David Skinner in Commonweal:
Although the dictionary was not founded at the university, the OED might be described as the Oxford of dictionaries, so revered is it among reference works and books in general. It is the gold standard of academic English-language lexicography and a key tool behind many research projects into the history of English, including many other dictionaries. “It is as unthinkable that any contemporary lexicographer be without the OED,” wrote Sidney Landau in Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, first published in 1984, “as it is that a professional photographer fail to own a tripod to support his camera when needed.”
A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, as it was originally called, expounded a new model for dictionaries—the historical dictionary—teaching readers, many for the first time, to think of linguistic form and meaning as historically mutable. Words change—this is the OED’s great lesson, taught one dictionary entry at a time.
More here.