Dictionaries of the Millenium

[Fred Shapiro]

I thought people on this list might be interested in a ranking of "50 best
reference sources of the past millenium still in use today," published by
Library Journal based on a poll of public and academic librarians.  The
following lexical dictionaries were included in the ranking:


1. Webster's Third New International Dictionary
5. Oxford English Dictionary
17. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
27. Black's Law Dictionary


I consider these rankings to be highly questionable, but still
interesting.  Of particular interest is the first-place ranking of the
much maligned Webster's 3rd.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2