OED on CD-ROM



The history of the Oxford English Dictionary (continued)



The New Oxford English Dictionary project



Beginnings


Early in 1982, when the editing of the third and fourth volumes of A Supplement to the
Oxford English Dictionary had reached an advanced stage, the Oxford University Press set
itself to consider the future of the OED. The two questions of whether any further
amplification or revision of the Dictionary should be undertaken, and whether an attempt
should be made to combine the main OED with the four volumes of the Supplement, were
recognized to be complementary. Publishing a supplement to the Supplement, or adding
further material to it, had to be rejected as unsatisfactory expedients. The OED and
Supplement should be combined before any further development was possible.

How should this amalgamation be performed? The two portions of the Dictionary had been
typeset in hot metal. A new edition, whatever it might entail, would have to be typeset
by computer. Conversion of the text into electronic form could be carried out either
before or after the amalgamation. The option of creating copy for typesetting from the
existing printed texts by means of cutting and pasting, or the marking-up of insertions
and deletions, was dismissed. The technology of textual processing by computer was now
at a stage of development that made it a highly appropriate tool for the task that OUP
contemplated. The OED in machine-readable form, structured for use in a database
management system, would be relatively easy to revise and, moreover, would be
susceptible of a number of other applications, especially as a publicly available
computer database. Indeed, the conversion of the Dictionary into electronic form, for
just such a purpose, had already been suggested by parties both inside and outside the
Press. It was therefore decided that the data conversion should be the first step taken,
not only to lead into and facilitate the amalgamation, and subsequent editing, of the
two parts of the Dictionary, but also to open up the possibility of its future
development in electronic form. A preliminary study, carried out by the Oxford English
Dictionaries Department in March 1982 under the supervision of Dr R. W. Burchfield,
concluded that both the conversion of the texts by manual keyboarding and their
integration by experienced editors were feasible;9 the report also listed the main
aspects of the OED which were ripe for revision and correction. The Senior Officers of
the Press determined at once to pursue the idea. Since the OED could be regarded as a
kind of national monument, it was felt to be quite proper to solicit assistance, whether
financial or technical, from Government departments, research institutions, or
industrial companies. Accordingly, Mr Richard Charkin, the then Head of Reference
Publishing, initiated a large number of approaches in various quarters, and in the
meantime assembled the elements of an appeal brochure. By the end of the year the first
outlines had emerged of a project that would involve computerizing and merging the two
parts of the Dictionary, revising and updating the merged text, and publishing it in
both a new printed and an electronic form.


The identification of partners


In March 1983 a small team was set up within the Press to begin the planning of the
project. Its first task was to write the appeal booklet. It was decided that this should
combine two aims. The first part, a clear explanation of the background and purpose of
the project, was intended both for general information and more specifically to arouse
the interest of any institutions or individuals who might wish to enter into some kind
of partnership in the project. The second part, giving detailed technical
specifications, was to be used by firms wishing to tender for the work of computerizing
and merging the text.

By June, the brochure, entitled A Future for the OED, was complete. Copies were sent to
computer companies, data conversion firms, on-line database proprietors, universities,
libraries, and the British Government. A deadline of 1 August was set, by which time
four firms had submitted tenders. The project team, evaluating these, quickly found
that, while each tender had its own particular strengths, none furnished the Press with
grounds for confidence that one tenderer, alone, could carry out the entire task to the
required standard.

The initial idea had been that the chosen supplier would convert the text into
electronic form, merge the OED and Supplement, and supply the resulting computer
database to OUP; then, using the text editing system newly installed at OUP,
lexicographical staff would revise and correct the Dictionary interactively and pass it
on for composition and filmsetting. It now became evident that to carry out integration,
to create a fully searchable database system, and to revise the bulk of the text in a
single step would be impracticable, and it would be far too long before any new edition
of the Dictionary could be published. A revised approach was needed. The project had to
be broken down into smaller components; a number of different project partners were
required, each responsible for what it could do best; and OUP should act as overall
manager of the whole process, co-ordinating the separate components centrally. By the
end of 1983, partnerships had been established with three contrasting institutions.
These were as yet on an informal basis, but during the succeeding months of joint
exploration they rapidly crystallized into formal agreements.

A data conversion firm of great experience and capacity, International Computaprint
Corporation (ICC), a subsidiary of Reed International situated in Fort Washington,
Pennsylvania, was selected to carry out the conversion of the two texts into electronic
form. IBM United Kingdom Ltd. undertook to supply computer hardware and software, and to
second a group of experts as the nucleus of a team of system designers: their task would
be to build a computer system that would facilitate the integration of the two
electronic texts into one. Early in 1984 it was confirmed that this assistance would
take the form of a donation under the auspices of IBM's Academic Programme. The
University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, had expressed great interest in the research
aspects of the project as early as 1982. They undertook the task of designing a database
system suitable for the dissemination of the OED in electronic form and for the phase of
updating and editing which would follow integration. The geographical distribution of
this partnership was felt by OUP to symbolize quite suitably the international
significance of the OED.

Recognition of the national importance of the project followed soon afterwards. A copy
of the brochure had been favourably received by the British Government, and as a result
a subvention towards the cost of the lexicographical research was announced by the
Department of Trade and Industry in May 1984.

There was one other development of great importance towards the end of 1983. Fifty years
before, the remainder of the team responsible for the OED, having completed the original
Supplement, dispersed, and there followed an interval of a whole generation during which
no original historical lexicography was carried on at OUP. Because of this, the new
Supplement had to be started virtually from scratch, and needed many years to make up
the lost ground. It was imperative to avoid the repetition of such a hiatus at the
completion of the Supplement. Accordingly, a small editorial group who had been engaged
in the drafting of entries in Volume IV was set to continue the work of compiling new
entries, starting again from A, but also taking in new words and senses anywhere in the
alphabet for which entries were clearly needed. This new series of entries was called by
the convenient acronym ?NEWS?, standing for the ?New English Word Series?. It
immediately became a valuable source of information for the other Oxford Dictionaries.
Although a complete updating of the Dictionary was now postponed to a second phase of
the project, it was decided during 1984 that approximately 5,000 items from this series
should be included in the new edition of the OED in order to compensate for the temporal
gap between the earlier and later volumes of the Supplement. The selection and editing
of these articles was set in motion, and their text converted to machine-readable form
at the end of 1986. This subject is treated more fully in the foregoing Introduction.


Planning


In January 1984 a department was established within OUP to manage the project. It was
now possible to establish the objectives of the project, as follows: the conversion of
the Oxford English Dictionary and Supplement to machine-readable form, ensuring that all
information contained in the one form was carried over into the other; the integration
of the two texts into one; the addition of articles on a selection of new words and
senses; and the publication of an integrated version of the Dictionary within an
acceptable time. These objectives constituted the first phase of the New Oxford English
Dictionary Project. The revision, updating, and enhancement of the Dictionary (of which
more is said below) would be the business of a subsequent phase.

Detailed planning was essential to the attainment of these objectives. An overall plan
(known as the ?Plan of Record?) was drawn up that identified all the major activities
within the project, their interrelationships, the time each would take, and the
resources of staff, equipment, and finance each required. These were: conversion of the
data (or ?data capture?), initial proof-reading, computer development, automatic
processing of the machine-readable text, editing of entries on the screen, composition
of galley proofs, final proof-reading, and final page composition. For each of these a
detailed plan was made. In July 1985, when the outline design of the computer system was
complete, it became possible to estimate the times required by the process of building
and using that system; these times were added into the plan, and a firm Plan of Record
was established. Thereafter, the target dates for the completion of each main activity
were fixed.

Proprietary software designed for project planning and spreadsheet operations was of
vital help in developing and monitoring each of the interlocking detailed plans which
made up the overall Plan of Record. This computer assistance immediately revealed the
effects on that plan of changing any value (number of staff, amount of time, or cost).
Hence it was possible to project time and cost quite accurately and to monitor progress
against these projections. The use of such technically sophisticated methods, more
redolent of engineering than lexicography, and unprecedented in the history of the
Oxford Dictionaries, was necessitated by the scope and scale of the project. The latter
may be roughly illustrated by some figures for the resources used in each main activity.
Data capture, the keying of about 350,000,000 characters over 18 months, took 120
person-years; computer development took 14 person-years; automatic processing of the
text took 10 months; interactive integration took 7 person-years; the two rounds of
proof-reading, undertaken by over 50 people, each took 60 person-years; and final
composition of the integrated text involved the setting of approximately 20,000,000
characters per week. The adoption of rigorous planning and adherence to strict
monitoring of progress contributed significantly to the work's completion in full
accordance with the schedule and expenditure forecast which had been established four
years previously.

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