Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789.

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. 25 vols. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Ronald Gephart, and others. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976-2000.) CD-ROM version, PC, Windows 3.1 or higher. (Summerfield, Florida: Historical Database, 1998. $325, network license available).

The first sixteen volumes of the Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, have been reviewed previously in this journal. The remaining ten, and the index volume, are reviewed above. This comprehensive collection of documents is now available on a single CD-ROM that includes its own search engine. Unfortunately, illustrations and their accompanying text in the printed version are omitted on the CD-ROM except for a brief note at the appropriate place in the text. Three introductory sections from the first volume are included in the User's Guide that comes with the CD, but they would have served historians better had they been included with the remainder of the material. However, the more than 23,000 fully annotated letters and documents and identifications of the almost 350 congressional representatives and staff are present and ready to search.

The "Folio Infobase" search function available in Letters is impressive. The major Boolean operators, as well as some less frequently used functions, are included. Additional features like wild cards and proximity queries add the potential of locating a wealth of information. Like all wealth, however, there is work to be done before it is gained. The ability to write a string of words that represents a complex query pinpointing detailed information has always been the forte of the talented librarians and archivists to whom many historians are indebted. On the Letters CD, as in other similar collections, this power is available on the historian's computer with a Help file that unlocks the power of the various keywords. Typical historians may have limited patience in the number of help files they will read and utilize.

One suggestion for this collection and others is to offer a way by which historians may export the text to their own search program, for example askSam. Rather than learning new search keywords or symbols to use with every new collection of documents, the historian could simply learn one program to do his or her searching. It is necessary to offer the query functionality, of course, for those who do not have a search program, but at some point this becomes redundant. Publishers must also protect their products, and this objection is harder to address. Nevertheless, there should be a way to produce document collections that do not require mastering new search engines.

The CD-ROM version of the Letters standing alone will be of great value in teaching novice students how to do research in this field. Except for the missing illustrations and their captions, the electronic version is complete. Onscreen text shows the volume and page numbers of the original, thus facilitating standard citations. Footnotes remain at the bottom of each page. Segments of the documents can be copied directly from the documents into research notes or text by simply copying and pasting. Students who might find the twenty-six volume printed set daunting should find the CD version usable and friendly. The search function is described in the Users Guide, and further instructions may be found on Historical Database's web site (http:// www.historicaldatabase.com).

Serious researchers will still profit from having the printed version of the Letters in hand to take advantage of the extraordinarily complex indices at the end of each volume and the cumulative index (vol. 26). The combination of the CD search function and the printed index will provide a comprehensive and unique research tool for all and a necessity for research-oriented collections. With or without its hardcopy progenitor, the Letters of Delegates to Congress CD-ROM is a valuable source of documents related to the Confederation period of United States history. Libraries with limited funds or space will find that the CD-ROM alone provides a valuable collection; it is a giant step toward the future of published archival material and historical research.

J. EDWIN HENDRICKS DANIEL J. PFEIFER

Wake Forest University