June 1995 newsletter

Our first newsletter was issued earlier this year, with copies being distributed in Europe and North America. In addition, the electronic text was posted on the Internet (www.oup.co.uk). The response was very positive, and has encouraged us all as we got down to the long task of revising OED entries. The number of new staff has risen from the nine reported in the last issue to a grand total of fifteen, making a complement of over thirty in all, and we are now looking forward to a move in June to a newly developed open-plan office area, which ought to relieve the congestion which has resulted from the recent appointments. The vision of ourselves moving from scholarly cells to a vast room resembling the newsroom of a great newspaper may be rather daunting, but accurately reflects the industry which work on the Dictionary demands: no more planning and scheduling, but a frontal assault on the alphabet, which has already resulted in the completion of four ranges of text for review by the OED's Advisory Committee.

Our Call for Research Materials continues to bring in a harvest from all over the world, and we have enlisted expert help in a number of areas. Particular thanks are due to Priscilla Bawcutt of Liverpool University for her advice on the dating of early Scottish texts, and we have also been fortunate in acquiring the services of Dr Charles Mitchell, himself an OUP author, as an additional law consultant. Thanks are also due to Professor James Sledd, of Austin, Texas, for his voluntary reverification work on Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionary and Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus. On the electronic text front, we would like to thank Dr Andrew Hawke of Aberystwyth for donating to the OED a copy of Edmund Bonner's Homilies (1555), and also Professor David Burnley of Sheffield and John Price-Wilkin of Michigan for making texts available to us.