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Oxford Dictionary Considers Going Online Only
Kilrah_il writes "Oxford University Press has confirmed that they are considering offering their next version of the Oxford English Dictionary as an online version only, with no option for a hardcopy. The 20-volume set, whose last edition (2nd) was published in 1989, weighs 145 pounds (65kg) and costs about $1,165. It is considered the 'accepted authority on the meaning and history of words.' In 2000, the dictionary was offered online for $295 a year and has been getting 2 million hits a month from subscribers. The printed version, on the other hand, has sales of only 30,000. Work is now progressing on the 3rd edition, but it's still a decade or more away from completion. Oxford University Press is considering going online-only with the next edition of their flagship product, but not for other products such as their best-selling Advanced Learner's Dictionary. At least for now."
The printed version, on the other hand, has sales of only 30,000
At $1,165, that's $34,950,000, still a tidy sum.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Of course they want to go online only, think about it, a 10 year subscription is over $2,000 for them to pocket compared to only $1,165 for the printed copy that lasts a decade. Plus, they can raise that fee in the future and don't have materials cost (which is significant in a book that large)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm going to miss the deluxe boxed editions that are over 12 pounds of dead tree plus a little drawer complete with magnifying glass. I'm not kidding, I once saw one a book shop that had a little compartment that held a magnifier.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
So instead of paying $1,165 for something you can touch and have access to whenever you want (and possibly resell) Oxford thinks consumers would rather pay $8,850 ($295/year * 30 years (rough average time between releases)) and get something that they cannot access whenever they want (servers go down, power outages, etc.) instead? Someone help me out here...I can't see the rational here. Maybe Oxford will make it available for download on iTunes :)
Never argue with idiots, they just drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.
I've been lusting after a full copy of the OED since I was introduced to it in my Freshman year of High School. However, as a poor college student majoring in Math, I just can't justify the costs right now... However, once I'm able to, I know I will be purchasing the full set, and would almost certainly purchase the 3rd edition when it is finally ready. While I know that I'm part of a very small minority, I think my existence (as an average person, not a writer, with an education in the sciences and not language) as a soon to be customer shows that there IS a market for these in print, and that much of this market would be absolutely devastated if the OED did go online only.
glad they get 2 million hits, but how many subscriptions is that? is it more or less than 30,000
The pride of my personal library is my copy of the 20 volume edition of the OED (2nd). I have it conveniently placed near my writing desk and make constant use of it. I fully appreciate the greater convenience of an online version but there's nothing quite like seeing it all laid out like this. While the market for something this expensive and large might be dwindling I doubt it will ever go away completely. And then at $295/year currently for the online version I just cannot justify spending that much (due to the weird price fluctuations at Amazon, and a lot of patience, that's the exact price I paid for my printed version). I also have the OED Historical Thesaurus which is an amazing work. The article mentions that they're going to combine it with the OED for the online version. That would make the yearly price more reasonable but it still seems more than I'd be willing to do for every year for the rest of my life.
How is this a news article? Oxford University Press says that when they are ready to publish their next revision in 10 years, they might consider doing it online only if there isn't a demand for the hard-copy version.
Calling it "wild speculation" just doesn't do that term justice.
That's one PDF I wouldn't want to download.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Well, I guess you could use an online version to play the Dictionary game , but nothing says "family fun for everyone" like passing a giant dead-tree-edition dictionary around the living room.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
2 million hits/month isn't much for "the 'accepted authority on the meaning and history of words.'". Considering we're approaching 7 billion people (granted not all English speakers) that means a tiny proportion of that population touch it even once a month.
Still a $1000+ 65kg dictionary is ridiculous so online might be the way to go.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
In my personal, completely subjective opinion, there were few things more satisfying to do at a library than open the biggest damn dictionary you could find to a random page. (This was after I finished playing Ghostbusters in the stacks)
Thankfully most academic institutions already provide proxy access to OED online for the students/faculty. I'll have to stay in academia just so I can get free access to OED and the precious definitions within...
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
This story is untrue according to Oxford University Press.
http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/8360446.Oxford_Dictionary____not_going_online_only___/
The CD-ROM version is available for $215. They really ought to make it available for e-book readers.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You know, I'm all for going digital and keeping electronic backups of things, but one big problem with selling digital-only of anything is that some form or specialized reader (in this case, a computer) is necessary to access the information contained within the document. Having the entire Oxford dictionary in paper form means that future generations and cultures can simply pick up the text and start reading/translating it based on context. Having the next edition in purely digital form means that some future generation or culture will have to develop some means of reading our digital records to have access to the lexicon that is the Oxford dictionary. Mind you, I am not advocating that decisions for the present be made regarding ease of access in some theoretical future, I am just noting that everything stored in a purely digital format today may not be accessible sometime down the road.
It sort of makes you wonder if some of the more obscure artifacts we have found from ancient cultures needed some form of a reader or another to properly understand. I don't know enough about archaeology to make any claims that is the case, but it is an interesting thought.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So instead of paying $1,165 for something you can touch and have access to whenever you want (and possibly resell) Oxford thinks consumers would rather pay $8,850 ($295/year * 30 years (rough average time between releases)) and get something that they cannot access whenever they want (servers go down, power outages, etc.) instead? Someone help me out here...I can't see the rational here.
You insensitive clod! It's supposed to give Oxford a better deal, not the consumer!!! Now immediately apologize by signing up for a few decades.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
... if for no other reason than to have a copy around that can still be read in 1000 years.
In Ohio, most public libraries let you access the OED online from home if you have a library card.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Consider an extinction-level event, such as an asteroid collision with earth. Presume that we cannot deflect the asteroid because we detect it too late, or some other reason you can imagine.
In that case I would bet that humanity, although scattered to the wind all over the planet, would survive in some form. But, who will maintain the internet? Who will preserve all of the data? And, even with that data, we still have to find all of the necessary components to read it (SATA controller, display board, connectors, etc). And our future fractured selves are going to have a hell of a time finding the meaningful and important data, since hard drives do not look remotely unique.
Books do not have any of those problems. The entire OED is not exactly portable, but once you have re-created infrastructure enough to used wheeled transportation, it should be carry-able.
Putting more and more records online is a good thing because it increases access to that information for everyone. But perhaps some records, such as the definitive history of the words in our language, should be designated cultural artifacts worth saving and preserving in hard copy form, lest the unthinkable happens and we lose several centuries of our historical record. And the longer we continue to put stuff only online, the worst the results will be.
Of course, everyone will think planning for this eventuality is ridiculous until we HAVE to plan for the eventuality. I hope we have enough warning to preserve what we need to.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
I don't know if modern paper, or the ink would last that long.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
For those of us who don't read English, does it come in a French translation?
I find this absurd. There's an air about a bookshelf dedicated to nothing but a dictionary or encyclopedia collection. It looks classy, smart and refined. Online can be easier to search and navigate, but being able to pick up something analog should not be dismissed in this digital world. Another though is even though I am not planning on society crumbling anytime soon, or us being wiped out, but I doubt an "Ipad" will last as long as the dead sea scrolls.
My mistake. It was "D'oh!" that made it into OED. Cromulent appears in the Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English.
This is exactly the type of thing that makes me want a workable micropayments scheme. I'd dig having the full version in either electronic or dead tree form, sure, but I can't justify the cost. I could easily see myself paying US$0.25 or something to look up words as needed, though.
You can bet that theirs will. Acid-free paper and non-fading inks are readily available.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A great read - intro to OED & interesting similarities to wikipedia
If they do decide to drop the printed version - then there seems to be little point in waiting 10 years until they "complete" the current edition before publishing it. They could simply release any completed sections into the online version at whatever frequency made sense.
OED CD-ROM based versions have been pretty terrible with DRM and obfuscating their database.. However, v4.0 CD-ROM (at least for mac) contains _no_ DRM, and appears to only be obfuscated in terms of how the backend database is stored.
I've been working on this on and off for a while and am pretty close to being able to fully decode their dictionary to the XML -- the sticky part is that their app is written in haxe and presented as a flash application to the OS, but defies any standard flash reverse engineering. But C reverse engineering has yielded chunks of decoded XML without a lot of effort.
So, buy OED v4.0 while they still offer it.. It won't be 0day like the online version, but I think I can live without the addition of new definitions for words like 'twitter'.
Definitely - physical copies need to be stored in library's around the world. Paper/Papyrus seems to last well, if cared for but are there better things we can do today (Difficult to prove without a few thousand years to test). If we have an event that retrogrades our knowledge base all the on-line, on CD, hard drive becomes inaccessible. Even language may change, that's why it's even more important that the Oxford dictionary has physical form as it would be a lexicon to translating other works. Yes to on-line, and good for them if they make money as it must cost a lot to produce, but only if there are many archived physical copes also made around the world. If these are few they they need to be in a form that is as secure against time and loss of knowledge as possible. (off top of head, laser cut into stainless steel or even better platinum)
Oh sorry, we were too busy updating our vast lexical and dictionary database to give a shit
There is a single volume compact edition available for $400.
Just as a comparison, Wikipedia could apparently fill 1424 volumes,
Also this appears to be the result of printing the longest 2500 articles of Wikipedia.
Okay seriously I've just run out of pointless things to say.
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And who in the fuck even knows what the funny little marks are? or mean?
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Here in retard land Australia, where we speak "Strain Mate", know one knows anything about speaking 5 or 6 languages.
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Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
Why don't people just go to wikipedia, answers or hell, just google the word and click on the first hit. Also there are so so many dictionarys around - including open-source ones - so why should anyone pay ?
They'd better print more then a few if they want it to be available in 1000 years.
Only 21 copies of the Guthenberg bible has survived of the 180 made, and that is a holy book with heavy historical implications and is only about 600 years old.
I think there is a good chance that none of the 30'000 2nd edition dictinaries will survive a thousand years.
Having the entire Oxford dictionary in paper form means that future generations and cultures can simply pick up the text and start reading/translating it based on context.
What makes you think future generations will have eyesight or be able to recognize letter forms? Perhaps they will have lost those capabilities from having their brains constantly plugged directly into a data stream?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yes, it's called the Grand Robert de la Langue Française by Alain Rey, 6 volumes, 2nd edition 2001 (ISBN: 978-2850366734).
As far as I know, it's gone electronic only since a couple of years, but you may still be able to snatch a dead tree version somewhere.
It's 4 volumes shorter compared to the OED, but that's not surprising when you consider that half of the english lexicon is made up of french imported words, only the other half being genuinely saxonish and thus germanic in origin, hence the need to make room for the redundancy.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/thinking/2008/04/how-bootylicious-got-into-the.html
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel