An Introduction to Research Processes

Back to Using Reference Materials

In addition to desk dictionaries like those most college students own, libraries have a variety of large and specialized dictionaries. You'll find dictionaries covering foreign languages, abbreviations, slang, and regionalisms as well as dictionaries for the specialized terminology in a particular field, such as Black's Law Dictionary, Stedman's Medical Dictionary, or the Oxford Dictionary of Natural History. Libraries often have unabridged dictionaries available on dictionary stands, where you can find the most obscure words currently in use and learn what they mean as well as how to pronounce them.

The largest dictionary in any language is the monumental Oxford English Dictionary (OED), now in its second edition. It fills a shelf or more, having twenty volumes in all, and is available in some libraries in a computerized version. It is primarily a historical dictionary that not only defines each word but tells how the word was used from its earliest appearance in the language to the present and gives many examples of its use through history.