How do I get the BNC

You can download the BNC for free from the Oxford Text Archive.

Why have you changed the way in which the BNC is distributed?

The BNC used to be made available on optical disks until March 2014, and was distributed with a copy of the Xaira software. We don't support Xaira any more, and there are increasing problems with getting it to work on the latest hardware and software. Optical disks are going out of fashion, and faster networks mean that downloading the BNC is now a feasible option for most users. Offering it for download also means that we don't have to charge any fees.

See more on Oxford text Archive blog.

I've got a BNC DVD - now what do I do?

You must have one of the old disks (see above). The corpus is available in a compressed version in the file texts.tar.gz on DVD 1.

If you really want to install the Xaira software, please visit the BNC XML and Xaira installation pages for instructions, but please note that the University of Oxford does not support the Xaira software.