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What has 83,000 articles, 7,000 photos and illustrations, 1,500 maps, one hour of video and tons of other features but takes up less space on your shelf than a box set of encyclopedias? No prizes for guessing Britannica’s latest 2001 deluxe edition CD-Rom.

This completely revamped edition includes 5,500 new articles, a redesigned user interface and new Internet tools, all of which make the Britannica 2001 even easier to use than its predecessors. Indeed this version of Britannica contains tens of thousands of Internet links to allow students to access the latest information in real time.

It provides direct access to the Britannica.com website, which widens a search for information and provides rated websites, special features and the latest news and sport. Britannica 2001 includes the full text of the Encyclopedia Britannica print set and more. As well as the illustrations, the 2001 deluxe edition CD-Rom includes multimedia videos and animation.

Pupils will appreciate the natural language search feature. Just type in a word, question or phrase and let Briannica provide the answers. With the analyst feature you can create customised reports, graphs, and tables comparing data between nations and regions. You can compare topics such as land use, trade, and communication.

The compass provides an interactive view of the world, visiting all 191 nations and 29 dependent states. It can travel from a global to a local view, from geography to international characters, and even further with the thousands of Internet links.

The timelines feature lets you examine the effects of people, events and discoveries on world cultures from the dawn of civilisation to today. Select from categories such as technology, exploration, music, medicine, or sports. The context bar helps keep searches focused, highlighting features where there is related information - a real time-saver.

The research assistant will help you create assignments, reports and presentations. You can write yourself a note, attach it to an article, place bookmarks, retrace your steps, copy and print. The new interface makes it so easy.

Britannica 2001 is an easier-than-ever-to-use resource that is rapidly becoming the last word in reference tools.

Chris Drage is ICT co-ordinator at John Kelly girls’ technical college, London borough of Brent