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The death of the printed dictionary has signalled the end of a Scottish publishing institution reports the Herald, after Hachette yesterday (15th) announced that it would be closing the Edinburgh office of Chambers Harrap.
Marion Sinclair, chief executive of Publishing Scotland, said: "It is an incredibly sad day. It is a long-established company and so much of Edinburgh's publishing traditions are synonymous with Chambers. It is a pretty unique company in the Scottish publishing landscape and when a name like that disappears, this is our industry's Johnnie Walker moment.
"Dictionaries have migrated online and a lot of people have the attitude that it doesn't matter about the brand name. But often it doesn't have the wealth of lexicography behind it. That is a real specialist skill and that is what we are in danger of losing.”
The Scotsman reports that the body responsible for promoting Scotland's publishing sector bemoaned the loss of an "iconic" brand it described as the "Johnnie Walker of the publishing world". Michael Russell, culture minister, said: "As one of our oldest book publishers, Chambers is a Scottish institution, so this is a deeply regrettable situation. Unfortunately it does, to a certain extent, reflect the changing patterns of how research and reference are now undertaken."