The New OED Project at Waterloo: Old Wine in New Bottles

'Presented at the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) Conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Mav 19-22. 1987 In mid-1983, three years before the fourth and final volume of the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) appeared in conventional print form, Oxford University Press (OUP) had announced its intention of computerizing the OED. By the end of 1983 the decision had been made that Oxford University Press would manage this large imdertaking itself, and would enter into a series of contracts/agreements with other parties (such as the University of Waterioo, IBM UK, International Computaprint Corporation (ICC) of Fort Washington. Pennsylvania, among others) to carr> out work on various aspects of the computerization.