The criticisms of who has been included in the 241 unusual Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entrants of this year (Report,13 January; Editorial, 14 January) reflects the arguably impossible task that confronts Dr Alex May and his small team of colleagues who constitute a research project of the Oxford University history faculty and not a vast army of researchers who work for Oxford University Press, and who publish the Dictionary online three times a year,in January, May and September. As Dr May explains, and he and his colleagues take “advice from a network of around 400 specialist advisers”. He also explains that under his editorship there have been “unusual ‘strands’ of subjects who died less recently,in areas including imperial, colonial and Commonwealth lives, or the impact of people of black and Asian descent on the UK itself,Jewish lives, geographers, or linguists,and scholars of foreign cultures. These entries have both highlighted and extended the global reach of the dictionary, which mirrors the place of Britain in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world.”This is an epic undertaking by a small group of researchers, or certainly not some sort of glib Google exercise,as Omar Alleyne-Lawler, of Black History Month, and is quoted as suggesting. It might be said of the ODNB researchers that they’re damned whether they carry out and damned whether they don’t. Patience is a advantage in research,and should be for present and future readers of the ODNB. As the renowned Guinness advert had it: “sterling things come to those who wait.”
Bruce Ross-Smith
OxfordContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com