"D. Starner" <shalesller@writeme.com> writes:
Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org> writes:
The OED is an example of this. Oxford has pumped a huge amount of money into the dictionary, but the dictionary has also been built with an enormous amount of volunteer help. There are no libraries anywhere near where I live in Bangkok with a copy of the OED which I can use. Since I don't have a credit card, I can't get access to the online edition even if I had the money to pay for it.
And I understand that despite how much it costs, it has never turned a profit in the history of its existance. Oxford keeps people working on it because of its importance, not as a profit making venture.
Good point -- The bills have to be paid by _someone_. But does that factor in profits from other dictionaries like the COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary)? The OED is the baseline for all of the Oxford Dictionaries, just as Merriam Webster does with their unabridged third international and the rest. COD or the MW Collegiate would not be what they are without their monster unprofitable cousins. I read somewhere that the COD has been one of the top selling books in UK every year for quite some time (that could be wrong though). And it might well be that even with this other revenue the whole venture might still be short of a profit. But if they are working on it because of its importance and not for profit then why make it so expensive? They _want_ to make a profit from it and they are trying. Fair enough. If the OED is only available in institutions which can afford it, it will eventually be replaced by another, just as Britannica is loosing ground to Wikipedia. Wikipedia still has a ways to go (perhaps not in quantity but in quality) but the writing is on the wall. More than any other type of intellectual work, every dictionary and encyclopedia is built on the backs of those that come before it. And so it goes. b/ -- Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org>, Bangkok, Thailand