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Submitted by Van on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 10:34am.

New Electronic Database: the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary is now available online at all library locations and to Ann Arbor District Library cardholders from home or office. The Oxford English Dictionary is a historical dictionary providing the meaning, etymology, pronunciation, and usage for over half a million words from across the English-speaking world.

The advanced search offers some useful features. You can use wildcards in your search. The question mark, “?”, can be used to replace any one single character. The asterisk, “*”, can be used to represent any number of characters (or no character at all). In the advanced search you can combine two or more words in your search. You can use “and”, “or”, “and not”, and “near” to combine words. With “near” you can choose whether your search words need to appear within 1, 2, 5, or 10 words of each other.

If you want to find a word for a lover of words, then you can enter “love*”, select “near” and enter “words”, then choose within 2 words from the pull-down menu on the right.

The eight search results include logophile, defined as a lover of words.

If you wonder how many other words there are that end with –phile, then you can use the wildcard “*”. Type *phile in the Find Word search box in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Ninety-four words appear that end with –phile.

In a jam working a crossword puzzle? Try using the wildcard “?”. If you have a nine letter word and you have five of the letters figured out, then do a search in the Find Word search box (upper right hand corner of the screen). Try this search: ?a??ala?e.

The library also has the print OED in the reference collection on the second floor of the Downtown Library.



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Submitted by Sancho Panza on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 1:00pm.

Yay! I can't wait to tell everyone that we have this database : )



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Submitted by Jody on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 9:27am.

Oh wow, this is incredible! And it doesn't even require the odd combination of a magnifying glass and Olympian biceps to enable one to look up a word. Anyone else love Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything?



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Submitted by wfzimmerman on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 10:53am.

Outstanding. With all the activity on new buildings, etc., it's good to see the library investing in fundamental additions to its collections. How about adding LexisNexis?



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Submitted by rjstone on Fri, 05/02/2008 - 7:42pm.

I'm glad this is here, but it seems like it's not entirely working properly in my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.13). In particular, if I click the "Etymology" button then the frame which contains the main word definition just ceases to exist.

Anyway, I this is an excellent service for the AADL and I thank those who helped to obtain it.



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Submitted by rjstone on Tue, 05/06/2008 - 7:16pm.

Well, I don't know if they fixed anything but now I'm not seeing this problem. I did switch to Flock which is 2.0.0.14 based, so maybe that fixed it or maybe I did something else. (Would have sworn I was also having this problem with this version of Flock earlier....)



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Submitted by sjosephson on Sat, 05/10/2008 - 10:05pm.

Thank you! Thank you! This is an important and fundamental addition.



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Submitted by arubin on Mon, 05/12/2008 - 1:45pm.

YES! I am SO excited!



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Submitted by Paperback Girl on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 7:03pm.

Splendid! This is going on my toolbar...

"She actually seemed happy to be there."
Miss Tarango from Don't Call me Ishmael



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