Five years ago, the Wildlife CD-ROM, titled "The Golden Bird" was launched. The objective was to create a product which was of the finest possible quality and aimed at the macro level of the Indian education system. The Kaleido India team has put together material
on a subject which is not very easy to document in the Indian subcontinent.where many wild species are endangered and rare to come by. The content is truly encyclopedic in its scope and designed to be of interest to a wide cross section of people from casual
browsers to experts. The content matter of the CD covers the following subject areas:
- Overview of Indian Wildlife -India's wild habitats
- Detailed sections on Indian animal species, comprising all groups of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish.
- Protected areas: Sanctuaries and National Parks.
- Conservation and Management (people and social issues, government and non- government agencies).
- Wildlife Trade and Traffic.
The CD content also constitutes a diffuse database comprising:
- Maps and overlays ( areas, species distribution and range) -Statistics, Fact sheets
- Dictionary/ Glossary of Conservation terms
- Glossary of English, Indian vernacular and Latin names. -Bibliographies and references
In addition, a high quality image bank comprising over 4000 still images( colour and B&W pictures, artworks, line drawings) and 40 minutes of edited motion film has been
incorporated in the Cd-ROM. All these have been interactively linked and users can access these as well as navigate the content of the CD through specially designed navigational screens.
In the final CD, text listings and descriptions have been integrated with pictures, video and sound and, where the subject so demands, information has been supplemented with
graphics and animations to illustrate special features.
For the expert and more technically inclined user, in depth data in the form of extract of research papers and lists of references for further reading has also been provided.
Review in "Discover India' magazine dated November 1999.