Problem with access to quotations in Oxford Reference Online

[Garson O'Toole]

Oxford Reference Online is a magnificent system, but if you plan to
access quotations in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations you may not
succeed.

I use a library gateway when using Oxford Reference Online. Requests
for large quotation sets often fail. For example, I just tried to
obtain the quotations of Thomas Jefferson in the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations and after a long delay a blank screen was displayed.

Customer Support for Oxford Reference Online indicates that they are
aware of the problem. But apparently it is a difficult problem because
they have been unable to fix it for more than a month, and the problem
is much older than a month.

The files being transmitted are tiny compared to the large PDFs files
successfully transmitted but other database providers.

What is the problem: Overloaded system? Improper time-out signal
during transmission? Who knows? Maybe they need a mirror system in a
well-connected location in North America to handle requests (if they
so not have one.)

When I was a direct subscriber the system also sometimes failed to
display large quotation sets. But a re-request sometimes succeeded. So
communication through an intermediate library gateway is compounding
the problem.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org