WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Johanneke SytsemaOULS Subject Consultant (Linguistics)
Katherine MellingOULS Subject Consultant (French & Italian)
WISER Humanities: Online language
dictionaries
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Aims of the session What are the advantages and uses of
online dictionaries? What kinds of dictionary are available
online? How can I access these dictionaries? Demonstration
Oxford Reference Online Xrefer OED Humbul
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Online dictionaries The future of dictionaries?...
“Online dictionaries surely embody the future for word browsers. New technologies allow word definitions, and their histories, to be conjured up with the click of a mouse. And now, instead of having to print new books each time the dictionary is updated, the online version can be altered in no time.” The British Library
http://bllearning.co.uk/live/text/mean/oedonline/
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Online dictionaries
Why use online dictionaries? Available from any internet connection – free
to uni members and not limited to library opening hours
Can allow for more sophisticated searching Can be less cumbersome and easier to
manipulate than printed tomes! Can be more rapidly updated by publisher Hyperlinks allow for better cross-referencing
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Things to look out for… Authority – who, when, wny? Know exactly what you are consulting – check
for exact bibliographic details, compare to print version if possible
Does the dictionary provide the level of detail, guidance, and explanation available in a print version?
Do not rely on one resource esp. if you’re studying for a language degree – you’ll still need to use print monolinguals, for example
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
What is available? 1 Dictionaries via OxLIP
Usually electronic versions of dictionaries published in print, e.g. Oxford English Dictionary, Collins bilingual dictionaries
Guaranteed quality – compiled and edited to academic standards by professional lexicographers; published by renowned companies
OULS pays for these – only available to university members
Athens password needed to access from home
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
What is available? 2 Free dictionaries on the web
Easy to find hundreds of free dictionaries through Google etc.
Better to look through an academic gateway such as Humbul
*SEVERE HEALTH WARNING*! – could have been created by any random person…
But there are some academic-quality projects freely available
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
xreferplus Digital reference library including various
dictionaries: Collins bilinguals for French, Italian, German, Spanish,
Portuguese, Latin Collins and Chambers English dictionaries
• Available through OxLip, Athens password needed for remote access
• Better for Italian and Portuguese• Allows browsing and searching (phrase, wildcard)• Automatically searches both sides of a bilingual,
great cross-referencing
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Oxford Reference Online
Contains ca.100 OUP reference works, including mono- and bilingual dictionaries
Available through OxLip, Athens password needed for remote access
Better for French and German?... Allows browsing and searching (phrase, wildcard) You have to search each side of a bilingual separately,
can’t cross-reference between the two Contains better explanatory information that xreferplus
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Free translators
Be careful with free translators
They don‘t guarantee a reliable translation
Examples: Geht er schon in die
Schule? http://freetranslation.com/
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Example
Het is mooi weer vandaag (It is a nice day today)
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Any better options?
Choose the ‘professional translation’ option
Better translations are possible if you’re willing to pay…
I want professional translation
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Free online dictionaries
Freedict free online dictionary found through Google
No information about number of entries
No information about editors
Results dubious Results unusable
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
www.humbul.ac.uk Humbul Humanities Hub provides description
and evaluation of the source Bilingual dictionaries Oxford Reference Online Lexicool.com links to over 4000 bilingual and multilingual
dictionaries and glossaries freely available on the Internet
Links to specialist dictionaries Choose dictionary for your search
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Lexicool (1)
Number of entries per dictionary
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Lexicool (2)
Choose dictionary
Search ‘Schule’, choose a meaning…
…or view the context
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Meaning and context
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
OED
Online dictionary paid for by Oxford University Library Services
Electronic Resources / OxLip Accessible directly from Oxford Accessible with Athens password from
anywhere Monolingual descriptive dictionary
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
OED features Historical dictionary First published in 1884-1928 English from 1150AD to date English from across the globe Number of word forms defined and/or illustrated:
615,100 Pronunciations: 139,900 Etymologies: 219,800 Quotations: 2,436,600
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
OED functions Find Word Search – searches main dictionary
entries Full text Search – simple search, searches all
dictionary text Advanced Search – Bolean operators, search
words near to each other Sort results Highlight specific parts of the entry Save results to a file Use wild cards Browse function – Lost for Words?
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Welcome to OED
Simple search will bring up search box above
Find Word
help
Get random entry
Advanced search
Find Word
help
Add OED to your browser
Search box
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Entry
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Quotations
quotations
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Etymology
List by entry
etymology
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Advanced: NEAR/NOT NEAR
NEAR
(bolean operator)
Options for NEAR/NOT NEAR
(Second search term +) 1 word before
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Advanced searchSearch quotations
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Sort and print
447 results
Sort by date
Change to ‘500 per page’ for printing
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Save to a file In results list click ‘print’ In print version choose ‘file’
and ‘save as’ Follow instructions in pop-up
box Save to file is a way of
building a text corpus for linguistic research
OED suitable for linguistic research since quotations are available from 1150 AD.
Searching by date is possible Investigate the use of a word
over a certain period
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
You can e-mail an entry, not a results list The link to the entry will remain life for three
days For research purposes, saving as a file is more
advisable
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Wild card search
Not sure how to spell? Use a wild card: The question mark ? represents the occurrence
of any one single character The asterisk * represents the occurrence of any
number of characters (or no character at all) c?t finds cat, cot, cut c*t finds cat, caught, commencement, conflict,
consent, cot, cut, etc.
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Advanced wild cards (1)
A set of characters enclosed in square brackets ([]) represents a single character which can be any one of the bracketed characters. For example
s[pt]eak will find speak and steak. A hyphen can be used to abbreviate a range of
characters in a square-bracketed expression. For example, [l-p] means the same as [lmnop]
s[l-p]eak will find sleak, smeak, sneak, and speak (but not steak).
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Advanced wild cards (2)
A caret (^) meaning NOT can be used at the start of a square-bracketed expression, to indicate that the character represented by the expression is not to be any of those included in the brackets.
s[^p]eak will find sneak, steak, etc., but not speak. A set of strings (separated by commas) enclosed in
braces ({}) represents a string which can be any one of the bracketed strings. For example
walk{s,ed,ing} will find walks, walked, and walking.
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Search a phrase
Click ‘simple search’ to open up the ‘full text’ panel
Type the phrase into the top input box
Simple search
Input phrase
WISER: Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources
Assessment form at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/courses/feedback/index.xsp
Thank you for attending today
And finally…