Dictionary Society of North America

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Okay, okay, the wire services are loving the news that the Oxford English Dictionary has added or revised the entries for "dad dancing," "tweet," "follow" and "geekery" but I'm impressed by the addition of "the silent treatment." Check out OED's blog on the latest updates (which is also the source of the nifty graphic).

Pardon Our Dust

TEST

Conference on Historical Lexicography 2014

The 7th International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology will be held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, July 9-11, 2014, and will be hosted by the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

ICHLL is a biennial tradition and provides scholars from different institutions an opportunity to gather and share their research on the history of the dictionary, the making of historical dictionaries, and historical lexicology. Previous conferences have been held at Leicester (2002), Gargnano del Garda (2004), Leiden (2006), Edmonton (2008), Oxford (2010) and Jena (2012).

For further information, see:https://sites.google.com/site/ichll2014/.

Belated summary of DSNA 2013

DSNA's 19th biennial meeting was great fun, beginning with the program cover:

Thursday afternoon included a lively discussion on the future of the Society, after which everyone repaired to a splended reception:

On Friday we enjoyed a tour of the brand new Special Collections library, which features three museums: the Peabody Awards Collection, the Hargrett Rare Books Library and the Richard B. Russell Collection, devoted to Georgia's political history. The library also put together a beautiful little exhibit of old and rare dictionaries.

The banquet Friday night was enlivened by a talk from DSNA President Orin Hargraves entitled "A Half-Life in Lexicography," as well as music from The Catchwords (Peter Gilliver, Katy Isaacs, Lisa Berglund, Rod McConchie, Terry Pratt, Orin Hargraves, David Jost and Orion Montoya). 

On behalf of the Board and the membership, Orin presented outgoing Executive Secretary Lisa Berglund with a heavily annotated copy of a 1824 edition of Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary.

President-elect for 2013-2015 Michael Adams announced that DSNA 2015 will meet in Vancouver, British Columbia, in conjunction with the Society for the History of the English Language (SHEL).  

Many thanks to Don McCreary and his colleagues at the University of Georgia for hosting such a splendid meeting!

Moving Sale: Journal Backlist at Bargain Prices!!

In anticipation of our office relocation on 20 July 2013, the Dictionary Society of North America is having a sale of its backlist. Complete your collection of Dictionaries at Bargain Basement Prices!! 

Quantities of some issues are very limited. Order Now! This offer will not be available after 15 July!!!

The following publications of the DSNA are available:

$1 each plus shipping; 16 copies for $12:

Dictionaries: The Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America

We have issues from 1981, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992-93, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001,
2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009.

Papers of the Dictionary Society of North America, 1977 and 1981

Johnson's Dictionary: A Bibliographical Survey by J.E. and Elizabeth Congleton, 1984

$10 plus shipping: Dictionaries 26 (2005)

$15 plus shipping: Dictionaries 32 (2011)

Shipping: 

Domestic: $5 for one journal; $13 flat rate for up to 16 journals

To Canada: $8 for one journal; $30 flat rate for up to 16 journals

International: Please contact the DSNA office

To order back issues of Dictionaries, click on Publications for Purchase link in the right-hand sidebar. Indicate which issues you wish to order and the shipping rate and pay with your credit card.

DSNA Office closed during 2013 Biennial Meeting

The DSNA Office will be closed until 28 May, as we head to Athens, Georgia for the 19th biennial DSNA meeting. 

A DARE-ing Rescue!

The Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel reports that donations of more than $600,000 have poured in to support the Dictionary of American Regional English, whose existence was threatened by the US budget sequester (as reported on this blog back in April). The University of Wisconsin, foundations and individuals all pledged their support, with contributions ranging from $5 to $130,000. Editor and DSNA member Joan Houston Hall reports that the dictionary is now on solid ground for the next few years. You can read the full story here.

NEH grants for dictionary projects

Just received from NEH:

The Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities will be accepting applications for grants in its Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) program.  These grants support projects to preserve and create intellectual access to such collections as books, journals, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, art, and objects of material culture.  Awards also support the creation of reference works, online resources, and research tools of major importance to the humanities. 

HCRR offers two kinds of awards:

1)     Implementation Grants -- $350,000 maximum, for up to three years. Eligible activities include:

 

• ·       arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• ·       cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art, and material culture;
• ·       providing conservation treatment (including deacidification) for collections, leading to enhanced access;
• ·       digitizing collections;
• ·       preserving and improving access to born-digital sources;
• ·       developing databases, virtual collections, or other electronic resources to codify information on a subject or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials;
• ·       creating encyclopedias;
• ·       preparing linguistic tools, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora, and reference grammars
• ·       developing tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographic information systems (GIS); and
• ·       designing digital tools to facilitate use of humanities resources.  

2)     HCRR Foundations Grants -- $40,000 maximum, for up to two years. To help in the formative stages of initiatives to preserve and create access to humanities collections or to produce reference resources,Foundations grants will support planning, assessment, and pilot activities that incorporate expertise from a mix of professional domains.  Drawing upon the cooperation of humanities scholars and technical specialists, these projects might encompass efforts to prepare for establishing intellectual control of collections, to develop plans and priorities for digitizing collections, to solidify collaborative frameworks and strategic plans for complex digital reference resources, or to produce preliminary versions of online collections or resources.

New guidelines for HCRR have now been posted, along with sample proposal narratives, FAQs, and other resources.  The application deadline is July 18, 2013, with projects beginning May 2014. All applications to NEH must be submitted electronically through Grants.gov; see guidelines for details.

Prospective applicants seeking further information are encouraged to contact the Division at 202-606-8570 orpreservation@neh.gov.  Program staff will read draft proposals submitted six weeks before the deadline. 

Please note that the Division is also currently accepting applications for three other grant categories, all with a deadline of May 1: “Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions,” “Research and Development, “and “Education & Training.”  Details on these programs, as well as on the full slate of funding opportunities in Preservation and Access, can be found on the Division’s website. 

"In praise of old dictionaries"

Check out this brief editorial in the 22 April Guardian, in honor of World Book Night.

"Nobody in their right minds starts at A": John Simpson retires

DSNA member John Simpson is retiring after 20 years as the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Oxford University Press has announced his retirement from his post effective October 2013. John joined the OED editorial staff in 1976, and became co-editor with Edmund Weiner in 1985. He was appointed chief editor in 1993, the seventh OED editor since Sir James Murray’s appointment in 1879. Under John’s editorship, over 60,000 new words and meanings have been added to the OED.

For more than 35 years John has contributed to one of the world's largest and longest-running scholarly projects during a time of great change. During the 1980s the entire OED text, comprising the First Edition (1884-1928) and its Supplement (1972-86), was digitized as an integrated single text. This work laid the foundations for the publication of the twenty-volume Second Edition in 1989 and the launch of OED Online in 2000.

Effective 1 November 2013, Michael Proffitt, the current editorial project director, will serve as chief editor of OED, responsible for leading decision-making on style, policy, and strategy.  Philip Durkin, currently principal etymologist, will become eeputy chief editor alongside existing Deputy Chief Editor Edmund Weiner

My headline comes from an interview with John published in Time, which you can read here.