Dutch historical language has been described in four separate comprehensive dictionaries: the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT, Dictionary of the Dutch Language, 1500-1976) the Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek (MNW, Dictionary of Middle Dutch, ~1250 – 1550), the Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek (VMNW, Dictionary of Early Middle Dutch, 1200-1300). and the Oudnederlands Woordenboek (‘ONW’, Dictionary of Old Dutch, ca. 500–1200). Both WNT and MNW were paper dictionaries, that were digitised by keying and made available on CD-ROM. ONW and VMNW were born digitial dictionaries. To have a comprehensive view of the Dutch language, it was decided to put the four dictionaries online in one portal. Making it possible for users to query one ore more dictionaries simultaneously was a logical step to take because these dictionaries complement each other. The challenge was not only to give the user optimal access to the dictionary information, but also to do so without compromising the uniqueness of each individual dictionary. Continue reading Digitised and Born-Digital in One Application: Dutch Historical Dictionaries Online
Author: Katrien Depuydt
Katrien Depuydt is senior researcher at the Institute for Dutch Lexicology. She has worked on two major historical dictionaries and has led several projects on corpus building, computational lexica, tools for lexicon building and retrieval systems for corpora and dictionaries. She has been involved in several European and national projects, leading work packages on lexicon development.