The new Oxford English Dictionary Online is now available through the NU Libraries.
If you love the OED, don’t be alarmed by the word “new”! All the content, the words, pronunciations, etymologies, definitions, and everything else you love and trust is still there, unchanged.
But for this new edition, Oxford has added new content, new ways of appreciating the English language, and new technical features.
New content
From a productivity standpoint, for my money the most important content addition is the integration of a thesaurus. Each definition of the word has a prominent “Thesaurus” link that allows you to see a few alternatives. The dictionary is also integrated with the
Historical Thesaurus to the OED, which places your word in an outline form with related words.
In fact, overall, Oxford has placed a high value on historical content and there’s a lot more word history to explore. For example:
*Links to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography give you more information about the authors of the example quotations. (For full biographies from this resource, see Snell Library’s print edition.)
*A list of most-cited authors and texts, updated each quarter, shows you what the OED uses for sources.
*Essays by OED staff historians have also been added on the history of the English language.
*A fun time-killing feature called “Timelines” leverages the incredible amount of information packed into the dictionary by allowing you to analyze it more like a database. Choose a broad topic like “Military” and see when new military words were added to the language. Sort them by region (Ireland, Australia, etc…) to see in what part of the world they originated. Link to lists of those words for browsing.
New functionality
An updated design and some great new technical features allow you to navigate the site more easily and appreciate the incredible richness and history of our language.
*When you do a search with many results, the first screen gives you a peek into each word so you know which one you want.
*Once you select a word, a scroll bar along the definition allows you to navigate more easily.
*A text enlargement feature is built into the definition page.
*The pronunciation symbols are explained in a pop-up box for every word.
*You can save instead of just printing and emailing.
*”About this entry” tells you when the word first entered the dictionary, what other words link to this word, and other facts.
*Each word has a “Cite” button that gives you the correct citation for MLA and Chicago for your bibliography, for download to Endnote, ProCite, RefWorks, and Reference Manager software.
*During your session, the dictionary remembers the words you searched so you can go back to them.
*”My Oxford English Dictionary” is a new feature for saving your searches, creating folders to organize your favorite words, and setting preferences such as how much information you want to display on each page.
How did we even tolerate this dictionary before this update? It’s hard to imagine! Enjoy the beautiful polish and shine on this online dictionary, a true jewel of the English language.
Micah Nathan opens the spring series on January 27, reading from Losing Graceland, a picaresque novel about a down-on-his-luck college student’s road trip to Memphis with an elderly man — who may or may not be Elvis!
On March 9, psychologist Shelley Carson talks about Your Creative Brain, a book about how to strengthen your brain to develop your creative side, with an emphasis on understanding what kind of brain you have and what techniques work best for you.
On March 16, Patrick Rothfuss brings us The Wise Man’s Fear, a fantasy novel that tells the story of the growth and development of a hero. It’s the eagerly-anticipated second in a projected trilogy (the Kingkiller Chronicles), following the immensely popular Name of the Wind.
If you’re young enough to have just missed the baby boom you probably have fond (or not so fond!) memories of the disco era. In which case, you’ll enjoy hearing Alice Echols discuss Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture on March 30. If nothing else, she rehabilitates the great Saturday Night Fever to its rightful place in the American film pantheon.
We’ll be making more announcements as we move closer to the dates. And we hope you’ll join us for this exciting series of authors!