Oxford English Dictionary 'will not be printed again'

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

As both my husband and I have been involved in the publishing industry at some point in our lives, and have known many professional authors, we've been following this debate with interest for quite a while. There are a lot of people stirring up fears that books will disappear because of the threat posed by electronic devices, but in more careful analysis, it becomes clear that the people doing the stirring tend to fall into one of two camps: bibliophiles or publishers. The actual writers know that they will continue to have a market regardless of how the "book" is delivered to the consumer; many, in fact, view the change as something good, because they're hoping it won't be long before the publishers, who take the lion's share of profits but would have nothing to produce without the authors, will go the way of the dinosaur. Many of them are also bibliophiles and would hate to see physical books disappear, so you wind up with something of a conundrum. To top it off, I know many bibliophiles (aging ones in particular) who have been decrying ebooks at the same time they admit that those physical books they love so dearly have become a millstone around their necks, because of their sheer numbers and the difficulty of keeping them clean and moving them around. The minute they get their hands on any kind of book reader, they see the potential benefits, but still don't want to get rid of their books. Such is the way of the world.

I imagine Tolkien would likely have been much the same as they. As I recall, he wasn't too keen on the idea of using a typewriter, but after being forced to use it to get his manuscripts published, grudgingly saw its benefits. If one dropped him into the middle of today's debate without benefit of living through the changes that have occurred since his death, I daresay he would be appalled. I myself was appalled when my husband brought home our first computer back in the early '80s. I had been writing novels for over a decade by then, and had been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of composing at the typewriter only a few years before. Even so, within a few months of the Commodore 64 becoming a part of our household, I was using it, tape drive not withstanding, to write another novel. The benefit of being able to do editing without the need for hours of retyping was a powerful draw, and has been to many writers I've known who were extremely leery of the depredations of technology upon the art and society. I don't know if Tolkien would have ever used a computer himself, but I imagine he would've had little against having his son, for instance, use it for him. The computer has a lot to offer in the management of drafts, notes, and multiple versions, especially for someone with such a large and complex amount of such things to keep straight. So perhaps if he had lived through the intervening years and the dawn of the computer age, Tolkien may not have been quite so horrified as folks imagine. He would, I think, have mourned the changes of the world, but he had already lived through many world changes which left him philosophical rather than militantly opposed. It's all speculation, regardless.

As to the issue of availability to those of lower income, I don't believe the OED was ever available to the poor, except via libraries — and despite the gloomy forecast from some doomsayers, I don't see them going away any time in the foreseeable future. They serve a strong and positive benefit to communities as more than repositories for books, and even though the people who view them as parasites to their profits would like for them to go away, it's not likely to happen, IMHO.

It's funny, in the circles in which I have moved for much of my life, I've been branded as someone who is resistant to technology and its changes. Here, I'm beginning to feel quite the opposite. It's a strange, strange world....

[davem]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

The computer has a lot to offer in the management of drafts, notes, and multiple versions, especially for someone with such a large and complex amount of such things to keep straight.

Exactly - & in Tolkien's case that would have meant no HoM-e - in fact, no Sil as we have it at all - there would have been no multiple drafts for him to play around with, return to, amend, switching around different versions. We'll never see anything like HoM-e in the future, because writers no longer work that way, & that's because the computer has made it unnecessary - & as a nasty by product has bequeathed us the dreaded 'Extruded Fantasy Product':

That was a sign of things to come. Publishers began to discover the selling-power of big books and multi-volume novels, and after the disappearance of the dollar paperback, made them the mainstay of their business. The loose and sloppy prose of the word-processor generation was perfectly suited to their needs. They were publishing books in greater numbers and at greater length than ever before, with editorial staffs constantly shrinking; one hears of cases where a single editor is expected to acquire and publish a hundred books per year. Meanwhile print runs were shrinking, advances and royalties remaining static at best; so that a mid-list author, to survive, had to become a hack, churning out vast quantities of work and sending them to press only half revised. The result: countless acres of what in our especial field is called, with a perfectly justified sneer, ‘Extruded Fantasy Product’. (The more general term ‘Extruded Book Product’ is occasionally used as well. I Googled that phrase and found to my chagrin that my own LiveJournal profile topped the list.) http://superversive.livejournal.com/49083.html

I think its perfectly possible to argue that Tolkien's entire legendarium is as much a product of the 'limitations' he faced in terms of producing the work as anything else. He produced the work in the same way as his characters created the Red Book - by writing it with a pen & paper at a desk. In other words, I don't think the means he used were simply incidental to the creative process involved.

And yet I'm not using a pen & paper to produce this text.....

But... I think its important to recognise that computers/websites are not merely a 'different' form of the book - they are something entirely different & the approach to producing & telling the story is entirely different. A generation (maybe two or three away) brought up entirely on e-texts/websites will not 'get' a book like LotR in the way we do, because 'books' will not carry the same meaning or relevance to them.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by davem

in Tolkien's case that would have meant no HoM-e - in fact, no Sil as we have it at all - there would have been no multiple drafts for him to play around with, return to, amend, switching around different versions. We'll never see anything like HoM-e in the future, because writers no longer work that way, & that's because the computer has made it unnecessary

That's not entirely true. I began writing in a time when the basic electric typewriter was the pinnacle of a sophisticated writer's tool, but I mentor a number of young writers who weren't even born before the first affordable home computers came into being. Because computer files have virtually no physical space needed to be kept, they keep all the various drafts and notes and ideas, on their computers, and backed up on other storage media, just in case the computer dies, or in case they might want to use in a later project what they're editing out of the current one. And they keep drafts so they can compare versions, decide which really is better, and what was just an interesting idea that they aren't using, but don't want to throw away forever. Certainly, there are some who always destroy everything but the finished product, but that's true even if a person uses no electronic media at all. Tolkien was a pack rat, and would've been that way regardless, I think. I'm much the same way creatively, and I know young people who are, too.

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

Because computer files have virtually no physical space needed to be kept, they keep all the various drafts and notes and ideas, on their computers, and backed up on other storage media, just in case the computer dies, or in case they might want to use in a later project what they're editing out of the current one. And they keep drafts so they can compare versions, decide which really is better, and what was just an interesting idea that they aren't using, but don't want to throw away forever. Certainly, there are some who always destroy everything but the finished product, but that's true even if a person uses no electronic media at all. Tolkien was a pack rat, and would've been that way regardless, I think. I'm much the same way creatively, and I know young people who are, too.

Exactly I still files on my computer from when I was in Middle School of essays and stories and while some of them are very embarrassing, I rarely delete anything. They are the background to my current writings (and to some extent my political ideals.)

I just realized that some people may be getting the idea that I am against electronic readers and all that, which I'm not. In fact I'm trying to save money for one that I can take to college next year so I can fill it up with books instead of trying to pack all of mine into my suitcase.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

Exactly I still files on my computer from when I was in Middle School of essays and stories and while some of them are very embarrassing, I rarely delete anything. They are the background to my current writings (and to some extent my political ideals.)

I think that all pack rats keep things like that. I have drafts and drafts of different things that I have done for school that are written out by hand. There were a lot of things that I stuffed in a drawer in my desk and at one time I couldn't even open it any more because it was so full. Though I like writing, and I like it even more now that I own a fountain pen. Of course, I don't just keep around papers that I've written on, I also horde things like cardboard boxes and envelopes and old, empty bags of sweets.

The thing is that no matter what happens and how far technology expands and grows, there are always going to be people who like writing things out by hand and there are those who want to keep around every little document.

Besides, what happens when all computers crash and all of that saved data is erased?

[Rumil]

I agree that books are still the best way to read,

but as for the Oxford English Dictionary, well, it consists of 21,000 pages in 20 volumes and costs over 650 pounds, so more of a consideration for the larger libraries and insitutions. I don't see any plan to discontinue the Shorter or Concise dictionaries.

I think Douglas Adams put it best-

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Rumil

but as for the Oxford English Dictionary, well, it consists of 21,000 pages in 20 volumes and costs over 650 pounds, so more of a consideration for the larger libraries and insitutions. I don't see any plan to discontinue the Shorter or Concise dictionaries.

But I'd bet it'd look pretty cool on the shelf of a law office... Even if I'd much rather just stock my future office with Tolkien books.