Page "Oxford English Dictionary" Paragraph 25

Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding, the " Scriptorium ", which was lined with wooden planks, book shelves, and 1, 029 pigeon-holes for the quotation slips.

He tracked and regathered Furnivall's collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages: for instance, there were ten times as many quotations for abusion than for abuse.

Through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, he appealed for readers who would report " as many quotations as you can for ordinary words " and for words that were " rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in a peculiar way ".

Murray had American philologist and liberal-arts-college professor Francis March manage the collection in North America ; 1, 000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium, and by 1882, there were 3, 500, 000.