SCOTS Project - www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk

Document : 839
Title    : The History and Development of DOST
Author(s): Marace Dareau

Copyright holder(s): Marace Dareau: Reproduced with the kind permission of
Edinburgh University Press

Text

The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) is a great store of
treasures for the researcher or the merely curious. Its twelve volumes, as
well as offering a unique point of entry to Scottish medieval and
renaissance society, form a substantial monument to many years of
scholarship throughout the twentieth century and, in the development of the
ideas that underpin it, a bridge to the twenty-first. Yet its history has
its share of precarious moments. This account of that history (1) seeks to
record these moments along with the powerful sense of purpose and endeavour
that informed the production of the dictionary and was expressed in the
dedication chosen for volume XII: 'To Scots everywhere, lovers and students
of the Scots language and all those who have given freely of their time and
knowledge to help achieve the completion of this work'.

DOST was compiled between 1925 and 2001 according to the historical
principles laid down in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). During the
first phase, a methodology based on that of the OED was established. This
chapter is divided into four main sections identified as those periods
which saw substantial innovations affecting the text of the published
dictionary. It includes an outline of the external history as well as those
aspects of editorial policy which most closely impinge on the external
history. (2) The final phase deals with the years 1994-2001, outlining the
accelerated completion of DOST in July of the latter year. 

This survey is based on evidence of three sorts: materials in print,
chiefly in the Prefaces of the volumes of the dictionary and the writings
of Sir William Craigie and Professor A. J. Aitken; official papers,
principally the minutes of the Joint Council for the Scottish Dictionaries
(subsequently, the Joint Council for the Dictionary of the Older Scottish
Tongue); and private writings, especially correspondence held in the DOST
Archive, now in the archives of the University of Edinburgh. In the last
two categories, we are extremely fortunate to have a file of correspondence
and official papers from the period 1949-58 contributed to the Archive by
Professor Angus McIntosh.

1919-1948

On 4th April 1919 Dr (later Sir) William A. Craigie, co-editor of the OED,
read a paper entitled 'New Dictionary Schemes' to the Philological Society
in London. In this paper he suggested that, following the completion of
OED, a number of supplementary dictionary projects should be undertaken.
These he referred to as 'period dictionaries', each being concerned with a
discrete chronological period in the history of English. His last suggested
scheme did not conform to the description of a period of English, but was,
perhaps, the dictionary that lay closest to his heart, a dictionary of the
'older Scottish'. This proposal bore fruit as the Dictionary of the Older
Scottish Tongue.

There seems never to have been any doubt in Craigie's mind that this
dictionary of Scots should restrict itself to the earlier period – up to
1700. He saw the project as lying within his plans for English, and the
major sweep of English had been encompassed in OED. He conceded that, in
the earlier period, Scots was a language, but had no notion that such
nomenclature might continue to have any truth or even advantage after 1700.
He saw the language as dividing naturally into the two periods now defined
by DOST and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND).

"The older Scottish tongue … Considered by itself it is a very definite
thing, beginning with the fourteenth century, flourishing as a literary
medium from about 1375 to 1600, and maintaining a precarious existence in
writing till towards the close of the seventeenth century, when a new
period definitely sets in and continues unbroken down to the present day."
(Craigie 1931: 9)

In a letter to Dr William Grant, the first Editor of SND, in January 1916,
Craigie had already set out his thoughts for the future of Scottish
lexicography:

"It is certainly well to be looking ahead with regard to the Scottish
dictionary. I have been doing so too, and have made up my mind that when
the Oxford Dictionary is finished, I shall undertake the Old Scottish one
myself … Some time ago I asked Watson (3) whether, in the event of funds
being provided for the Modern Scottish dictionary, he would be prepared to
take a hand in the compiling of it … It would be excellent if the two
Dictionaries could be produced concurrently, so that the one could link up
with the other and the continuity (or otherwise) of the words be clearly
shown. In that case Watson might be a kind of connecting medium for both.
(DOST Archive)

It is thus evident that Craigie had the dictionary of older Scots in mind
well before his paper of 1919 and had also begun planning the collection of
the materials he would need at this time. In the same letter to Grant he
outlines his thoughts on that crucial aspect of successful lexicography:

"In the collections made for the Oxford Dictionary there is an enormous
amount of material which could be used for the purpose, and I shall arrange
to have the use of this. Some further collecting may be wanted, but nothing
to what would be necessary if the whole work had to be done from the
beginning."

This collection of Scottish material consisted of some hundreds of
thousands of citation slips, both used and unused, excerpted for OED.

Craigie set to work seriously on what was to become DOST in 1921, when,
with the help of a number of volunteer readers, he began to expand the
collection of quotations inherited from OED. In the winter of 1925-6, with
the assistance of George Watson and Otto Schmidt, he began editing from the
collections thus far available to him. By this time he had become Professor
of English in the University of Chicago. In 1929 a Memorandum of Agreement
was drawn up between Craigie and the University of Chicago for the
publication of 'A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue', which would be
printed in Oxford by Oxford University Press (OUP). The first fascicle of
the dictionary was published in 1931. Volume I (A-C), in six fascicles, was
completed in 1937 and Volume II (D-G) in 1951. At this time the preparation
and production of the published work seems to have consisted largely of
excerpting and editing without the systematic press-preparation that became
part of the production process at a later date. The Agreement of 1929
stated that the dictionary would be completed in twenty-five parts of 120
pages each.

1948-1981

The work of editing continued very largely under the editorship of Craigie
alone until the appointment of Adam J. Aitken in 1948. Craigie had retired
in 1936, returning from Chicago to Watlington, near Oxford, where he
continued to edit material for DOST. Aitken, as Craigie's assistant, was
based in Edinburgh and funded from year to year as a Research Fellow by the
Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. With the appointment of
Aitken the second major period in the history of the project had begun.

Aitken was a young man of twenty-seven when he took up the post in which he
was to spend the rest of his career, not that this seemed inevitable or
even particularly likely in the beginning. For a number of years he was
employed on temporary contracts, renewed annually, a fact that disturbed
Angus McIntosh, Forbes Professor of English Language and General
Linguistics in the University of Edinburgh, who was concerned for both the
welfare of Aitken and the long-term interests of the dictionary. However
the delicacy of relations with Chicago University Press was such that no
plans for the longer-term security of either Aitken or the dictionary were
feasible at this time. If relations with Chicago were to break down it
would lead almost inevitably to the abandonment of the dictionary project.

Early financial problems

Although DOST continued to be published by Chicago University Press until
1981, there were during that period a number of crises, the first of which
occurred in 1950. In 1949 Craigie had written to Mr Hemens, Assistant
Director of the Press, to inform him that it had become clear that the
dictionary could not be completed in twenty-five parts but was likely to
run to ten or twelve more. Hemens replied that the Press was prepared to
face the extra cost that this would entail with the assurance 'the
intention of the University is to complete the publication of this work'.

In 1950, however, the situation worsened. In February Craigie alerted
McIntosh to a change of attitude in Chicago due to rising costs and the
failure to attract outside funding. The problem of the increase in scale of
the dictionary and consequent rise in costs had led to Chicago's
unwillingness to continue under the previous agreement with Craigie alone.
However, in October a new contract was signed with Chicago to which the
University of Edinburgh became a party. To help meet the increase in costs
Edinburgh agreed to forego royalties, which would stop with the death of
Craigie.

While this may have gone some way to securing the dictionary's future, the
production itself was by no means secure. Over the next year Hemens
continued to press for a reduction in scale. Craigie could not see this as
a solution. He wrote to McIntosh in February 1951:

"This could not be done by a simple reduction in the scale; it would
involve a real change of method which would greatly reduce the value of the
dictionary as a record of the language, while it would not materially
lessen the work of preparation." (DOST Archive)

In November Hemens reiterated his anxiety at the slow rate of production.
Though he conceded the importance of the work, he could not deny that
Chicago was finding publication a heavy financial burden. In a letter to
Aitken of 20th November 1951 Craigie outlined his view of the requirements
for an efficient, productive enterprise:
    
"I enclose a letter which I have this morning received from Hemens. It is
unfortunate that the lack of assistance, even if temporary, will reduce the
amount that can be turned out this year.
To make really satisfactory progress a staff of at least four, in addition
to yourself, is required, to consist of:
Two for elementary work, getting into order of date all the material for
each word, making additions from the reference slips not yet copied,
abbreviating long quotations, and making a complete list of spellings.
Two sub-editors to distinguish and define the senses and either draft the
etymologies or supply the material for these. They should always bear in
mind the importance of keeping the scale as low as possible.
The sending on of slips for the later letters might be done by one or other
of these according to the time they can spare for it." (DOST Archive)

However the ideal staff was not available and Craigie and Aitken had to
struggle on as best they might. The true grimness of the situation (4) is
revealed in a letter from Hemens to Craigie the following March:

"There are two areas in this financial problem where you could help. I have
written about them before. In writing again I do not wish to imply that you
may not be trying. However, the results are so imperceptible that I must
ask you to review the matter and make a strenuous effort to do better.
We need from you a commitment and performance in line with that commitment
as to the maximum total number of parts to encompass this work. When
publication was undertaken it was with the expectation there would be a
maximum of twenty parts. After it had been under way and a number of parts
published, it was perfectly obvious that you were not keeping within that
limit. Based on completion of the first approximately ten parts, it then
looked as though the total would not be twenty parts, but twice that
number, or more. That completely upset the financial arrangements which we
had made.
The cost of alterations is the second problem …
At times it becomes discouraging and somewhat disheartening to fight for
the funds necessary to keep this production and publishing program for the
dictionary going. At one time, only a few years ago, I was instructed to
have production stopped and cancel the order with Oxford. I wilfully
disregarded those instructions. I believe we should do all that we can to
complete publication of the dictionary. I still believe that. I had hopes,
but that was all I could have, that something would happen to change the
financial picture. Unfortunately that something has not happened and, if
anything, the finances are worse.
I continue to hope that by working together, each of us possibly a little
more carefully, the production of your Scottish Dictionary can continue
without interruption." (DOST Archive)

However supportive Hemens might be of the project, he and Craigie differed
as to the nature of an appropriate scale for such a work. It is ironic to
note that our perception now is that Craigie's part of the dictionary is
woefully inadequate in scale.

Solutions

The need for a resolution to Craigie's proposal for securing DOST's future
after his own lifetime and for the management of the project within the
environs of the Scottish Universities was evident to McIntosh. His
perception of the value of the project both to Scotland and to Edinburgh is
clear. He worked tirelessly, using all his skills of persuasion and his
contacts within the academic world to bring his vision about. Craigie had
laid out his thoughts on the future of his dictionary in 1949. The
situation was summarised in a letter dated 6th September 1949 from McIntosh
to Charles Stewart, the Secretary of the University of Edinburgh:

"1. Sir William Craigie who is now 82 has completed about 2/5ths of the
great Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue.
2. Having found that A. J. Aitken (of this University) is proving an
excellent Assistant, he seems to be inclined to hand on the task to him. He
believes that two or three others will be needed to help him.
3. He thinks strongly that Edinburgh (where Aitken is at present working)
is the ideal place to operate the project. To encourage this, he has
bequeathed all his books connected with it to the University if they will
make them available to the dictionary staff (otherwise to Aberdeen,
Glasgow, St Andrews in that order of preference).
I should like to make the following comments:
1. There are probably numerous technical problems, housing of material,
financing, etc. which will need to be solved, but I believe that this is a
magnificent opportunity for us to build still further on the linguistic
side, and that Craigie is right in thinking Edinburgh is the proper place.
2. In view of Craigie's age and the advisability of having his advice in
any reorganisation, I think we should go into the matter as soon as
possible." (DOST Archive)

In November 1951 the matter was brought before the Scottish Universities'
Conference by Edinburgh University. The timing of this was provoked not
only by the situation with DOST but also that of the Scottish National
Dictionary (SND) which was undergoing a financial crisis of its own in
Aberdeen. The outcome of this meeting is contained in a communication from
the Principal of the University of Edinburgh to Hemens:

"The conference made certain recommendations:
1. That editorial work on both Dictionaries should be carried on in one
University, namely, Edinburgh …
2. That a new Joint Council should be set up, representative of the four
Scottish Universities and the two Dictionaries.
3. That, following this, the four Scottish Universities should together ask
for adequate financial support for both ventures; and that for this purpose
they should in the first place approach the Ford Foundation and
subsequently, if necessary, any other potential sources of financial
assistance.
The force of these proposals … is that, in making an appeal for funds, it
is desirable to present the two Dictionaries as together forming a major
project covering the whole field of Scottish lexicography, carried on in a
properly co-ordinated manner in one place; and that an appeal by the four
Scottish Universities on behalf of this work of national importance would
be a more powerful means of obtaining financial assistance than an appeal
by (say) the University of Edinburgh on behalf of only one of the
Dictionaries.
Certain points, however, must be made clear in explanation of these
proposals. Firstly, they do not imply any control of the editorial policies
of the Dictionaries, or any interference by one Dictionary in the affairs
of the other. It is fully appreciated that their editorial methods differ
in several respects, and it is agreed that all such matters of policy
should remain under the present system of separate control …
In terms of the 1950 Agreement, what we have to lay before you is this:
that the Compiler (Sir William Craigie) and the Institute (the University
of Edinburgh) propose now to enter into a separate Agreement with a Joint
Council which will represent the four Scottish Universities, the S.N.D.
Association, and the Compiler and editorial staff of the D.O.S.T. Our
object in doing so is to raise funds to establish an adequate editorial
staff for the D.O.S.T. and so to improve the rate of work on the
dictionary; and we are confident that if this can be achieved it will help
materially to lighten the task of the University of Chicago with regard to
the publication of the dictionary." (DOST Archive)

So Edinburgh set out its proposal. The Scottish Universities would give
what help they could with accommodation and a modicum of financial support,
hoping (as it turned out, vainly) to raise most of the new funding required
to create a viable project from wealthy American foundations. They would
take responsibility for the production side if Chicago continued with
publication, which, if all went well with the Scottish Universities'
fund-raising, would no longer be a financial burden. Above all the Scottish
Universities wanted to keep Chicago on board, and phrased the proposal for
a Joint Council in terms they thought least likely to cause it to pull
out.

It is interesting to note that, according to Craigie, the cost of
publishing DOST (which Hemens found much too high) was, for setting Part
XIII, 164 pages, £420 with £94 for corrections, whereas Part IV of Vol.
III of SND, 134 pages, cost £1,100. At this time, as throughout its
production, SND was published by the Scottish National Dictionary
Association Limited and financed by subscription of its members. It was
printed in Edinburgh, latterly by Constable. 

The outcome of this initiative was the setting up in 1952 of the Joint
Council for the Scottish Dictionaries with McIntosh as its Convener.
McIntosh played a prominent role in all three major initiatives in Scottish
studies of this period, the others being the creation of the Linguistic
Survey of Scotland and the School of Scottish Studies. Thus, as it turned
out, so far from being a time of disintegration, this was a period of both
consolidation and expansion.

Dictionary production

From 1950 Craigie had begun to send materials, books and citation slips
north to Aitken and in 1955, when Aitken took over from Craigie as Editor
of DOST, its government and funding had altered radically. The DOST
enterprise had become to all intents and purposes a department within the
University of Edinburgh, overseen by the Joint Council representing the
four Universities and funded in part by them, in part by a variety of
charitable foundations. Two years later, in 1957, Craigie died, aged
ninety. He was a notable scholar in many fields, and one of a line of
extraordinary Scottish lexicographers. 

The financing of an adequate level of staffing was a perennial problem. In
1952 Aitken had received a small grant of £100 from the School of Scottish
Studies Committee with which he had employed a part-time assistant, Miss
Iona B. MacGregor. Aitken reported to the Committee the following year:

"I have no hesitation in saying that she is well worth the 4/- [4
shillings] per hour which she is paid. Since she has arrived there has been
a perceptible acceleration of the output of finished dictionary copy, which
is directly attributable to her contribution." (DOST Archive)

Miss MacGregor was required to 'rough out the material for editing' which
Aitken then completed. In the year for which she was contracted, he
reckoned she would complete fifty of the dictionary's pages. She also
reassigned citation slips to words further down the alphabet, sorting the
material which had arrived from Craigie, and did some library research for
Aitken. This accounted for £90 of the £100 grant. In 1953 the School
Committee was not able to renew the grant. Aitken spelled out the
precariousness of the situation in a letter to McIntosh:

"I understand that this year the School's allotment of money is likely to
be largely used up, and also that there may be other objections to making
even a small non-recurrent grant to an enterprise which is not a
responsibility of the School itself." (DOST Archive)

At this point, in February 1953, Aitken applied to Dr J. R. Peddie of the
Carnegie Trust for support for his assistant. His letter makes it clear
that a previous application made 'some years ago' had been successful in
obtaining a grant of £300. On this occasion the Trust made a grant of
£150, and, equally importantly, a connection that was to be crucial to the
future of the dictionary was reinforced.

In 1955, when Aitken took over as editor, Hemens, wishing reassurance as to
the value of the University of Chicago Press's investment in DOST, sought
an opinion from C. L. Wrenn, Fellow of Pembroke College and Rawlinson and
Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. The Press was at this time
underwriting a small publishing loss and wished to ascertain whether its
money was well spent. It is perhaps worth quoting some of the points that
Wrenn made in his extremely full reply. After praising the relatively
recent integration of the organisation of DOST into the Scottish University
system, and the staff, including the two newly appointed assistant editors,
Betty Hill and Hans Meier, he went on to make some general points:

"To some extent the value of the dictionary will ultimately depend on its
association with the Scottish National Dictionary which is also being
directed by the same Joint Dictionaries Council and there is an obvious
advantage in the two Dictionaries being thus intimately related …
The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue is a vital companion piece to
the Ann Arbor Middle English Dictionary which relies on the existence of
the former and has specifically excluded all Scottish material. Here again
the importance of either Dictionary depends in some measure on the
completion of the other …
The importance and worth of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue
will continually increase with the fuller development of Scottish studies
which is being pursued, for example, by the University of Edinburgh School
of Scottish Studies. As these studies come more and more to take their
proper place in the picture of N.W. European culture in the Mediaeval and
Renaissance periods, it will more fully come to be realized how absolutely
indispensable and admirable the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue
really is as a working tool." (DOST Archive)

Expansion

During this period Aitken put a great deal of effort into expanding the
dictionary's corpus. (5) One aspect directly affected by the enlargement of
the corpus was the scale of the dictionary. This had been problematical for
years and had been one of the causes for Chicago's unhappiness about the
project as far back as 1949. This situation had not changed when in 1953
Aitken tried to calculate the likely number of parts in the finished
Dictionary by a comparison with the size of OED. He reckoned that for
A-INDENTIT each of DOST's parts of 120 pages corresponded to 376 pages of
OED. This equation allowed him to calculate that, corresponding to the
total of 15,487 pages in OED, DOST, when completed, would have 4,920 pages
or 41 parts. Volume III (H-L), the first volume for which Aitken was
responsible, was published in 1965.

The development of the infrastructure for funding and academic support and
the expansion of the corpus led to an expansion of the project as a whole
and set it on a new footing. The size of the staff increased, both editors
who prepared edited copy and editorial assistants who carried out the
various tasks required to prepare the raw slips for editing and afterwards
the edited copy for the press. Aitken was the sole Editor until, in 1973,
Dr James A. C. Stevenson, who had come to DOST in 1966 from a career in
teaching, was appointed Joint Editor with him. In 1971 Aitken was appointed
part-time Senior Lecturer in English Language in the University of
Edinburgh and between that date and 1979 devoted only half of his working
time to the dictionary. During this period he developed the teaching of
Scots within the English Language Department and will be remembered by many
for this aspect of his career.

Stevenson's meticulousness in the analysis of language was fully in keeping
with the quality and attention to detail for which DOST was renowned. The
attitude that the project was much more a matter of scholarship than a
product to be got speedily into the market-place was characteristic of
historical lexicographers from the time of Sir James Murray at least. OED's
original remit, for instance, had been to restrict the etymological
material included, on the grounds that it was a historical dictionary
rather than an etymological one. In practice this restriction was largely
ignored. Coming from this tradition, Craigie's intention was to expand the
history of older Scots as fully as he could. So too in his turn Aitken saw
the gaps in coverage and the need to fill them if the record of Scots up to
1700 were to be as close to exhaustive as might be. These perfectionist
tendencies, which he confessed to in the paper 'DOST: How we make it and
what's in it' (1981: 46) about a later situation, were always evident, and
the dictionary itself is all the better for them, even if the funding
bodies felt plagued by this compulsion to edit to the absolutely highest
standards. Stevenson fitted into a lineage of high scholarship with ease
and, through the 1970s especially, developed the highly analytical style
that is so evident in the volumes from that period on.

Completion and Crisis

In 1969, Aitken expressed the hope that DOST might be completed in 1976,
shortly after the scheduled completion of SND in 1974. In 1971, the year in
which volume IV (M-N) was published, the fact that SND was approaching
completion (it was completed in 1976) and the expectation that DOST would
follow soon thereafter gave rise to a number of proposals for the future.
An Institute of Lexicography dealing especially with an archive of
computer-readable texts was suggested, as well as a project to produce an
abridged dictionary. The Joint Council took the view that exploration of
the former proposal should not be allowed to have a prejudicial effect on
the production of the dictionary, though it merited further consideration.
The latter proposal continued to be researched with the hope that it might
come about on the completion of SND. This led ultimately to the production
of the Concise Scots Dictionary (CSD) and its publication in 1985. As the
completion of SND drew closer there was a further debate as to whether the
Joint Council should be wound up and DOST supported until its completion by
Edinburgh alone. However, by the end of 1976 the Universities of Aberdeen,
Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Stirling had agreed to continue
to fund the project. A Joint Council memorandum drafted in 1974 included
the statement: 'The project was unquestionably a national enterprise and
should be treated and be seen to be treated as such.' (DOST Archive) This
remains true, now as then; indeed, it is one of the most remarkable aspects
of a remarkable project that it had the participation of the Scottish
Universities for almost fifty of its eighty years. However, such support
did not put paid to financial problems, and in 1981 what was perhaps the
most serious crisis so far blew up.

In 1980 the Universities, disappointed of completion in the 1970s,
threatened withdrawal of support if a firm end date were not established.
The Conference of the Scottish University Courts made it clear that it
would be unlikely that the Universities would continue to support the
dictionary after 1988, a year after the Carnegie Trust had said it would
terminate its financial support. It was undeniable that the editing was
taking too long. The calculations of Aitken and Stevenson proved that this
date could not be met following the traditional methods so they devised a
plan to finish DOST by means of what they called the 'OED-Dependent Method'
where dictionary entries were based solely on the equivalent entry in OED:


"We accept OED's sense-analysis and definitions as given and simply assign
our quotations as best we can to their places in the OED scheme, providing
our own definitions only for those additional words and applications which
we cannot fit into the OED scheme…And we propose to offer no etymological
note and to undertake no research to ensure the precision of definitions or
to provide encyclopedic notes and comments beyond those already in OED. But
we would continue to provide exemplification at least as copious as now of
all words, senses (according to OED's analysis), forms and collocations,
with all their distributions." (Aitken 1981: 47)

The whole situation was explored at the Joint Council meeting in February
1981, when the following options were offered:

"1. Consideration of a plan to complete the editing of the dictionary by
1994.
2. ... to complete the editing of the dictionary by 1994 and allow for a
further period of about a year for checking the press-prepared material and
for proof-reading.
3. ... to use a much lowered standard of lexicographical analysis which
would present, for T-Z, only those Older Scottish forms and meanings not
already recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. This would therefore be
an Older Scots supplement to the OED; it would enable the dictionary to be
'completed' [sic] earlier than 1994." (Joint Council Minutes, DOST
Archive)

A further meeting was arranged for April to give Aitken time to complete
his researches into the viability of these options, so that a final
decision might be reached. In the meantime a crisis of another sort arose
with the publisher, the University of Chicago Press. This exacerbated
matters, though it did not actually cause the crisis as had the problem of
publication in 1950. The basic problem was still the same: the scale of the
dictionary had doubled, at least, in comparison with what was envisaged in
1929. By the point reached in editing in 1981, the relationship Aitken had
calculated in 1953 of 120 pages of DOST for every 376 pages of OED had
become closer to 176 pages of OED. So between February and April 1981,
Chicago University Press withdrew as publisher. This news was announced to
the Joint Council in April. when an emergency meeting was called to address
the future of the dictionary. The following options were laid before the
Council:

"1. Completion of editing by 1994 with an increase of staff and replacement
of editors when they retire.
2. Completion of editing by 2020-2030 by one editor and no replacement of
staff when they retire.
3. Completion of editing by the Oxford English Dictionary-Dependent
Method.
4. Abandonment of the whole project."

Aitken's assessment of option (3), which had now undergone a trial period,
was that completion by this method would be two to two and a half times
faster than by the other methods proposed, and that it would, therefore, be
conceivable to complete the editing by 1987-8. He considered, however, that
in larger entries there would be considerable loss of quality. The Joint
Council invited a distinguished panel of lexicographers and scholars of
Older Scots, Dr R. W. Burchfield (Oxford English Dictionary), Dr A. Fenton
(National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh), Professor D. Fox (University
of Toronto), Mr P. G. W. Glare (Oxford University Press), Dr R. J. Lyall
(University of Glasgow) and Dr J. L. Robinson (Middle English Dictionary),
to report on the editorial policy of the dictionary and recommend a way
forward. They reported in September that the OED-Dependent method of
editing was a distinctly inferior option. The proposal had also been aired
by Aitken at the Third International Conference on Scottish Language and
Literature (Medieval and Renaissance). This Conference represented scholars
with the most intimate knowledge of DOST, those best able to judge the
losses that would be sustained were it to be completed according to the
OED-Dependent method. On Saturday 11th July, their views were reported thus
on the front page of The Scotsman:

"Sixty experts from all over the world … signed an open letter condemning
the possibility of cuts in the project, which they said would amount to 'an
appalling blot on Scottish scholarship'.
The letter stated:
For all our working lives we have looked on the Dictionary of the Older
Scottish Tongue as one of the great enterprises of literary and linguistic
scholarship and have looked forward to its completion according to its
present plan and format as a major contribution to the cultural life of
Scotland and the world."

As Aitken had expected, the outcry which their complaint unleashed was
sufficient to ensure a return to autonomous editing, though with no
guarantee that funding would continue beyond the working lives of the
present staff. Indeed, part of the package of 1981 was that after the
retirement of Stevenson in 1985 and Aitken in 1986 the Universities would
support only two posts, one editor and one editorial assistant. By November
1981 Aberdeen University Press (AUP) had expressed an interest in
publishing DOST and in February 1983 acquired the publication rights. AUP
installed a microcomputer in the DOST offices and from then until 1994
edited copy with a minimal level of tagging was prepared for printing
in-house and recorded for the first time in electronic form.

1981-1994

Staffing

The 1980s started inauspiciously with the crisis of 1981 and promised worse
with the imminent retirement of both the editors who had brought the
project through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. When Aitken and Stevenson
retired, the editorial staff consisted of Harry Watson and Marace Dareau.
Volume V (O-Pn) was published in 1982 and VI (Po-Quh) in 1986. The whole of
R and a considerable part of S had been edited but was not yet ready for
publication. A completion date of 1988 was clearly out of the question. 

In 1984 a charitable organisation, The Friends of the Dictionary of the
Older Scottish Tongue, was set up to help with fund-raising. This
initiative grew directly out of the concern felt by scholars that DOST
might founder. By the end of the decade it had raised enough money to fund
a part-time editor and a full-time editorial assistant/editor as well as
providing a number of short term clerical posts. During this period there
were also a number of valuable private benefactions, one of which funded a
further editorial assistant post. In 1986 the Royal Society of Edinburgh
agreed to support the dictionary for three years at the rate of £4000 per
annum.(6) 

Watson became Editor-in-chief in 1985 on the retirement of Stevenson. He
had six years experience of lexicography, having, like Stevenson, come to
it from teaching. The years between the crisis of 1981 and Watson's
assumption of overall authority had seen no basic changes in editorial
methodology or routine. The possibility of using word processing technology
as part of the editorial process had been investigated, but it was quickly
realised that on-screen editing was not feasible. It was recognised that
the process of editing required the physical presence of citation slips,
the pieces of paper on which individual quotations were recorded, so that
all the quotations for a given word could be sorted and re-sorted with
maximum ease. The most time-consuming aspect of lexicography is the thought
and research that goes into the editing process, which only long years of
experience can shorten. Watson applied the methodology passed on to him by
Aitken and Stevenson, which meant that the conditions that had provoked the
crisis of 1981 continued. 

Dareau had returned to DOST in 1984 after a period as an editor on CSD.
During the second half of the 1980s she became responsible for the revising
stage of editing. From 1987 Lorna Pike became the third member of the
editorial team. The anomalous situation with regard to responsibility for
edited copy (Dareau) and overall responsibility for the dictionary (Watson)
was recognised in 1988 when both were re-titled Senior Editor, with Watson
retaining administrative responsibility and the title of Director.

Publishing

Volume VII (Qui-Roz) was published in 1990. In 1993 the collapse of AUP
added renewed publication difficulties to the organisation's other
problems. They were resolved with a return to OUP, DOST's printer during
the years with Chicago University Press, as publisher. Although the
relationship enjoyed with AUP had been beneficial in every way, publication
by the major publisher of reference works in the United Kingdom seemed to
bode well for the final stage and there was a hope that the publication of
the paper version might lead on to an electronic version similar to the
electronic OED.

1994-2001: Accelerated Completion

In November 1993 Dareau, in a letter to Dr Victor Skretkowicz of the
Department of English in the University of Dundee, who had succeeded
Professor John MacQueen as Convener of the Joint Council, took stock of the
situation with regard to editing. At that date the first editing of S was
almost finished. She suggested that twelve years would be required for the
remaining eighty-four drawers of unedited slips for T-Z. Early in 1994,
Skretkowicz instituted a Review of the editorial methods and management of
DOST in relation to the costs to completion of the project. Its context was
outlined as follows:

"The Review was required for the purposes of fund-raising by Professor
Alexander Fenton, Chairman of The Friends of DOST.  It provides a long
overdue examination of the editorial policy and of the procedures of
editing and production. The first Part of DOST was published in 1931. The
only interim Review was in 1981." (Asher et al. 1994)

The Review was carried out in March 1994. The Review panel consisted of:
Professor R. E. Asher, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of
Edinburgh, Mr T. Benbow, Director of Dictionaries, Oxford University Press,
Dr C. Macafee, Lecturer in English, University of Aberdeen and Dr
Skretkowicz, with Lesley S. Brown, Editor-in-Chief of the New Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary, as Consultant. The aims of the Review were:

"to fix a firm date for completion and make recommendations on how this
might be achieved;
to examine the organisation and working practices of the staff, and
editorial policy;
to make recommendations concerning staffing levels, and to consider
replacement or addition of equipment." (Ibid.)

As regards the completion date, the panel found grounds to believe that
funding might be easier to obtain if a date of 2000 was guaranteed. Dr
Robert Burchfield, then editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, had served
on the 1981 Review. On 18 February 1994 he wrote from New Zealand, 'DOST
must be finished somehow, and I very much hope that the means to do this by
the year 2000 can be found'. Alexander Fenton, Chairman of the Friends, has
also urged completion during that year. (Ibid.)

Completion by 2000 thus became a cornerstone in the recommendations of the
Review. However, it was unanimously agreed that the volumes of DOST to be
published after the Review must maintain the quality of those published
before. The solution proposed in 1981, where the DOST entries would depend
for their content and structure on those of OED, was not acceptable. It was
hoped that the time saving required on the production side would be made
largely by employing a data-entry agency to key the edited copy from slips.
An extended trial conducted with SPI (Technologies) Ltd demonstrated the
practicality of this approach and a contract covering the keying and three
phases of corrections for some 180,000 citation slips (in the event the
number ran to 204,000) was agreed. Although SPI is based in Manila in the
Philippines and all the work was done there, the company's European
technical and marketing office was in Irvine in Ayrshire. This enabled a
close liaison to develop between the two organisations, and the
effectiveness of SPI's contribution with regard to quality in relation to
efficiency of production cannot be overstated. An important consequence of
keying the material at a relatively early stage in the process was the
capacity gained to sort the quotations electronically. The extensive
verification of the quotation material required prior to publication was
greatly expedited by the capacity to check all the quotations from a single
text at the same time. However, the challenge of speeding up the editing
still remained. The editors' response to the Review document, made in
September 1994, indicates how they saw this:

"We have carefully addressed the specific points made by the Review and our
responses will demonstrate to all those interested in the future of DOST
our commitment to drive the project in a new direction to achieve
completion by the end of the year 2000." (Dareau et al. 1994)

It was clear to the editorial team that there was no time to waste. As soon
as the editing of S was completed in August 1994 a calculation was made,
dividing the time available by the work to be done. This gave a figure of
eighteen days as the time available for editing each half drawer of the
eighty-four drawers of raw slips for T-Z. This crude calculation gave the
target to aim at and the rate of editing to be sustained over the six year
period to 2000. (Previously, a similar amount of editing might have taken
thirty or more days.) New editing guidelines were tested throughout August
and September. The editors' response to the Review included a statement of
what would be required if the 2000 deadline were to be met:

"To complete the fascicles of T-Z by 2000 we must edit two fascicles per
year. This means one fascicle every eighteen months for each Editor. At
present we are testing the hypothesis that this is possible by editing the
first part of T in the fashion outlined above. By the second week of
November when the period we have given ourselves for this test is up we
should each have edited a sizeable sample of untouched material. If we can
do this, and at present we believe we are on target, then we can claim with
assurance that we can achieve the desired end date." (Ibid.)

There was certainly very little slack in the system, but some benefits
arose from suggestions made in the Review, namely that a Project Manager be
appointed to maintain an overview of the progress of the project as a
whole; a production schedule devised; and a system of performance
indicators, assessment and feedback adhered to. By the end of 1994,
Professor William Gillies of the Department of Celtic, University of
Edinburgh, had been appointed Project Manager. William Aitken, Secretary of
the Joint Council and formerly Director of Management Information Services
in the University of Edinburgh, took on responsibility for the budget. The
production schedule drawn up by staff was monitored and refined in
collaboration with Aitken, who drew up a monthly, and towards the end of
the project, weekly, schedule. This operation demonstrated to the Joint
Council and the Universities that the demanding targets set in 1994 were in
fact being achieved. Aitken was also responsible for overseeing the
increased computing aspects of the project, while he and Gillies looked
after much of the day-to-day management of the project including
fund-raising, thus freeing the editors to concentrate fully on the
editorial task.

The quality and size of the team were also critical. It consisted of the
three full-time editors and one full-time and two part-time editorial
assistants (Eileen Finlayson, Heather Bree and Marjorie McNeill). The team
combined size and experience to a greater degree than at any time in the
past. The importance of experience had been stressed by Aitken in a letter
to McIntosh in 1980:

"Some remarks [were made] … that one could buy three or more junior
editors for the price of two seniors and that younger people worked faster
than older. The implication of the former and the fact of the latter are
untrue in the context of DOST (or any other similar dictionary, such as
MED), at least if any regard at all is given to quality. More experienced
persons in fact produce acceptable results much faster, because they
already know much the junior has to find out ad hoc, because they are more
skilled at analysis and at the devising of definitions and because they
have confidence in their findings where a junior hesitates and vacillates."
(DOST Archive)

In 1996 a follow-up Review took place. Its outcome is summarised in the
report drawn up by the Review Panel, Professor Emeritus R. E. Asher
(University of Edinburgh) and Professor A. A. MacDonald (University of
Groningen):

"The high-level objectives of this review were to establish whether the
changes recommended by the previous review in 1994 had been implemented
and, in consequence, whether the target of completion in 2000 is likely to
be achieved. The reviewers report that they were most favourably impressed
with the progress made by the members of the DOST Team since 1994, and are
pleased to state with confidence that:
1. the dictionary is now likely to be completed on time and,
2. the high quality of scholarship can be maintained throughout the
remaining stages."

The Conclusion to this Review was as follows:

"The reviewers found that the actions taken in response to the
recommendations of the 1994 Review had been very effective. They were
impressed by the realistic and constructive attitude of the staff and
management of the project, both in terms of morale and commitment. The
target for completion of DOST remains 2000. The reviewers believe this is
an achievable target and, further, that this should include publication of
one volume per year with the final volume appearing in 2000. This would be
a most commendable monument to Scottish scholarship." (DOST Archive)

As a result of this Review the Universities affirmed their willingness to
fund the project to completion. The funding situation was also eased when
in 1999 the Management Team secured a grant of £155,000 from the Arts and
Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and one of £34,000 from the Heritage
Lottery Fund.

The punishing rate of editing was maintained from 1994-2000 but the
internal structure of cross-referencing of variant spellings and the
interdependency of U, V and W meant that the publishing schedule of one
volume per year could not be adhered to. Volume VIII (Ru-Sh) was published
in 2000. Editing was completed in early December 2000 and all copy for
volumes IX-XII dispatched to OUP by mid-July 2001. Volumes IX and X were
published in 2001 and XI and XII in 2002. 

Closing remarks

From 1953 the work of the dictionary was carried on at 27 George Square,
Edinburgh. Whilst support from all the participating universities
(Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Stirling) showed a
generous and genuinely national effort, Edinburgh as the host university
and employing institution also supplied support for the day-to-day needs of
the project. The premises in George Square, charged at a rental well below
commercial rates, ensured security of tenure and the many benefits of
working in an academic environment with ready access to colleagues and
services such as the Library and Computing Services. Most significant was
the support from DOST's nearest neighbour, the School of Scottish Studies,
whose staff proved valued colleagues. From 1988 to 1992 the Director of the
School, Professor John MacQueen, was Convener of the Joint Council, and his
successor, Professor Alexander Fenton, was a founder, Honorary Secretary
and Treasurer of the Friends of DOST. The Director during DOST's final
years, Dr Margaret A. Mackay, continued the tradition, always giving
generous support, not only to the work of the Dictionary, but also to its
staff as colleagues over the years of her tenure and especially in their
more recent initiatives to find a future role for Scottish lexicography.

As completion approached, both the DOST Team and the Joint Council gave
thought to what would come next. A Colloquium of representatives of DOST's
user groups was asked to contribute to a discussion of where Scottish
lexicography should direct its efforts at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. These meetings, which received a warm response from a number of
groups involved in the study of language and linguistics as well as related
subjects in Scotland, led to a proposal for an Institute for the Languages
of Scotland. This was conceived as an enabling agency which would foster
work on many levels and within all the languages that are or have been
contributors to Scotland's culture. It received wide support and remains an
aspiration, so that the co-operation that is clearly desired by
participants in so many fields can find suitable expression.

In a more local initiative a Liaison Group was set up to explore the
possibility of integrating the data contained in DOST and SND. As a result
of its deliberations, an application was made to the AHRB for funding to
digitise DOST and SND. The successful outcome of this bid enabled the
initiation of a joint project to make DOST and SND available in electronic
form on the World Wide Web. This project (2001-2004), carried out at the
University of Dundee, allows easy access for anyone with an internet
connection to the dictionaries as they are, and will facilitate revision,
leading, we may hope, to the eventual creation of an integrated Dictionary
of the Scots Language from the earliest times to the present.

It is fitting to pay tribute at this point to the Scottish Arts Council
(SAC), which supported both DOST and SND and warmly encouraged their coming
together. SAC's recognition of the national importance of Scotland's
languages was a major influence in a strategy which led in 2002 to the
inception of Scottish Language Dictionaries Limited, the body now
responsible for the dictionaries and the furtherance of Scottish
lexicography, and active in a wide variety of language support measures.

Thus it is with the sense of coming full circle that Craigie's letter to
Grant is recollected. Craigie had hoped that DOST and SND, although dealing
with the language in different ways, might be organised so as to allow the
connections between the older language and the modern to be clarified. The
developments now envisaged surely offer the best prospect for fulfilling
Craigie's vision, and, although he could not imagine the unity of DOST and
SND in 1916 at the point of their conception, such an outcome would no
doubt have given him enormous satisfaction.

Notes

1.  Material from this section is included in Dareau (2002b) and in DOST
XII, pp. ix-xix.
2.  For a more detailed history of editorial policy see 'Editorial
Philosophy', DOST XII, pp. xx-xxviii. For the editors, see the biographies
in this volume.
3.  George Watson joined the Clarendon Press in 1907 and worked as an
assistant on OED till its completion, when he went to the University of
Chicago as an Assistant Professor working with Craigie on DOST and the
Dictionary of American English.
4.  This phrase was used by Lesley Brown in her recommendations to the
Review panel in 1994: 'that the DOST staff be fully apprised of the true
grimness of the financial position'.
5.  See The DOST Corpus, DOST XII, pp. clxiii-clxxiv.
6.  See list of Funding Organisations, DOST XII, p. cclvii.



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Information about document and author:

Text
Text audience
Adults (18+): General public: Informed lay people: Specialists: Males: Females: Audience size: 1000+

Text details
Method of composition: Wordprocessed
Year of composition: 2004
Word count: 8854

Text medium
Book: 
Text publication details
Published: Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication year: 2005
Place of publication: Edinburgh
ISBN/ISSN: 0748622810
Edition: 1st
Part of larger text: Contained in: Perspectives on the Older Scottish Tongue
Editor: Christian J Kay and Margaret A Mackay
Page numbers: 18-37

Text setting
Education: Other: Users of DOST

Text type
Article: Prose: nonfiction: 

Author
Author details
Author id: 274
Forenames: Marace
Surname: Dareau
Gender: Female
Decade of birth: 1940
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 18
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism
Occupation: Lexicographer
Region of birth: E & Mid Dumfries
Birthplace CSD dialect area: Dmf
Country of birth: Scotland
Region of residence: Gers
Country of residence: France
Father's occupation: Farmer
Father's region of birth: E & Mid Dumfries
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Dmf
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's occupation: Housemaid / Housewife
Mother's place of birth: Dundee
Mother's region of birth: W Angus
Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Ags
Mother's country of birth: Scotland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Most of the time
Language: French
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: With French people in France where author lives
Language: Scots
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: With certain people, occ. at work