Container-less Content? Not in This Digital Age.
The OED today is a database, not a book or set of books, or series of sheaves, or even mass of slips. That it is a database means it has simply been reframed by screens, code, database software, information management tools, server stacks, monitors -- but not that it's unleashed from framing altogether. In its monumental journey the OED has a constantly evolving set of distribution mechanisms, best understood as overlapping methods of framing the content. Each one articulates the OED in a subtly different way, emphasizing a certain performative aspect of framing. Each acts as a "container" for the dictionary, although the language of the container hardly helps us see the Scriptorium and the database on a continuum with each other and those handsome volumes gathering dust on library shelves.
- People:
- Michael Bhaskar