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The Middle English Dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary of the English language as it was used between 1100 and 1500, was in production at the University of Michigan from 1930 to 2001. Collection contains 3 million citation slips used in compiling the Middle English Dictionary, including citations donated by Oxford English Dictionary and Cornell University in addition to those generated by systematic reading of Medieval English texts and manuscripts. Citations include vocabulary words along with context and notes concerning sources.

The Middle English Dictionary (MED) citation slips, over three million individual slips of paper, represent the raw material used in the compilation of the MED. The citations include the original slips donated by the Oxford English Dictionary and Cornell University as well as those generated through the MED project's reading program. Some 200 readers pored through Middle English texts, including Bibles, letters, diaries and legal documents. Scientific texts were also read in order to capture a technical vocabulary not appearing in literary texts. Words gleaned from these readings of Middle English texts were copied by MED staff, along with the context (a phrase or a sentence or two), onto slips of paper along with notes concerning the source of the citation. Each citation typically consists of a line or two copied onto a slip, or sometimes a whole paragraph or stanza cut from a copy of a book. The slips contain short titles assigned to the individual texts by the MED; these short titles may be found in the Middle English Dictionary Plan and Bibliography (1954), Plan and Bibliography Supplement I (1984), and the comprehensive 2nd edition of the Plan and Bibliography (2007).

The citation slips are organized alphabetically by headword. Originally the citation slips were stored at the MED facilities in some 900 boxes each 16 inches long and 8 1/2 inches wide. Each of the boxes could hold up to 4,000 slips. In 2001, prior to transfer to the Bentley Historical Library, the slips were reboxed maintaining their original order into archival storage containers. The archival boxes, smaller in length, expanded the box count for the citations slips to 1,137 boxes. An archival box normally contains a number of entries separated by cardboard guidecards, but occasionally, in the case of commonly used words, may contain only one.

In each entry the organization of materials is as follows (with slight variations--the order becomes more fixed as the alphabet goes on): (a) the copy used in the printed MED, with definitions written on yellow slips (with senses and subsenses indicated by numbers and letters where appropriate), followed by the citation slips in chronological order illustrating each sense and subsense; (b) spelling and form lists on pink slips, plus cut-up's from the OED entry as well as those in other dictionaries, along with the editor's and other notes; miscellaneous rejected citation slips preceded by a pink slip (usually those that are too late or too early, that are from other languages, or that cross senses); (d) rejected citation slips by sense and subsense, in chronological order, each preceded by a pink slip; (e) duplicate citation slips from the OED, preceded by a single pink slip.

The following inventory gives the beginning and ending headwords for each of the 1,137 boxes of citation slips. Abbreviations in the inventory are: adj.= adjective; adv.= adverb; art.= article; conj.= conjunction; cont.= continued; def.= definite; ger.= gerund; interj.= interjection; n.= noun; pl.= plural; poss.= possessive; pref.= prefix; prep.= preposition; pron.= pronoun; rel.= relative; suf.= suffix; sup.= superlative; v.= verb. Also, three Middle English characters are used in the headwords: æ, alphabetized as a + e; 3 (lower case), alphabetized between g and h; þ and ð, alphabetized as t + h.

The supplement slips were stored at the MED facilities in the same kind of boxes as the original citation slips, but were reboxed during the summer of 2001 into the smaller archival boxes, expanding the original box count of 18 to 27. The supplement boxes contain primarily supplementary quotations for already existing entries or quotations for new entries; in only a limited number of cases are there full-fledged edited entries like those in the printed MED or in the electronic MED.

NOTE: The contest list has been broken by letters to aid in navigation. Since boxes do not always break on a new letter, some words at the beginning of each letter may be in the previous box.

The Middle English Dictionary (MED) is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language as it was used between 1100 and 1500. The MED was in production at the University of Michigan from 1930 to 2001. The collection contains correspondence of the chief editors, administrative records, files on editorial matters, and miscellaneous files and production material.

In August of 2001 the administrative records and most of the materials pertaining to the history and making of the Middle English Dictionary (MED) from its beginnings at the University of Michigan in 1930 up to its completion in 2001 were deposited in the Bentley Historical Library by the project and by the administrative unit responsible for it, the Office of the Vice President for Research. These materials consist primarily of correspondence, administrative records (including budget), files on editorial matters, and miscellaneous files and notes on other matters. In February of 2010 the remainder of the MED materials was transferred to the Bentley Library from the Buhr Storage Facility, where they had been kept since the fall of 2001, along with the books from the former MED library (now dispersed), under the supervision of the Special Collections Library. All of these materials form a collection separate from the citation slips used in the printed MED (along with the supplementary slips), which are now catalogued as Middle English Dictionary Citation Slips. The total number of boxes in the present collection is 98 (of various sizes), amounting to 68 linear feet.

The Middle English Dictionary records are organized in three major subgroups, RECORDS BY EDITORIAL ERA, MISCELLANEOUS MED MATERIALS, and NON-MED MATERIALS.

In the first 20 boxes (21 linear feet) the materials are in standard-size boxes in 8 1/2" x 14" folders and are arranged strictly chronologically by the editorial eras of the chief editors: Samuel Moore (1930-1934), Thomas A. Knott (1935-1945), Hans Kurath (1946-1961), Sherman M. Kuhn (1961-1983), and Robert E. Lewis (1982-2001), except that the Moore and Knott eras have been combined because of the difficulty of separating the files, other than correspondence, in those two eras. In the later MED boxes (21 through 78), the materials are stored in a mixture of formats (8 1/2" x 14" folders, 6 1/2" x 9" cards, 3" x 5" cards and slips, etc.), and the organization is topical, though still generally chronological. Non- MED materials (specifically, the Early Modern English Dictionary (EMED) materials) appear at the end (in boxes 79 through 98).