Legal Research

Friday Fun: The Sordid OED

By admin

I had to read James Murray’s biography in library school and it was fasincating. The OED is certainly one of the icons of librarianship and publishing and has undergone enormous change over its history. I thought that this Mental Floss posting was very interesting and a neat, gossipy summary:

The Quick 10: The Surprisingly Sordid History of the OED (and other facts)

Highlights:

1. OED co-creator Frederick Furnivall had habit that was rather unhelpful ? he tended to start fights with the very people from whom he was trying to ascertain facts.
2. It wasn?t until late in his career that editor James Murray found out that one of his most reliable and prolific readers was actually a patient at The Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
3. A couple of famous writers have worked for the OED, including J.R.R.Tolkien.
4. Despite being considered one of the most accurate sources in history, the OED sometimes gets it wrong, too.
5. The 2010 additions to the OED include ridiculous slang like ?bromance? and ?chillax,? and even really of-the-moment words such as ?tweetup? and ?vuvuzela.?
6. The longest entry is for the word ?set,? which requires more than 10,000 words to explain properly.
7. To convert the OED to an online format, more than 120 typists were required.
8. The blue leather 20-volume set is currently selling for $6,295 on Amazon.
9. It?s said that when author W.H. Auden died, his OED was found in such shambles it was hardly legible
10. Author Ammon Shea issued himself a personal challenge to get through all 20 volumes ? that?s 21,730 pages ? in just a year. He wrote a book about it, in fact.

Fun stuff. Read the whole post. Even though I have an e-copy I still jones after the 2-volume one that comes with the little drawers for the magnifying glass. Yep – that’s what library geeks do.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 11, 2011 (boomark / email).