Editorial - the New DNB and the future of the printed reference work

I admit to being one of those sad individuals who find great reference works interesting for their own sake, and even go so far as to enjoy reading about the eccentrics who devoted their lives to compiling them. The biographies of men such as Alexander Cruden (compiler of the Biblical concordance) Robert Watt (the poverty-stricken bibliographer) or Sir James Murray (the lexicographer) make fascinating, and at times poignant reading. I was therefore pleased to attend a lecture entitled ‘Wales and the New Dictionary of National Biography’, given by Colin Matthew, the eminent nineteenth century scholar, and editor of the forthcoming revision of this famous publication, on 27 October. Professor Matthew died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack less than two days after giving his lecture, and it is ironic - yet quite fitting, that he will thereby be one of the last people to qualify for inclusion within a work which he has done so much to forward.

The lecture charted the history of the original D.N.B., from an idea for a British version of the Biographie Universelle by the wealthy publisher George Smith floated during the 1870s, to the more specific plans for a ‘Biographia Britannica’, as it was originally known, under the editorship of Leslie Stephen. These were announced in the Athenaeum in December 1882. Stephen, and his successor Sidney Lee, together with a team of contributors, thereafter worked at a prodigious rate, compiling and publishing 22 volumes between 1885 and 1901, each containing about 1200 lives (Matthew, 1997). Smith’s widow later gave the copyright of the work to the Oxford University Press, which has continued to publish a series of supplements. These cover notable British men and women who have died before the end of 1990.

The D.N.B. has been admired, and indeed used as a model for many other national biographies during the twentieth century. However, great reference works can only live on their reputations, and benefit from supplements for so long – there will always come a time when the whole project needs to be ‘re-invented’ from first principles. This is particularly so for biographical works, where new discoveries and new interpretations by scholars are constantly being made. Great biographical compilations have a tendency to set knowledge in stone (particularly with respect to minor figures), and have to be used with care. Perhaps it does not matter that that the D.N.B. entry for King George IV is somewhat offensive, as there are plenty of other more modern accounts of his life available, but there are many minor figures whose reputations have been scarred by inaccurate or biased accounts in the standard work of reference. There have been discussions about revising the DNB since the 1920s, and the need for such a revision has grown ever more pressing with each succeeding decade. However, the scale and cost of the enterprise had always proved to be too daunting, until 1992, when government funds were allocated through the British Academy to finace the necessary revision.

The second part of Professor Matthew’s lecture therefore described the project for revising the dictionary, and the plans for publication in 2004. He outlined his policy for extending the coverage from 36 500 existing articles (all of which will be revised or rewritten) to 50 000 articles (New Dictionary of National Biography, 1999). This will be done by addressing some of the well-known inadequacies of the existing work such as the under-representation of women, industrialists, businessmen, members of the labour and trades union movements, immigrants to the UK from overseas and of emigrants to the British colonies. There will also be the opportunity to include 10 000 illustrations, replacing the verbal descriptions of many subjects. Above all, the new dictionary will not be primarily written in-house but will rather to harness a community of 9000 contributing scholars in the UK and throughout the world, under a team of 450 associate editors. Thus the new edition will be much more of a collaborative work than its predecessor. At the time of his lecture 70% of the new dictionary had been written and 63% had been approved by the editor, and thus the whole project was on schedule.

The great advantage that Colin Matthew and his editorial team have had over Leslie Stephen and his colleagues lies in the use of information and communication technology to keep track of all aspects of the undertaking. Oxford University Press have developed considerable expertise in managing large-scale electronic publishing projects, including the computerisation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Computers have therefore been used throughout the editorial process for the New DNB– from recording details of subjects planned for inclusion to a database of completed articles. An early requirement was the capture of the entire text of the original edition in machine-readable form, and the creation of a searchable database. This has also enabled the University to offer it for sale as CD-ROM product in the interim, thereby giving users new means of access to the text. Computerised record keeping systems have been used to keep track of the progress of commissioned articles, for records of payments together with a database of contact details for existing and potential contributors. The new entries, once completed and approved, are being entered into a new database, together with bibliographical information, and a standardised profile. This will ultimately deliver all kinds of search facilities to be employed for identifying individuals who match a complex series of criteria.

Not knowing in 1992 the likely state of information and communication technology in 2004, the editors and the publishers made no fixed plans for the final form of publication of the new DNB at the outset of the project. Given the enormous changes that have taken place in the means of disseminating information over the last decade, their decision (or lack of decision) showed some wisdom and foresight. Discussions are now taking place and ideas being floated. Undoubtedly the primary means of publication will be electronic, but whether by CD-ROM, DVD, as an online service, via the Internet, or by some other means, is as yet undecided. However, there is also the likelihood of a hard-copy printed version, although this is unlikely to find many non-institutional purchasers. Another interesting approach raised in the lecture was the possibility of publishing individual volumes containing selected entries for particular professions, periods or regions. There is even the possibility of the publishers being able to deliver customised collections of entries to match specific requirements.

Thus in spite of all the advantages of computers to assist in locating information in a huge database, the traditional printed page still seems to have many advantages in terms of legibility, and user-friendliness. This seems to apply to the technophile as to the technophobe. I am writing this Editorial on a computer containing the Oxford CompLex software, giving me immediate access to five dictionaries and thesauri. It also has a Web browser providing access to all the facilities of the Internet. Yet my initial reaction is still to reach for the copies of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, or any one of several other quick-reference titles sitting on a nearby shelf! The idea of having to read a 1 000 word (or even longer) DNB article on a computer screen rather than on paper is not very appealing.

This raises a question which features regularly within my teaching - whether the traditional printed reference book has a future in the twenty-first century, or are we now witnessing the last days of this category of publishing? At the end of each academic year, a colleague and I conduct a debate involving the first-year undergraduate students on this issue. I will usually propose the motion ‘that the printed reference book is dead’ in these days of the Internet and the CD-ROM. My colleague will then oppose it, before we deal with comments and questions from the audience followed by a vote on the motion.

I will point to the advantages of speed and flexibility derived from sorting and searching computerised databases, of displaying or otherwise outputting multi-media information formats, and of downloading electronic text for inclusion within new documents. I will discuss the inflexibility, bulkiness, and high cost of books and periodicals – particularly with respect to large-scale or highly specialised works. My colleague, on the other hand, will point to the potential technical problems, hardware costs, illegibility, or poor design and presentation of many existing computerised information products. He will provide examples of the mass of unregulated, disorganised, trivial and frequently inaccurate information that is readily available over the Internet and of the difficulties of telling what it likely to be trustworthy and what is not so. He will talk of computers as being tools only for the ‘information rich’, whereas I will argue that they are rather a potential means of empowering the ‘information poor’. I usually lose the vote, but over the years there has been a perceptible change in student attitudes and a growing acceptance of the crucial role of electronic sources.

Of course, in common with all such debates, the issues are not so simple as we describe, and neither of the proponents has quite such a ‘black and white’ vision of the alternatives. It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify hard copy publishing of volatile and highly structured information – and so publications such as catalogues indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, directories, timetables are being, and increasingly will tend to be offered electronically. Yet there are many other categories of large-scale reference work where the respective advantages and disadvantages are not so clear-cut. It may be that the pattern of reference publishing in the next few decades will involve finding ways of taking advantage of both the traditional and electronic alternatives, as is the case with the new DNB.

However the respective advantages and disadvantages of different modes of publication are not merely an issue of ease of access and flexibility of use. The economics of publishing such works is also changing under the influence of computerised technology. In some cases works are being made readily available at low cost, but in other circumstances inferior electronic publications are beginning to undermine the alternatives. One obvious category is the encyclopaedia.

The advent of Microsoft’s Encarta has revolutionised encyclopaedia publishing and caused traditional publishers to rethink their publishing and marketing strategies. Encarta is easy to use, colourful, multi-media, and above all incredibly cheap - due to the large numbers of copies that have been sold, often bundled with other software supplied with new computers. It has brought the opportunity to own an encyclopaedia within reach of many individuals and families, who would never dream of buying a printed alternative. It is an ideal tool for finding concise information on a wide variety of subjects. It is not as easy to browse as a printed encyclopaedia, but it does have various navigations tool. Even the earlier criticisms of a pronounced American bias are being addressed by the production of various international editions. However in spite of all its advantages it cannot be regarded as a work of scholarship that is in any way comparable with a traditional encyclopaedia such as the Britannica. It is also far more difficult to read a lengthy article in this form than it would be on a printed page.

Yet the success of Encarta is serving to undermine the future of several existing products, who are busy seeking to offer individual and networked CD-ROM, online, and printed versions through a variety of different sales packages to libraries and schools in an attempt to preserve their markets. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is even considering taking a more radical step of offering its 44 millions words free on the Internet and funding the operation through a mixture of advertising, sponsorship and “e-commerce” (Times, 20 October 1999). It is difficult to envisage how any future publisher will be able to justify the investment involved in compiling a new high quality encyclopaedia on this scale, irrespective of whether it is ultimately published electronically or in hand copy. The dominance of a significant area of reference publishing, by Microsoft is just as worrying as the same company’s dominance of the market for microcomputer operating systems and means of access to the World Wide Web.

In the area of reference publishing, as in other areas of publishing, there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’ It may be that the truly great reference works of the future – such as the D.N.B. - will only be economically viable if they are subsidised by government funding. A dwindling number of commercial alternatives may be cheap, increasingly pervasive, but ultimately inferior to what we have at present. If this proves to be the case, the advent of computerisation to the world of reference works will have been a mixed blessing.

David Stoker

With thanks to Geraint Evans

Matthew H. C. G. 1997. Leslie Stephen and the New Dictionary of National Biography (Cambridge), available at http://www.oup.co.uk/newdnb/html/lslecture.html

New Dictionary of National Biography, 1999. http://www.oup.co.uk/newdnb/

The Times, 20 October 1999 ‘Words pf wisdom are free for all on the Internet’.