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....