I can log into the online OED using my New York Public Library card number!
Of course Perseus has always been completely open, though over-featurized, and for the fine old standard lexica and concordances, blueletterbible.org is actually terrific, intuitive and easy to use. (Use the ‘C’ option on a selected verse).
TLG has a subset of the corpus available for free searching, though a full subscription is still $125 a year. Grrrr. But the subset isn’t too bad.
Even Jstor, which has come in for some abuse in these pages, now allows unaffiliated researchers to sign up for an individual account. This provides mingily limited free reading of some material, and also gives the opportunity to buy items. These seem to run about $12 a pop, from what I’ve seen, which is daylight robbery, of course. I wonder if this grudging pinchfist aggiornamento antedates or postdates Jstor’s encounter with Aaron Swartz, which was really bad for Aaron and should have better for Jstor — should at least have taught those Pere Goriots of the intellectual world more than it apparently has.
Somebody really needs to hit JSTOR upside the head. Hard.
Lord, so can I (OED via my local library card)!
I have JSTOR access via my local library consortium; I knew about that, but not the OED.
Thanks.
NYPL does not seem to have a deal with JSTOR, alas.
FWIW, I have to log in through the library website, and end up in JSTOR at an odd domain: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.plsinfo.org. PLS is the Peninsula Library System, of which my local library is a member, along with Cañada College, which is where the JSTOR access appears to be coming from.
Interesting. There doesn’t seem to be any link from the NYPL site to JSTOR, though it does suggest that you can get to it from the library’s own branches. Dunno if this would work for a laptop on their wireless. Worth a try.
I actually got in touch with NYPL about this, and found that Jstor is indeed accessible from the library’s own networks (including wireless) but is NOT available via proxy logon as in jlundell’s case. And why not? Because Jstor charges libraries for this service based on the number of library cards they have issued. Of course in NYPL’s case this is a huge number. Creeps. (Jstor I mean, not NYPL.)
Done.