The products you would want depends, as always, on your site and situation.
What do you want your site to be?  What and who should it serve.  How much
time and effort can you and your staff spend on the site?  The answers to
all of these and more that you can easily think of should be used in designing
an appropiate site.  There are many more products out there than you can afford
with the $1000.
 
The following recommendations are based on usage in a slightly different
environment than the one you have described.  (The Map Collection has a small
lab with a LAN of 5 workstations, a server with a large harddisk and a
6 cd-rom tower, color and laser printers, and a scanner.  The LAN is connected
to the University's broadband and to the Internet.  The Collections is in the
ARL GIS project and has a fair sized collection of digital data.)  Some of the
following products work on a LAN and some do not.  Most of the CD products
will require some space on the workstation's harddrive.  You will need a large
harddrive if you want them all pre-loaded with a usable icon on the menu.  If
you do not they will have to be loaded each time they are used. (Either a
security problem or a staff time problem.)
 
One way to look at the products is to break them up into categories.  For
example:
 
 
Road Atlases: "Map Expert" or "Street Atlas USA"
 
Trip or Travel Planners:  "Automap" (Only slightly better liked by patrons)
                          We have not yet received "Microsoft's Automap" but
                          it looks good on the Web.
                          "Map'n'go" (or Mop'n'Glow") is also very good. I
                          have not tried the others.
 
Historical Atlases:  "Centennia" (From Clockwork).  I do not know if this is in
                     a CD version, but it is very, very nice.  It covers Europe
                     right now and is suppose to be extended to the other
                     regions.  A must buy if historical atlases are important.
                     "The Great American History Machine" and
                     "AniMap" (spelling?) are both good buys for the U.S.
 
World Atlases:  There are several world atlases programs out there with many
                different features.  You need to pick up one of them.
                "Global Explorer" from DeLorme has been a disappointment
                because, unlike the outstanding print capabilities of their
                other products, staff and patrons have found printing from the
                atlas to be a problem.
 
Regional Atlases:  These are just starting to appear.  I have not yet seen the
                   Bartholomew cd on Europe but it is a possible choice. You
                   might look at their whole range of cd databases, but they
                   are probably out of your price range.
 
National Atlases:  There are several U.S. atlases out there, you will need one
                   of them.
 
State Atlases:  Several states have e-Atlases.  If there is one for your state
                you need the thing.
 
Reference tools.  You need at least the "GNIS" cd of U.S. names. The "GEOname"
                  cd is probably out of your price range, but is excellent for
                  foreign names.  If your usage warrents, or it is in your
                  Gov. Doc. Dept. you might want the "APSRS" cd from USGS.
 
 
Digital Data:  GIS and imagery data and software have not been covered above
               because it would be a separate catagory that does not appear
               to be part of your plans.  It would also mostly be out of your
               budget range.  However you could consider:
               1)  Pull the "Landview" cds out of Gov Docs and add to the list
                   of atlases loaded on the workstation.
               2)  Download "Arcview 1" from the Web for free and buy the
                   ArcInfo version of the "Digital Chart of the World".
               3)  Put "Corel" or another graphics software on the workstation
                   so patrons can manipulate their images.
               4)  Give the workstation access to the Web so patrons can get
                   data off the Web (but watch the type of use!).
 
Are you going to put together a list of all the recommendations and post it on
the list??  Hope so.
 
John Sutherland
University of Georgia
Map Collection