Chicago Assyrian Dictionary…for free?!

With all this talk about “iPhone suckers” here is one that can really make you cringe. U of Chicago has decided to release the CAD for free as PDF downloads. Now, I know many of us much prefer books over electronic copies, the truth is that I do as well for down and dirty research, but PDFs are great. Imagine you are on your way to do some research or simply write up some articles in a remote location (like your in-law’s house by the beach). You need the all the articles and books sitting on your desk, but your car can only hold so much and your back is only rated for carrying 150 lbs, not including two small children (roughly the weight of the CAD). Download these babies and voilá! You have a massive resource in a just a few MBs of space on your notebook’s harddrive.

Now for the sucka part. Don’t raise your hands, but how many folks out there paid $60-$145 PER VOLUME for their CAD? Maybe mostly libraries, but I know many friends who have bought various volumes, at great expense to themselves. Still, I am glad to see the information being let lose in the wild. Almost makes me wish I had actually gone to Chicago and done Akkadian. 😉

And thanks to Stephen for the heads up!

Free Online: The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary

I finally remembered to make this post: The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD) can now be downloaded free of charge as PDF files. As anyone who has studied Akkadian knows, this is a major lexicon of the language. Click here, then identify the volume you want to download. Then go to the far right, to the little vertical rectangles with the dollar-signs and the down-arrows. Click on the down-arrow to download the volume that you want.

UPDATE: It is far more than the CAD as Chuck points out in his comments. Be sure to see his blog post for more details. Thanks Chuck!