Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 09:03:55 -0500

From: Gregory {Greg} Downing downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU

Subject: Re: ADS-L; Hazard; Legal Sharks; Linguistics Dictionary; Dog Names



At 02:10 AM 12/9/97 EST, you wrote:

I just bought THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF LINGUISTICS by Peter

Matthews (1997, Oxford University Press, paperback, 410 pages, $13.95). It's

more comprehensive (3,000 entries), but less in-depth than Crystal's

dictionary. Why isn't anyone doing a CD-ROM linguistics dictionary?





Very few CD-ROM's have made money to date, I'm told by people who work in

and with the industry (Silicon Alley in downtown NYC; NYU's Interactive

Telecommunications program). Many have instead been done as give-aways

included with some hardware or software purchase. But DVD's (digital video

disks) are coming at this point, and can hold much more than a CD-ROM. But

whether DVD will prove to be a financially viable technology is another

issue. It seems to me that the advantages of CD-ROM/DVD (search capability

etc.) are great. For example, you can search the entire OED2 text (not just

headwords) looking for a word or collocation of phrase in about 15 seconds.

But until individuals and institutions buy CD-ROM's/DVD's enough so that

they make back their investment plus some kind of profit for those sinking

effort and money into them, the list of available titles will remain small.



Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu