🚀 go-pugleaf

The ICR Evening Lecture Series

Monday, September 25, 1989
8:00 p.m.
DC 1302

Towards an Electronic Oxford English Dictionary

Frank Wm. Tompa

Professor of Computer Science

Since 1984, the Oxford University Press has been working towards
computerization of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
As a joint venture with the Press, the University of Waterloo has
been designing an on-line dictionary database suitable for
editors charged with maintaining the OED, lexicographers working
on other dictionaries, and researchers who wish to consult the
OED interactively.  Several innovative components have been
developed as part of the project.  For example, the PAT text
searching engine retrieves all occurrences of words or phrases
appearing in the 540 Mbyte OED in less than 1 second.  The
approaches used to computerize the OED are equally applicable to
managing the text inventory of many other organizations, whether
or not the enterprise has formal publication as a goal.  This
lecture will recount the experience at Waterloo with the OED to
illustrate the major ideas that have emerged.

Prior to his appointment to the Department of Computer Science in
1974, Frank Tompa attended Brown University, from which he
received BSc and MSc degrees in Applied Math, and the University
of Toronto, from which he received a PhD in Computer Science.  He
is currently a Professor in the Department, a member of the Data
Structuring Group, and a co-Director of the UW Centre for the New
OED.  Professor Tompa's interests span the fields of data
structures and databases.  In recent years, he has been
particularly interested in database design for videotex systems
and in the design of text management systems suitable for
maintaining large bodies of text.