"CD-ROMs in Print": Transmediality in Early Digital Culture

In the late 1980s and early 1990s an era of “new media” opened, full of the promises of
multimedia, while databases emerged as the new “symbolic form” (Manovich, 2002), and
interactivity turned into a buzzword. Our proposal revisits this history through one
“transmedia” and “boundary” object: CD-ROMS in Print books. These catalogs of more than a thousand pages aimed to list, classify, and describe all available CD-ROMs of the time.
Published in print and on CD-ROM, they served as both reference books and databases. Thus, situated at the intersection of print culture and emerging digital culture (Rassuli, Tippins, 1997) these “transmedia remnants” offer a rich case study for exploring the transition from analog to digital media, their intertwinement and complementarity. Framing these “reference works” as products of media circulation, we will emphasize their role as transmedia objects. While positioning the catalogs as a metaphor for transmediality, we will also explore the transmediality of their content: the types of CD-ROMs cataloged, the key market actors involved, the language used, and the ways in which transmediality intersects with multimedia capabilities (Schafer, 2022)—such as the integration of video, audio, and other media formats. enabled by CD-ROMs. “CD-ROMS in print” highlight the interplay between different media forms and the reconfiguration of media ecosystems during the early digital transition period.