Dictionary of Old English: 2009 Progress Report
The highlight of 2009 was unquestionably the new release of the DOE Web Corpus in November – a moment of great joy for the DOE team and a significant milestone for the project. The Web Corpus, which had been generously hosted by the University of Michigan ever since its worldwide release in 1997, has now been brought home to Toronto, currently residing on a server in Robarts Library through the kind offices of our Chief Librarian, Carole Moore. Andy Orchard, the Toronto member of our International Advisory Committee and Provost of Trinity College, University of Toronto, together with his wife Clare, hosted a reception in the Provost's Lodge to celebrate the launch of the 2009 Web Corpus. Our guests included our Program Officer from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Sarah Mark, and representatives from the Salamander and Jackman Foundations and the St. George's Society. We would like to express our gratitude to Glenn Carter, who donated a number of historic prints to be sold at a silent auction during the reception on behalf of the project. We are also grateful to the Division of University Advancement, Faculty of Arts and Science, for their support. Also in November, we released the 2009 Corpus on CD-ROM in XML and HTML formats. The new publications supersede previous releases of the Corpus. Information on both can be found on our website (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca) and inquiries about the Corpus should be sent to corpus@doe.utoronto.ca. Meanwhile, the drafting of entries for H (the next letter to be published), I/Y, L, M and N is progressing well and the lemmatization (the assignment of spellings to headwords) of O is steadily advancing.
Technological Advances
Our systems analyst, Xin Xiang, has concentrated this year on facilitating the smooth transition of the Web Corpus from Michigan to Toronto, where it has now joined DOE: A to G online on the University of Toronto Library server. She has also ensured that the XML version of the 2009 Corpus on CD-ROM is TEI-P5 conformant, that is, fully conformant with the 2008 Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). We continue to work hard to make sure that our digital materials adhere to current standards. A major technological advance of the year is the implementation of hotlinks to the Middle English Dictionary. We now have an internal version of DOEonline with hotlinks to both MED and OED; the hotlinks to MED will be made available to users when DOE: A to H is published. The general public can access new H words, demonstrating the new MED links, at our "Word of the Week" feature (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/wofw/). Please note that we have added an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed to keep our readers informed about the changing content of the "Word of the Week".
Grants and Gifts
We are happy to report that in the course of the year we were awarded grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York, the Salamander Foundation, Toronto, the British Academy, London, the McLean Foundation, Toronto and the Jackman Foundation, Toronto, as well as gifts from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and from colleagues and friends. We are greatly indebted to our funding agencies and individual donors, for without their generosity the Dictionary cannot be completed. We continue to seek steady financing and new sources of funds in this challenging economic climate. A list of gifts to the project in the past year is appended.
Dissemination and Outreach
We were delighted to have visits from two members of our International Advisory Committee – Professor Eric Stanley, of the University of Oxford, who gave a lecture co-sponsored by the project and the Centre for Medieval Studies, and Professor Roberta Frank of Yale University. This year we were, as always, pleased to welcome scholars and students from around the world who came to our offices to consult our collection for their own research. Our Editor, Antonette diPaolo Healey, has represented the project at conferences and meetings in the course of the year. In April, she was a speaker at a conference on "Other People's Thinking: Language and Mentality before the Conquest" at the University of Wisconsin. Also in April, she delivered a plenary address to a combined meeting of three conferences: The Forum for Germanic Language Studies (GFLS 8), Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference (GLAC 15), and Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL 6), at the Banff Conference Centre, Alberta, In May, she attended the 44th International Congress at Western Michigan University and the annual board meeting of the Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research. In July, she attended the biennial meeting of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists in St. John's, Newfoundland and the meetings of its Advisory Board. In late summer, she was invited to Japan, where she delivered a plenary address at the meeting of the Society for English Language and Literature at the University of Hiroshima and gave a lecture at Chiba University. In December, she attended the meeting of the MLA in Philadelphia, where she gave a report on the project to the Old English Executive Committee.
Staff
- EDITOR: Antonette diPaolo Healey
- REVISING EDITOR: Joan Holland
- DRAFTING EDITORS: David McDougall, Ian McDougall
EDITORIAL STAFF:
- Catherine Monahan Picone
- Xin Xiang (Systems Analyst)
- Elaine Quanz
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE:
- Roberta Frank, Yale University
- Helmut Gneuss, University of Munich
- Simon Keynes, University of Cambridge
- Andy Orchard, University of Toronto
- Fred C. Robinson, Yale University
- Eric Stanley, Pembroke College, Oxford
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS:
- Emira Bouhafna
- Michael Elliot
- Alex Fleck
- Paul Langeslag
- Tristan Major
- Stephen Pelle
- Richard Shaw
STUDENT ASSISTANTS:
- Karen Law
- Erin Keenan (Mentorship Student)
- Abigail Ferstman (Mentorship Student)
EDITOR, Toronto Old English Series: Andy Orchard
EDITOR, Publications of the DOE: Andy Orchard
Funding
- The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (formerly the Canada Council): Grants in Aid of Research, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975; Major Editorial Grants, 1976-81, 1981-86, 1986-91, 1991-96; Grants from the Federal Matching Funds Policy, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991; Special Presidential Grant, 1993; Consortium Support Programme 1996-98, 1998-2000, 2000-2003, 2003-2005, 2005–
- The British Academy
- Canada Foundation for Innovation (for TAPoR [Text Analysis Portal for Research]), 2002-2007
- Connaught Fund, University of Toronto, 1986-1991
- Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, 1998-99, 1999-2000, 2000-2001, 2002-2003, 2004-2005, 2008-2009
- Early English Text Society
- Marc Fitch Fund
- Foundation for Education and Social Development, Boston
- Jackman Foundation
- Macdonald-Stewart Foundation
- McLean Foundation, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2009
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1985-90, 1994-99, 2000-2005, 2006–2011, 2009-2011
- Peter Munk Charitable Foundation
- National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Tools Program, 1991-93, 1993-95, 1995-98, 1998-2000, 2000-2002, 2002-2004, 2004-2006, 2006-2008, 2008–
- Presidents' Committee, University of Toronto
- Salamander Foundation, 1998-2001, 2001-2004, 2004-2006, 2006–2008, 2008-
- Salus Mundi Foundation, 2002, 2004
- St. George's Society, Toronto, 2007–
- Triangle Community Foundation
- University of Toronto
- Xerox Corporation University Grants Committee
Friends of the Dictionary of Old English, 2008-2009
We wish to acknowledge the very generous contributions the project has received during the past year. Donors who supported our research in honour of or in memory of individuals are also noted separately at the end of the list. All of us on the project are grateful to each one of you. We would like to mention especially the generous donation of $1,358 US from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. The strong support of the most important scholarly organization in our field has been invaluable to us. We are also very grateful to all those scholars who have kindly donated books to the DOE library. Such contributions of publications, both old and new, enable us to maintain our research collection. We hope to have included all who have so generously supported our work, but must apologize to any of our donors inadvertently left off this list of acknowledgements. This list encompasses gifts given between December 15, 2008 and December 15, 2009.
— Toni Healey
SUPPORTERS
- Helen G. Balfour
- Janet Bately
- Wendy Cameron
- Roger Carruthers
- Glenn Carter
- Wendy Cecil
- Howell Chickering
- Elan Dresher
- Antonette diPaolo Healey
- John Hill
- E.D. & M.P. Hirsch
- International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
- Jackman Foundation
- Maruja Jackman
- Philip & Mary Maude
- James McIlwain
- McLean Foundation
- Linda Munk
- Lawrence M. O'Donnell
- Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
- Carol Pasternack
- George & Jennifer Rigg
- Harry & Medora Roe
- Salamander Foundation, Toronto
- St. George's Society, Toronto
DONORS
- Carole Biggam
- Leger Brosnahan
- Estate of Sharon Butler
- Peter Dendle
- Steven Foulds
- Jon Harstone
- F.R. Higgins
- Joan Holland
- Sylvia Horowitz
- Brenda Hosington
- Ann M. Hutchison
- Dwight Keister
- Ronald MacFeeters
- James I. McNelis II
- James I. McNelis III
- Brian & Pat Merrilees
- Inge Milfull
- Catherine Monahan
- Carol Percy
- James Russell Perkin
- Hans Sauer
- Linda Simpkins
- Charles Smith
- Helen Smith
- Paul Szarmach
- Janet Thormann
- Ruth Wehlau
- Anonymous (1)
IN MEMORY OF ST. CLAIR BALFOUR
- Helen G. Balfour
IN MEMORY OF PROF. ANDREW DONALD BOOTH,
1918-29 NOV 2009, COMPUTER PIONEER
- Janet Bately
IN MEMORY OF SHARON BUTLER
- Brenda Hosington
IN MEMORY OF DANIEL G. CALDER
- Carol Pasternack
IN MEMORY OF ANGUS CAMERON
- Philip & Mary Maude
- Brian & Pat Merrilees
- George & Jennifer Rigg
- Hans Sauer
IN MEMORY OF COLIN CHASE
- George & Jennifer Rigg
IN MEMORY OF ANNE COLLINS
- Antonette diPaolo Healey
IN MEMORY OF ROWLAND L. COLLINS
- Howell Chickering
IN HONOUR OF MARY TASCA diPAOLO
- Antonette diPaolo Healey
IN MEMORY OF STEPHEN GLOSECKI
- John Hill
IN MEMORY OF STANLEY B. GREENFIELD
- Carol Pasternack
IN MEMORY OF RICHARD HOGG
- Elan Dresher
IN HONOUR OF JOAN HOLLAND
- Inge Milfull
IN MEMORY OF B.F. HUPPé
- Sylvia Horowitz
IN MEMORY OF EDWARD B. IRVING, JR.
- Howell Chickering
- John Hill
IN MEMORY OF JOHN LEYERLE
- Brian & Pat Merrilees
IN MEMORY OF HENRY LOYN
- Carole Biggam
IN MEMORY OF EDNA L. O'DONNELL & LAWRENCE H. O'DONNELL
- Lawrence M. O'Donnell
IN MEMORY OF JOHN C. POPE
- E.D. & M.P. Hirsch
IN MEMORY OF ALAIN RENOIR
- Janet Thormann
IN HONOUR OF FRED C. ROBINSON
- Howell Chickering
IN MEMORY OF GILES SINCLAIR
- James I. McNelis II
- James I. McNelis III
IN HONOUR OF E.G. STANLEY
- Helen Smith
IN MEMORY OF RAYMOND P. TRIPP, JR.
- John Hill
