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Back in March the Raccoon News had a posting about our old dictionary, http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2009/03/good-old-dictionary.html.
Now, this past Sunday, the NYTimes ran an article in its supplemental magazine titled Old Dictionaries, per above. Reading this, we hastened to see what edition of Webster's we had. As you can see below, we have a 'Fifth Edition' of the Webster's Collegiate, the largest abridgment of the vaunted - per the Times piece - SECOND EDITION !
What a noteworthy find! This means we possess ( all ownerships indeed temporary,) thin pages run apparently from the original plates. This volume is very satisfying. It is so fun just to page through it, admiring the lithograph illustrations. Sometimes we photograph them and use them - for greeting cards? as we did with the raccoon image in the above SRN link.
"SOMETHING there is" that loves an old leather-bound book.....
Even, or, especially our Webster's Collegiate. Dated 1944, it is platformed in good years, WW II not withstanding. We are not so anachronistic as to eschew today's modern internet for spellings and definitions, and for information not available in 1944.
There are professionals in library science and archive preservation who bridge gaps such as these for a living. Our daughter, Erin Kate, Lawrence U graduate finishing her masters at UW Madison is training to be one of them.
This is one old dictionary that will be preserved.
