Reference Reviews

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf

January 2008

Title: Visual Dictionary Online
Publisher: Merriam-Webster, Inc. (M-W)
URL: http://visual.merriam-webster.com/
Cost: free
Tested: Jan 18-27, 2008

The Context

These days you will find in a good bookstore quite a number of picture dictionaries with very few words—primarily for children. Some also are available free online, but most visual dictionaries are not available online. A few are available on CD-ROM, such as many of the Dorling Kindersley (DK) and FireFly visual dictionaries with awesome color graphics. There are some excellent free online dictionaries with adequate illustrations and definitions, such as Webopedia, but they focus on specific disciplines or subdisciplines. A.D.A.M. stands head and shoulders above others in the category of free online medical ready reference sources, practically available through any medical Web sites dealing with health. It is, as the name implies, more than a dictionary, it is an encyclopedia. Then again, the names and categories are used inconsistently in the publishing word. The classic Grove Dictionary of Art, with its 34 volumes, is a hyper encyclopedia and not a dictionary. It has the richest collection of illustrations and it is online, but at a steep subscription rate.

Many of the best-known traditional dictionaries have a free version available via the Web, although usually not the most current edition, and most of them have poor or no illustrations—with the notable exception of the American Heritage Dictionary 4^th edition (AHD4). When it was first published, many dissed this dictionary for the simple, black and white illustrations. These were then considered by some as a blasphemy in the world of dictionaries. I salute the editors and publisher for having included these, and setting the precedent for new dictionaries to raise the bar in this regard. Encarta World English Dictionary did this in print, offering the largest number (4,000) of illustrations, but none of these are available in the free online version.

AHD4 has been my favorite collegiate dictionary for decades, both for its definitions and illustrations. The Web versions of this dictionary made it even more appealing, as there are many large, mostly color illustrations in it, and at a much better quality than in the print edition. (The audio pronunciations in some online AHD4 implementations are of particular importance to me, not as if I had been able to soften my thick accent, but at least I could slightly improve on the renditions of some words with unintended meaning, such as "eunuch" when uttered by me, not to mention some of the not fit-to-print mispronunciations).

The black and white illustrations are beautiful too. In its first Web implementation on the wonderful ready-reference collection site whose sponsor prefers to remain anonymous, there is a separate thumbnail index for the set of nearly 1,000, mostly color illustrations. Clicking on a thumbnail would show the large image. You don't find the equivalent of these in the print edition because they would significantly raise the production cost, the weight, size, shipping, handling and storage costs. The illustrations are linked back from the image to the definition.

In the print realm of adult general dictionaries, there are, of course, such remarkable works as the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, the Macmillan Visual Dictionary, the Scholastic Visual Dictionary, the Fact on File Visual Dictionary and the three most richly and best illustrated ones: the DK Ultimate Visual Dictionary, the DK Visual Dictionary of Everyday Things and the Firefly Visual Dictionary. None of these are freely available online, except for one, and that one has much enhanced content. This is a nice transition to the content section of my review.

The Content

The visual dictionaries listed in the last paragraph (except for the DK books) have something common beyond not being available in the free Web domain. Their visual content represent a subset of the magnificent set of illustrations of the Canadian publisher, Firefly. What Merriam-Webster has done is very significant. It cut a deal to make available 6,000 illustrations enhanced by definitions created by the lexicographers of Merriam-Webster as a free dictionary. This is a novel and laudable approach which brings out an exemplary synergy.

Merriam-Webster(M-W) entered earlier in a somewhat similar cooperation, but stopped short at publishing it only in book format, not posting it on the Web as a free resource. It is the Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary with 32,000 definitions created by its lexicographers and illustrated by 3,000 superb images licensed from the other master of visualization, Dorling Kindersley. DK is the publisher of top-notch Eyewitness series, pictorial encyclopedias and travel guides which make you want to hop on a plane and get to the destination ASAP. (This is not just nice talking. Several months ago, I returned after nearly 30 years to Bali, persuading my mother to take the long trip to celebrate her 80^th birthday. The brilliant and inexpensive Bali & Lombok Eyewitness Travel Guide—which is in its own league among the travel guides—played a role in my efforts and guidance on the scene).

This venture is not in cooperation with DK for this database, but with QA International, which seems to produce the illustrations for Firefly imprints. It is even better, as the quality and functionality of its images is at the level of the ones in the DK series, and the content is on the Web free for anyone to consult. And consult they will. It is so cool that even students will feel comfortable consulting it and be spotted using a dictionary (a geeky thing among those for whom the alphabet starts and ends at B, as in Britney) without being bullied or teased for it.

Images, labels, definitions

There are 20,000 definitions. None of the ones among the roughly 100 that I checked seems to have been lifted from one of the existing M-W dictionaries. They appear to have been created by the lexicographers for this purpose, and they were driven by the choice of available images. This is quite apparent when looking up detailed images for, say, ungulates, which are defined by the Visual Dictionary Online (VDO), as "Herbivorous vertebrates covered with hair, having four limbs bearing a varying number of digits ending in a corneous sheath (nail or hoof)". The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (MW-OD), definition is "a hoofed typically herbivorous quadruped mammal (as an artiodactyl or a perissodactyl) of a group formerly considered a major mammalian taxon (Ungulata)". In addition to the definition, MW-OD provides etymological information, data of first use, and function (i.e. used as noun or adjective).

VDO does not have this extra information, but has audio pronunciation for everything (in MW-OD, audio is available selectively), nine picture panes of the most well-known ungulate, the horse alone, six panes of examples of 29 ungulates, and one pane for types of hoof with a short explanation of the types. MW-OD has a good black and white drawing of a horse, and the parts are labeled, but these are not linked to their definitions. In VDO the first of the nine picture galleries for the horse, is a nice, morphological one in color, the text of the labels right on the picture, and then defined at the lower part of the screen, each of them with an audio pronunciation. It could only be better if the labels were listed alphabetically.

This is followed by an anatomical overview, then a richly detailed skeletal one, and if this is not enough, there is an extra skeletal picture gallery, pointing out the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral, and caudal vertebrae of the horse. The illustration of the plantar surface of the hoof allows a close-up view of the details without getting kicked, and makes it easy to understand from the cross-referenced picture of the horseshoe how it fits onto this area that you never saw in the western movies. By now you can't resist galloping through the terms used for the four major gaits of the horse from walk and trot to canter and pace.

Arrangements, classification, cross-references

The awesome illustrations and the informative definitions will keep luring in the users for a wonderful ride, through cross references, from the goats to the cheese types, to the variety of foods, to the digestive systems. Sometimes the definitions include difficult words, which are not explained because there are no illustrations for them, and as I mentioned, the illustrations—understandably— drove the definitions, not the other way around as in the illustrated dictionaries.

The cross references always lead to related galleries, which instantly offer the visual equivalents of the Sirens' sound that Odyssey could not resist, but there is no danger here. Yes, there are anatomically explicit drawings, as there should be, but any kids who went to the Web, must have seen already much more explicit textual, audio and video materials, so hopefully this site will not be blocked for this reason from school and public libraries.

The whole collection is very well classified into 15 main themes. These are divided into sub-themes, and many of the largest groups are further divided into one or more levels. This makes it easy to get from, say, the Animal Kingdom theme through the insectivorous mammals, down to the mole, shrew, and hedgehog.

It may be unusual for those who grew up on, or at least saw only alphabetically arranged dictionaries and encyclopedias. The classified arrangement—which was characteristic to the early encyclopedias, i.e. to the circles of knowledge, are particularly good for the common situation when the search is for something whose name you don't know, but you do know that it is a rodent that has very long hind legs, and needs moisture only not water. Just in a few click you will get to the picture and short definition of the jerboa.

The classified approach makes it natural to go from the horse to the other ungulates, at least to some of the attractive or otherwise interesting ones, such as the elk, the mouflon, the caribou, the antelope and the white-tailed deer, skipping the ugly ones like peccary, just by glancing at the thumbnails of the galleries.

These beautiful and informative illustrations go on and on and lure in the users for an educational pleasure ride. Quite often, the details are better than in an anatomy text book, or in a user manual for your refrigerator or PC, not to mention the "things" that come without a user manual and go out of order sooner or later.

Think of the unavoidable malfunctioning of a toilet that most commonly happens on Sunday when you expect guests for the evening, and you can't even explain on the phone to the plumber who charges extra for weekend emergencies, what is wrong at what part of your toilet. From VOD you get the picture along with explanations. If you feel that you can handle it, it is worth to look at the full picture from VOD before you do a Sunday plumber gig.

Coverage

Practically everything is covered in VOD, everything and the kitchen sink. At first I thought that this theme was based on a Martha Stewart cooking show on TV where the onions never make you cry, the knives are always sharp, the chalaza and the albumen give way to the yolk to let it flow out smoothly from the egg into the bowl rather than onto your fingers in its vitelline membrane—just as a supermodel flows out from the limo in her Gucci gown. Why? Because the kitchen sink appeared merely as a part of the kitchen layout illustration while great details are given about the types, shapes and forms of glassware, silverware, etc. A closer look revealed that indeed there is a detailed illustration of the kitchen sink under the plumbing theme, and clicking on the + sign next to the sink label automatically takes you there. What was I thinking?

The coverage is excellent in most themes, but the breadth of coverage was, sometimes a little odd. To me, the combination of dinnerware, glassware, utensils and silverware section, for example, was a little excessive, although I admit that I was relieved that indeed the largest tablespoon is of 0.5 oz capacity in the Western hemisphere, and my efforts to hunt down a deeper 0.8 spoon to eat my goulash soup remain useless until my next visit to my home country.

I feel that the entertainment technology coverage is thinner and less current than I expected. It may be highly subjective as for obvious reasons I don't get interested anymore in combs and brushes no matter how they are shaped and named. It looked strange that there wasn't a good cutaway for the variety of iPODs, a plain MP3 player, or a USB with MP3 playback capabilities.

It is good to know for our grandchildren how the cathode ray tube TV looked like, but the picture about the picture tube does not contribute to get a good picture. A cutaway illustration of the Hollywood-slim high definition liquid crystal television could have been added. The same is true for the portable radio, which should have been complemented by the picture of a state of the art radio with 3-D stereo behind one's earlobe without surgical intervention. Then again, my admiration for the rich and sophisticated presentation of the typographical, diacritical symbols, punctuation marks, fabric care symbols and all the iconic things may be found excessive by others.

Non-coverage

The only really weak part is the Society theme. It is no surprise as societal issues don't lend themselves easily to illustrations, although some do, such as visualization of demographic data; the origin of the left and right labeling of parties; the layout of the educational pyramid; the maps of election systems; the typical hierarchical structures of governments; the map of the world by major religions. The characteristic religious clothes, head-dresses, headgears so often seen these days on television could have provided interesting illustrations . These latter ones don't appear in the Clothing & articles sub-theme either, except for the garrison cap which is somewhat similar to the karakul worn by Hamid Karzai, and the skullcap without any allusion to religion.

The burka, the chador, the turban, the keffiyah, the fez, the niquab (face veil), the boushiya (eye veil), the disdasha, the large variety of scarfs and shals of different religions would have been good additions to the very limited Religion themes. These are perhaps errors of omission which are always debatable, but the most perplexing to me is an error of commission within the sorry Religion theme. It is interesting that even in the land of free speech when the subject is religion it often triggers a mind cramping reaction in authors, editors, TV personalities, reporters—all of them very much aware of the political correct mantra. Surprisingly, this applies not only to verbal communication but also to written communication when there is enough time for refining, chiseling a statement, an allusion, or an illustration. Writers'cramp sets in, and the political correctness turns into lack of common sense. Several years ago I mentioned an example for this when reviewing in this column, the very poor Factmonster component of the otherwise excellent Web site of the Information Please Almanac. Although the error was since corrected, the whole Factmonster segment is still rather phony, selling chapters from the Information Please Almanac as kids stuff wrapped in summer camp quality cliché graphics and language. I still could find the error through the Web archive. If you scroll down you would see that it lists under the heading World Religions Buddhists, Hindus, and Judaism. That's it. Never mind the sloppy mixing of terms for religions and adherents. Do mind the omission of Catholicism and Islam which by any kind of filtering should have been listed, simply because they attract the two largest groups of adherents.

In MWOD, there is a similar incompetence when it comes to religion. Beyond the chronology of religions there are only four illustrations, all of them about houses of worship. There is one very good cutaway for a church, one cutaway for a synagogue, and two illustrations for a mosque. Having two for the mosque is strange not only because there are significantly fewer adherents of Islam (close to 1.5 billion) than of Christianity (more than 2.2 billion), but also because the only difference between the two images is, that the second one has three more locations/objects marked on the drawing than the first, so there is no need for the former. Forget about the ratio, but think about the lack of illustration for the places of worships for Hinduism (nearly 1 billion adherents, and Buddhism (somewhat below 0.45 billion adherents). There are quite a few spectacular wats, puras, stupas, and shrines to choose from for illustrations.

The Software

There is not much software functionality needed for MW-OB beyond browsing by themes, sub-themes, and following cross references. No relevance ranking, proximity operators, sorting by multiple criteria are needed. These are well implemented and intuitive. Direct searching is minimal, and it is OK because there is only a single index that can be searched, that of the definitions' text. It is somewhat confusing that a huge place in the second most precious part of the screen estate is left entirely empty in this phase, and the only thing that pops up for every query is "no records found", which would be true for some words in my test search, such as merkat and panda, which have no illustrations, and hence no definitions, but is absolutely not true for many of the searches that I have done.

This is a spectacularly good visual dictionary that needs to enhance the content in the sub-themes of the Society main theme and add a few illustrations for the state-of-the art gadgets in the Entertainment area. It is easy to live with the advertisements as they are on the top and right side of the screen, and they make it possible to have this outstanding ready reference source freely available. The book edition is also very attractive and reasonably priced at around $40, depending on where you shop and how you shop, but the convenience of the online version can't be beat.

The 20,000 definitions may seem to be almost an order of magnitude smaller than in the typical print dictionaries in the collegiate dictionary league at this level, but many will choose MW-OB than one of the others simply because of the pleasure of looking at these magnificent illustrations, explanatory labels and informative (if sometimes a bit difficult) definitions even if they are also free and available online.