The Oxford English Dictionary is an awesome piece of work. Painstakingly assembled over the course of several decades, it is a testament to the will of the individual compilation scholar.

I'm sure the true original project manager, James Murray, who became the backbone that brought it to fruition, would have loved a more efficient system than the one he was forced to employ. Quotations illustrating word usage were kept on slips of paper sent in by individual volunteers from all over the world, and filing was a nightmare. It was housed in what Murray called the Scriptorium.

Technology has allowed employment of much more efficient cataloging, so why would we lament such progress? It boggles the mind, those that hold out for paper based storage.