Houghton Mifflin announced on Friday that its Electronic Publishing unit has launched eReference, software that includes the full text of The American Heritage Dictionary and Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, with the ability to grow its knowledge base through expansion titles. eReference features color images, spoken pronunciations, bookmarks for favorite words and the ability to highlight and look up words on Web pages, in documents or within the text of dictionary and thesaurus entries.
Houghton Mifflin currently offers several expansion titles on the eReference Web site, including 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary and others. The American Heritage Spanish Dictionary will be added later this month.
Pricing is US$34.95, with a demo version available. The expansion titles vary in price from $5.95 to $29.95; all of the software is an additional 15 percent off “through the holiday season.” Mac OS X is required, although Houghton Mifflin doesn’t specify the minimum version required on the eReference Web site. The company notes that the software doesn’t currently work with Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2004.