The end of an era

OBSOLETE - THE PRINTED EDITION

In another sign that the future of the printed word will be digital, the Oxford University Press have said that it is very doubtful that future editions of the Oxford English Dictionary will be available in a printed edition - Look up the word obsolete in a few years, and you could find an example: the Oxford English Dictionary print edition. The complete OED, as it's affectionately known, now gets 2 million hits a month online. The print version, a 20-volume behemoth, sells only about a thousand a year. So the head of Oxford University Press now doubts the next edition of the OED will be offered in the form of a book.