Putting scholarship online
Robert Faber
Editorial Director, Scholarly and General Reference
www.oup.com/online
OED and ODNB
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Competition
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OED: none on same scale; lots of free dictionaries
ODNB: none on same scale in British history; lots of low-grade
biography
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Print, magnetic tape, CD-ROM, online …
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Online business model: subscription
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Unlimited
Concurrent user
Limited periods … so renewable
www.oup.com/online
Business models
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Subscription
Pay-per-view / pay-per-access
Perpetual access (e-books?)
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With hosting fee?
From online shops to e-readers (e-books?)
Mobile apps (e-books?)
Free!
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Advertising
Market place
Infomediary
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OED project
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OED first published 1884–1928
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Complete rewrite now under way
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70 staff
publishing online since March 2000
currently 260,000 entries, 800,000 senses defined,
2.9 million quotations, 55 million words of text online
10,000+ revised or new entries a year, in 4 updates
Editing now based around online publication and electronic materials
New search capabilities
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20-volume print set; text first digitized in 1980s; CD
By date, language of origin, full text, quotations, usage, region, etc.
Online has brought new readerships
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OED Online
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Markets: academic and professional libraries
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Law, medicine, as well as humanities
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But also public libraries and individuals
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In 8 years OED has gone from being the 20-volume gorilla of the
dictionary world …
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Legendary but rarely seen in the flesh
To the most-used Oxford dictionary online
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2,300 to >4,000 subscribers in last 5 years
Up to 2.8 million entries viewed each month
Challenge now to offer content at all levels of use
Language tool-kit a mix of print, PC, and online
www.oup.com/online
OED usage: entries displayed by month
Calendar 2000
• average 160,000/month
• peak 320,000 in a month
Now
• average >2m/month
• peak c2.8m in a month
Jan Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Months in each year
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
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Oxford DNB project
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First published 1885–1901 (63 + 3 vols)
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+ supplements: total 36,000 lives, 33 vols, 33m words
New DNB project 1992–2004: £25m+
55,000 biographies
10,000 images, 62m words
Written by 10,000 people worldwide
Communication, technology
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50,000 sub-projects made possible by technology
Database prepared for any form of publication
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Publish all together
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Not the original plan
Shortened timescale: 12 years not 20
More resources, more risk!
Enabled focus on subsets of content
Became a research project
Mobilize 10,000 contributors
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653 wrote the Victorian DNB (29,000 lives)
Would we do it that way now?
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ODNB online
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Innovative online features
Highly searchable
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by place, occupation, religion, date, images, etc.
Direct links other resources
Online ‘themes’ growing as British history companion
Rapid online sales growth
Driving traffic: biography index
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Marketing and positioning
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Content relevant to everyone
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Generates much interest: word hunts, family and local history
But content can be of the highest standard
Link to OUP’s mission
Brand awareness – and challenging misconceptions
Very large enterprises over very long time-spans
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Ideally suited to electronic management
Hubs of online information
Built into the academic network