4. Final assessment

The current OED online version can be classified as another successful and constantly advancing version of the OED series. It accomplishes a combination of the traditional and very efficient search methods of the OED2 with a range of new and innovative features to assist research on variation and change of the English language. The advanced search options are a major tweak as they complement the traditional search for entries or quotations with various search variants/combinations. This feature accelerates solutions for complex linguistic queries, but its complexity might also be the reason for distorted results as just one tick mark might change the whole outcome of a search. . In addition, thThe omnipresent feature Timeline has proven to be especially convenient in visualizing variation and change of the English language with regard to e.g. usage or origin of words. A timeline-link appears on the main OED page as well as in the top left corner of every list of search results. But it is important to note that only the link on the main OED page leads to the complete timeline feature with its various settings. The other link, appearing on every list, leads only to a simplified version of the feature. This rudimentary version is less useful for a researcher, but gives a first impression of a diachronic development. Apart from that,To sum up, both features have a clear design, are easy to operate and can therefore be regarded as advantageous supplements.

Other special features such as Categories or Historical Thesaurus explore and structure the majority of entries with an unconventional method. Based on senses and lemmas these features encourage the researcher to discover new links between entries and to gain unusual perspectives. These features allow studies (e.g. on the influence of several languages on English) to be conducted more efficiently. The categories given considerably facilitate the researcher’s work. Nevertheless, these features – especially the Historical Thesaurus – appear to be overloaded and require longer familiarization.  By contrast, the feature Sources has a convincingly simple structureis convincingly simple  and it offers countlessinnumerous search variations and a sheer flood of further information. All in all, the OED online can be considered to be a suitable database for a large variety of linguistic approaches.

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