CompuServe Messages

The price differential between the reduced-type OED and the standard version is pretty much 100 percent a reflection of costs: production and distribution, primarily. In the print version, the reduced-type OED could be considered less functional than the standard because of its small type, or I suppose one could argue the sharp reduction in the number of volumes and their bulk makes the reduced-type version more functional in terms of ease of going from aaa to, say, ggg. In any event, the "functionality" is tightly coupled with the medium. Printed matter will never afford the reader the same speed of access which is possible in an electronic version. But this really has little or nothing to do with the price. Assuming Oxford Umiversity Press starts with the same "base" – the information content of the OED2, properly 'marked up' for typesetting in an SGML or similar environment – the cost of getting that content into printed, bound volumes is dramatically higher than getting it onto a CD-ROM. Distribution and storage costs are also way higher for the paper version. OUP's pricing does not reflect the electronics era – it reflects what is probably a "what the market will bear" consideration. For OUP, "the market" for the OED has traditionally been institutions spending money other than their own and with pretty deep pockets for a "quality" product. As someone else said a while back in this thread, OUP likely has no real incentive to change its pricing policy just now. I agree with many others here the ROM version is "too expensive", but I'll buy it anyway, and so probably will many others. OUP will no doubt miss the opportunity for vastly larger sales quantities, but they probably just don't care … Ric