oed.com - the story so far

Since the launch of OED Online in March last year, four batches of new and revised entries, hot off the workstations of the editors, have been published on the web site in a smooth quarterly cycle. Every three months, the OED Technology Group extracts the latest completed batch from the database and processes it, in order to simplify the complex tagging used by lexicographers into a more streamlined form suitable for the online version of the Dictionary. The Publication Group checks the processed text, making sure (among other things) that revised entries are correctly linked to the corresponding Second Edition entries. The text is then passed back to the Technology Group for a final electronic spit and polish, before being whisked across the world to HighWire Press in California, who insert the entries into the web site's database. The Publication Group previews the updated site, which, when it has been approved, is made 'live' to subscribers. By this time the next batch is due for extraction by the Technology Group.

The range of entries covered by the new edition now runs from M to meaty, a total of 5474 entries, of which 759 are new to the OED. The size of the text is approximately double that of the corresponding range in the OED's Second Edition.

One of the advantages of publishing the Dictionary online has become apparent in the last year, namely the ability to update and republish an entry when further information on the word comes to light. This has been the case with the entry machicote (a skirt worn by native American women). The discovery of recent evidence has enabled us to remove the 'Obs.' label, and to give a contemporary spelling for the headword. Similarly, earlier evidence was found for the mathematical term Maclaurin's series, which also provided a reference to Maclaurin's first publication of the series. Both the antedating and the reference can now be seen in the entry.

As well as the Dictionary itself, other material has been published on the site. In June 2000 we added the Bibliography to the Second Edition to the Help text, and in September the prefatory material from the printed Second Edition was converted into HTML and placed in the public part of the site. Also added to the public pages was an appeal for help with locating quotations cited from Dr Johnson's Dictionary. These were originally accepted on Johnson's authority, but we are now attempting to check the quotations, some of which have proved difficult to trace owing to their incomplete bibliographical references.

To help users of OED Online, we have produced a Quick Reference Guide, which is available as a downloadable PDF file from the Help text. The last three issues of OED News have also been available in PDF form, and the newsletter is now published quarterly, to coincide with each update of the Dictionary.