LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW

(CD-ROM) READY! SET! SIGN!!
Ready! Set! Sign!! LLC (703-820-5730; contact_us@readysetsign.com)
Windows 95+. 2001. No ISBN available.
Price: $99.95
www.readysetsign.com

This five-disc set contains a 24-lesson course in Sign Language for beginning signers aged 10 and up. Signs taught here are all ASL-based and are stipulated by the producers to be "totally accurate for use in communicating through American Sign Language and totally accurate for use in communicating through Pidgin Signed English." Funding for the product's creation came mostly from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Rehabilitative Services.

To give you an idea of what you're getting for your $99.95, here's a summary of the discs' contents: about 13 hours of video instruction, showing hand, facial, and body movements (these are superb! The performers are dynamic, clear, and effective in demonstrating even nuances of meanings); 1,250 signs equal to about 3,000 English words; Sign Searching,
a randomly  accessible Glossary which lets learners locate and see any sign they want from anywhere within the program at any time; fingerspelling; number signing; major grammar concepts; and closed captioning, in addition to video and audio explanations.

The producers have assembled all of this beautifully from both a user's and teacher's point of view. The product is set up so that multiple users may access the lessons and keep track of their progress. The 24 lessons can be taken sequentially, building on what the learner knows ("100 Signs You Already Know"), progressing through Instruction, through several sections on Vocabulary (each followed by Practice sequences), and ending with a Wrap Up. Or, if you're like me and prefer to learn "out of sequence," you can jump around, sampling different parts of the disc, skipping ahead to lessons of interest or simply browsing through the Sign Search facility, learning new signs one at a time. The omnipresent videos succinctly provide demonstrations and explanations of each sign, along with contextual representations and common sense background. My low-tech workstation ran all the discs effortlessly, and the technical quality of the videos was just as high as their pedagogical content - in other words, no jerkiness or pauses.

The bonus here is a Cultural Moments section, full of fascinating material about deaf culture and the deaf community, with information about how deafness affects speech and language acquisition, equal opportunity laws supporting deaf peoples' rights, and recent medical and technological developments having considerable impacts on deaf culture. I would have liked a little more elaboration on the social and cultural issues surrounding cochlear implants, but I'm nitpicking just because it's a subject of personal interest. The disc does note such issues do exist, which is more than many instructional programs would do.

The Bottom Line: Attention has been paid to every detail here: even the clothing worn by the signers on camera provides good contrast to make their gestures highly visual and easy to interpret. This set compares very favorably to the classroom-based introductory ASL course I once took. In fact, being "language-learning-challenged," I prefer this individualized method of learning to that of the classroom. A top quality product, and enthusiastically recommended for libraries everywhere.

Cheryl LaGuardia

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Cheryl LaGuardia
Head of Instructional Services
for the Harvard College Library
Widener Library, Research Services
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
617-496-4226; FAX 617-496-9802
e-mail: claguard@fas.harvard.edu