2004-2005

EPPI contains a complete set of British Parliamentary Papers relating to Ireland and Irish affairs published during the period of the Act of Union (1801-1922). The documents were published under the authority of the UK House of Commons and bound together as volumes ('blue books') arranged by parliamentary session – usually a part of a calendar year, but occasionally covering parts of two calendar years. The documents include papers originating in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well as reports of Royal Commissions of Inquiry and other .Command Papers. produced by the government rather than parliament.

A number of sets of Parliamentary Papers were published for use in parliament, government offices and other repositories, but few complete sets are accessible to the public. In 2002-5 the original EPPI project, funded by AHRC and based at the University of Southampton, digitised the bulk of Irish-related papers and rendered them searchable over the web. The DIPPAM project has taken over the maintenance of the EPPI materials from Southampton, enhanced their usability and filled any gaps in the document run, made them cross-searchable with the IED and VMR records, and restored free global access to users.

The completed EPPI archive contains over 14,000 documents containing over half a million pages of text originally published as UK parliamentary papers. All documents identified as relating to Ireland in the breviates and indexes of official publications have been included, incorporating materials on the Irish in Britain and reports of Emigration Commissioners on Irish migration overseas. EPPI includes all parliamentary bills (although not the final acts of parliament), reports and accounts from parliamentary committees and official bodies, reports and evidence of Royal Commissions of Inquiry, reports of the Census Commissioners, etc. It is an unrivalled source of statistical and qualitative evidence for the history of Irish society in the Union period, as well as for its political, religious and economic history. Although EPPI represents principally the official view of Ireland from Westminster and Dublin Castle, the sources are rich with testimony and correspondence collected or originating in Ireland or with the Irish overseas.

All EPPI documents were published during the period 1801-1922, when Ireland formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, although some documents reproduce material dating from before the 1800 Act of Union.

Principally Ireland, but with a number of documents relating to Irish emigration and settlement in Great Britain, British colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the United States and elsewhere.

The Scottish National Dictionary was produced by the Scottish National Dictionary Association (SNDA) from 1931 to 1976 and documents the Lowland Scots language. The original editor, William Grant, was the driving force behind the collection of Scots vocabulary. A wide range of sources were used by the editorial team in order to represent the full spectrum of Scottish vocabulary and cultural life.

Literary sources of words and phrases up to the mid-twentieth century were thoroughly investigated, as were historical records, both published and unpublished, of Parliament, Town Councils, Kirk Sessions and Presbyteries and Law Courts. More ephemeral sources such as domestic memoirs, household account books, diaries, letters and the like were also read for the dictionary, and a wide range of local and national newspapers and magazines, which often shed light on regional vocabulary and culture.

Given the fact that Scots has often been perceived as inappropriate for formal situations (including formal written text) during the period from 1700 to the present day, many words and expressions that were in regular everyday use did not appear in print. In order to redress this imbalance and fully appreciate the linguistic oral heritage of Scots, field-workers for the dictionary collected personal quotations across the country.

When David Murison took over the editorship of the dictionary in 1946, following William Grant's death, he greatly increased the number and range of written sources and expanded the coverage of oral material. He improved the layout and clarity of the entries, revealing the healthy position of modern Scots usage in spite of centuries of neglect. Murison was therefore instrumental in encouraging the study of modern Scots and fostering respect for it as a language. He was responsible for the completion of Volume III, and for overall control of Volumes IV to X. Laser eye surgery is a term that scotish dictionary hasnt yet defined

In 1985 the one-volume Concise Scots Dictionary based on the SND and DOST was published (editor-in-chief Mairi Robinson).

In 2004 a team at Dundee University and Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis (QUB) digitised the full text of all ten volumes and made them available free via the Dictionary of the Scots Language.

An award from the Heritage Lottery Fund enabled SLD to bring the dictionary up-to-date with a New Supplement, published online in 2005 as part of the Dictionary of the Scots Language.