Don T Judge A Book By Its Rom

What’s wrong with this picture? This was no book the august Book Review was writing about. It was-Luddites alert!-a CD-ROM, those five-inch silver discs that you slip into a computer, containing the entire collection of London’s National Gallery, accompanied by millions of words of text. For better or worse, it marked the first time the Review had opted to judge a work that can’t be smudged.

Horror of horrors? Book editor Rebecca Sinkler concedes the section’s “confirmed print junkies” will probably look at it that way. But they needn’t fret about such reviews devouring the section: “We just felt there are enough people who have the capacity to read information on CD-ROMs now and this was a particularly appealing, uh-I can’t call it a book-thing to review. "

The reviewer, Bernard Sharratt, chairman of the department of communications and image studies at the University of Kent in England, is impressed. For $79.95, you not only can click through 2,000 pictures but can even be your own artist, cutting and pasting between pictures. As Sharratt mischievously reports, “I can airbrush a fluffy pink beard onto Bellini’s stern Doge.”