OED: 75 years and more (continued)

2003

In the latest quarter-century of the Dictionary's history, a great deal has happened. Two further volumes of the Supplement appeared in 1982 and 1986; the Second Edition of the Dictionary, incorporating a further 5,000 new items and edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, was published in 1989; three volumes of Additions appeared in the 1990s; and of course the great task of revising the entire Dictionary has now been under way for over a decade (and online publication of the Third Edition for three years). In some ways the nature of the editorial work has changed a great deal, not least due to developments in technology: the completion of the Supplement was transformed by the use of computers, and every lexicographer's workstation now provides access to the richness of the English language of all periods which the editors of the First Edition could hardly have imagined. And yet some things have not changed: slips of paper, six inches by four, may still be found on every desk in the OED's current offices - and will no doubt continue to do so for some time to come.