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Hand-Pulled Cross-References, late 1940s to 1980s/early 1990s, 1940-1999
The Hand-Pulled Cross Reference cards series is held in the first half of box 75, and contains a sample of the cross-references (A-En, W-Z) that were used from the late 1940s through the 1980s, and even into the early 1990s, before the MED had developed a program to insert them directly from the computerized copy. These cross-references were hand-pulled from both the handwritten copy and the first draft of the composited copy, typed on slips, and then inserted into the final composited copy.
Quotations
The remaining three and a half boxes in MISCELLANEOUS MED MATERIALS (the remainder of 75 through box 78) are made up of the Quotations series; it contains primarily quotations which were donated to, or in a few cases prepared at, the MED but which were not used in the current printed or online dictionaries. These consist of: Concordance Slips for Avowing of Arthur, Stern Quotations, Cornish Quotations, Cornell Class B Material and MED Reading Program slips.
Concordance Slips for Avowing of Arthur (half of box 75) were sent to the MED in 1939 by Norman Waldorf of San Jose, California. They are alphabetically arranged.
The Stern Quotations (boxes 76-77) are quotations sent to the MED by Professor Gustav Stern of Göteborg in the 1940s, containing miscellaneous words; alphabetically arranged.
Cornish Quotations (box 77); alphabetically arranged. In letters G through P (1963-1984) of the MED Cornish quotations from Origo Mundi and Pass.Christi in Norris Anc.Corn.Drama that contained words borrowed from Middle English were included, but this practice was discontinued beginning with Q (1984); in addition to the unused Cornish quotations, this part of box 77 also contains notes on where in the MED (G through P) Cornish quotations may be found.
Cornell Class B Material (box 78) contains a selection only. The titles given are a combination of titles in the Cornell material and the short titles in the Plan and Bibliography, 2nd edition. Editors Meech, Whitehall, and Rettger, in a report of September 30, 1934, after Moore's death, observed that of the 219,000 quotation slips sent to the MED from Cornell in 1930, 105,000 "were of such slight value because the words recorded on them were adequately represented in the Oxford material and because quotations in them were short or altogether lacking that we put them aside and probably will never touch them again." The MED referred to these slips as "Cornell Class B Material," and this category also contained those of the additional quotations sent from Cornell in 1942 that were not filed in the boxes during 1942-1943.
MED Reading Program (in the center of box 78) comprises a small number of slips taken from the Doncaster Corporation manuscript, prepared at an unknown date; arranged by page.