Re:The OED is great, but ... (Score 1)

I'd like to correct the impression that the OED is a profit centre for OUP. The OED, and in fact all of OUP, is a non-profit, and the OED runs at a loss of millions of pounds a year, a loss borne by the rest of OUP. The amount charged for the dictionary only just covers the cost of distributing it (i.e. either printing etc. or supporting the Web servers etc.), but not the cost of having sixty full-time staff members and hundreds of paid consultants. The OED does also work hard to try to make the dictionary widely available, for instance by encouraging libraries to license versions that they can make available offsite to members.