Continuation of the Dictionary

An effort has been made over the past three years to supplement the work of excerption of additional Modern Greek sources published in the last twenty years (from the press, literature, and the sciences), so that the editing of the remaining five volumes of the MGED may continue without interruption. Following the bequeathing to the Centre for the Greek Language of Emmanuel Kriaras’ Archive of Medieval Greek Literature, this will be employed as well to assist the work of editing, as will the fully digitized editing system already compiled for the abridged Dictionary of Medieval Greek. However, the bulk of future efforts will be devoted to digitizing the entire Georgacas Archive, without which it will not be possible to enter the era of electronic editing, making each volume available as a database simultaneously with its publication, which we consider indispensable for every research and educational use.

Our thanks are owed to Barbara Georgacas, who entrusted to the Centre for the Greek Language not only the Archive, its Library and Georgacas’ manuscript of the Dictionary, but the continuation of his work to completion; to the National Endowment for the Humanities which, during Professor Georgacas’ lifetime, funded the research that resulted in this monumental work; to the Ouranis Foundation of the Academy of Athens for their grants to Georgacas; to the Foundation for Greek Culture, for funding in part the costs of printing of Volume One; to Minister of Education Gerasimos Arsenis, who assigned to the Centre the design of the “Electronic Site for the Support of Teachers of Greek” within which digitization of the Dictionary was included, and who provided funding through the 2nd Community Support Framework; to Dimitris Papaioannou, Special Secretary of the Ministry of Education who was assigned oversight of the project. Thanks are also owed to all the readers who contributed to the final form of Georgacas’ manuscript while editing was still ongoing, and to Ladislav Zgusta, Professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, Georgacas’ friend, colleague, and external consultant to the project. Above all, thanks are owed to both regular staff and external collaborators of the Lexicography Division of the Centre for the Greek Language, who were actively involved in preparing the MGED for publication. Publisher Aris Caratzas and his staff demonstrated superb expertise and enormous patience during all stages of the Dictionary’s production, and they have succeeded in giving it a typographic appearance worthy of its scholarly stature.

J. N. Kazazis