WOMAN'S DICTIONARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1925, Page 26

WOMAN'S DICTIONARY.

There is something staggering, something really awe-inspiring in the making of a dictionary, that might have been considered outside the scope of female endeavour. But when in 1915 the Danish Board of Education gave tho work of producing the new dictionary "of the Danish language to the Society Het Danske Sprog og Litteratur Selskab, it was to Dr. Lis Jacobsen, the president of the society, that the command was given. To her, with her co-director Herr JuulJensen, has fallen all the work of organisation, publicity and correspondence, both as regards the work in the Royal Library, where the lower grade checking, sorting, filing, looking up, etc., are done, and in the outside world, where the editors are working at the dictionary in their own homes.

Perhaps it is something in the Scandinavian air that makes Danish women so energetic, and Dr. Lis Jacobsen can best be described as a '?live wire." Short and slim, she radiates enthusiasm and determination. The dictionary is to her almost a living thing, and the staff must owe a great deal to her inspiration and encouragement. Since 1915 six volumes have been completed, and there are to be at least 20 in all, but once the war was over, Dr. Jacobsen has been able to bring out one a year, and is bent on keeping up to that mark. Not the least of her work is in the stimulating of public interest in the dictionary, and here her journalistic aptitude and work help her greatly, for she has pressed the newspapers into service.. It-was her idea to publish inquiries several times a year in all the Danish papers when.a word had baffled all the editors, os..when it was not certain whethar some words were obsolete. "Do you know that word?" and "What does it-mean?" the public were asked. Answers came in over Denmark from all sorts and conditions of men. In that way words were discovered to be in use in remote districts which were thought to be quite obsolete. Though she has the highest position, Dr. Jacobsen is, not the only woman at Work on the dictionary.. The editors happen to be all men, but when the work was started there was no sex-bar, and quite a number of the . students who are- doing the lower grade work are women. - These Btudents work by the hour, and to come %nd go when they please, and they are all students of thjp. Danish, language. Work in these congenial and quiet surroundings, with its value in their study and its payment by. the hour, must be a considerable attraction for poor students.