Many of us, above a certain age, have argued passionately in defence of the book and the library, but increasingly we are having to adjust our thesis to the impact of new technology. No better example of the new media could be found than this particular digital resource, which on a single disk contains an astonishing amount of information on the English parish church. It has the equivalent of more than 600 pages of text, and is designed to run on both Windows PCs and Macs. The aim of its creators is ‘to illustrate the multi-layered interaction of belief, art, architecture, community and culture through the centuries', which is achieved by using text, images, maps, music, video and 3D modelling. It incorporates recent research by well over 200 academic specialists in the fields of history, literature, theology, archaeology, art history and music. The material on this disk is organised by themes such as daily life and worship and art and architecture, and by chronological periods from the early centuries of Christianity to the present, with further access to subpages, an encyclopedia, glossarial notes, bibliographies, notes on contributors, key texts, primary sources, case studies and even a ‘saintfinder’. It may take the reader a few hours to become familiar with the complexities of the system with all its various colours, tabs and menus, but the rewards are considerable for a wide variety of readers, whether academics, students or the general public. Inevitably a massive and ambitious resource such as this contains repetitions, typos, inconsistencies and a fair sprinkling of errors, but these will no doubt be addressed in the later editions which will undoubtedly follow.