Proceedings to be Available on CD-ROM

The Proceedings of the Casualty Actuarial Society (PCAS) will be available on CD-ROM when the 1999 volume is published later this year. Forty PCAS volumes, from 1960 to present, will be available as a two-CD set for a purchase price of $24. Orders for this new product can be placed now by using the order form on the CAS Web Site at www.casact.org/pubs/pcascd.htm.

The two-CD set will be contained in a jewel case that holds two CDs. CD #1 will contain PCAS for years 1960-1995 and CD #2 will contain 1996-1999. For future PCAS volumes, only CD #2 will be amended, enabling the yearly production of a single 1996-present disc for current owners of the 1960-1995 CD. For example, when the 2000 PCAS is produced in 2001, the volume will be added to the 1996-present CD and made available for purchase at a lower cost than the original 2-CD set.

The CDs will contain search features, including the ability to perform multifile PDF searches. Enhanced navigation features will be added, including an opening screen with a table of contents linking to each title, and a "home" button added to each page for navigation back to the opening screen. The CDs will also contain the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ and will operate on both Windows and Mac platforms.

The Committee on Online Services (COOS) conducted a survey of members to gauge interest in having the PCAS available on CD-ROM. The survey revealed that nearly all respondents (97.4 percent) had access to a computer with a CD-ROM drive and that 82 percent indicated that having the Proceedings available on CD-ROM would be useful in their actuarial work.

Though the PCAS are available through the CAS Web Site, respondents indicated that there are additional advantages to having the PCAS available on CD-ROM, including portability and shorter download times.