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V' November 11, 1954 Internal Memorandum Charlottesville, Virginia Conversation With Dr. Elbert Kincaid and his Assistant, Mr, William Edel concerning the work which they have done on the inventory of .the Carter Glass Papers The original deadline for this study was September 15• At that time, the group of three graduate students who had been working with Dr. Kincaid on this project was dispersed. The student named Sam went into his military service. The girl named Anne emerged as Sam's fiancee, and only Dr. Kincaid and William Edel were left in Charlottesville to finish the inventoiy. I suspect that those two worked rather spasmodically on it for the last two months. At any rate, the important thing is that tiie inventorying of the boxes is actually finished. The first questions that came up was where so inadequate an estimate as 216 boxes, which was -what I was told in the spring, came from. 4ie only solution we could find is that the boxes are not all together in one place in the library and that probably I only saw half the collection. At any rate, there actually were 423 boxes, which means that they did twice as much work as was expected of them. This certainly can be taken as explaining why the work was slower than we expected. The actual inventory itself is a matter of 614 pages. There is at least one page to a box. In certain instances, where the boxes contain little of value or interest, there is simply a paragraph making that statement. In other boxes, where there was material that required listing, (in certain instances, the judgements varied), more than one page, sometiixes two or three pages, of information is contained. The value of these pages varies greatly. I understood from Mr. Edel, and I am not sure that he meant that he knew exactly -what he was telling me, that the procedure worked out by Dr. Kincaid and his group left a great deal of responsibility to the group. It would have been my expectation that Dr. Kincaid -2himself would have seen each page as it was finished and would have turned back those which seemed inadequate• He did not, however, do this* Each page, when finished, was laid aside, and only in cases where material -which seemed to be of interest to the cataloguer was turned up did they refer these pages to him. This method explains the irregularity in system, and I think it very unfortunate that he did not exercise more supervision* The inventory would have been of a more consistent grade had another plan been worked out. ioung Edel himself said that he would not take responsibility for the ^hole thing. It was obvious that the girl, Anne, was quick and bright, but that neither Mr. Edel nor Dr. Kincaid considered her a vezy accurate worker. However, it is too late to revise at the present time, and it is my impression that we would do better to accept the thing as it is, rather than to insist that they go back and hunt for errors in the sheets which Anne did. The finished work, as I saw it, had been put in order according to box number. Inventories which contained more than one page had been stapled together* There was no overall pagination. It was explained to me that the number on the page, that is, the box number on the page, corresponded to a box number on the box itself, and that therefore this inventory would be forever useful. I was so dubious about the possibility of papers going astray from the boxes to which they were assigned that I called in Dr. Berkeley, i^ho is the head of the Manuscript Division of the library, to ask his opinion in the matter. I would have thought that each item might possibly have been numbered and that equivalent numbers be put on the pages. I would also have thought that there might have been a certain rearrangement of papers usefully done at this time. I was, however, reproved for this second idea and told, as far as the first idea was concerned, that nobody would misplace those papers. This I regard as a bit of wishful thinking, but there seems to be nothing to do about it. Dr. Berkeley said that one of the first tilings which an archivist learned was that papers must be kept in "toe order in ^hich they were when given to the repository. He regarded any possible rearrangement of the G lass Papers as a form of heresy, (it is also possible that any rearrangement would be fought off by &v* Carter Glass, Jr. to whom the papers technically belong). At any rate, the fact remains that we have a catalogue ^hich is keyed to the boxes by means of the box number on the page and on the box. There will undoubtedly be misplacing of papers between boxes. There will be papers ^$iich are lost. There will be papers which were not adequately described in the Inventory, nevertheless, this Inventory is far better than no inventory, and I think that the Committee should receive it and accept it as done. The questions of how to preserve these pages in libraries then came up. It was suggested by Dr. Kincaid that a ao-called spring binder would be the proper way in which to keep them. I told them that I was very eager to have one copy to present to the Committee at its forthcoming meeting in Princeton. It was finally agreed that they would not bother about any form of binding at the present time but would put page numbers on all the pages of one set and would send the set up so that I would get it the first of the week. In this office, we will then take off the unnecessary staples and find some kind of binding which is more or less permanent, or at least permanent enough for library use. We will also make a title page and provide a page ^hich indicates that an index will follow. The matter of the index was discussed at length. Dr. Kincaid and Mr. Edel would like to make it, but there are no funds in the grant to them left for this work. Also, I am not sure that they are the people to do this. Therefore, I suggested that the library send us an estimate of costs of indexing• ¥ e will also get an estimate in lew lork. If worst comes to the worst, we could do it in -4r this office, although it vould take some time. I also asked Dr. Kincaid for a foreword -which vould be, in form, an explanation of -who did the work, where it was done, under -what circumstances, and with •what funds. That foreword should be signed by Dr. Kincaid. It should also contain the names of the students who were working with him. He will send it to us in time so that I can make corrections if necessary before it goes into the one copy of the work which is destined for Princeton. Twenty copies were run off at the time that this was done. Hie stencils still exist, and another set could be run if desired. The library of the University of Virginia wants six copies. They want for each box the page or pages containing the inventory of that box. In addition, they want five copies bound in some form or other for use in the library. Dr. Kincaid would like two copies, and he says that the Richmond Reserve Bank would like one copy. It also would seem wise that a copy should go to Mr. Carter Glass, Jr. whose permission made it possible for us to do this work. One copy should go to Brookings, one to the Library of Congress, and one to the library of the Federal Reserve Board. Whether the other banks would like a copy for their libraries remains to be seen. The theory was that twelve vould be set aside for the Committee to be disposed of as the Committee saw fit. This question is so uncertain and touches on so many different angles that it will have to be brought up at the Princeton meeting. Aside from the one copy which is being sent me in time for the Princeton meeting, the other nineteen will be kept in Charlottesville until I give the word for them to be sent on their various ways. We must also provide binding for them, and this is a real problem on which we will need the advice of the Bank library. It was suggested that a letter of presentation to Mr. Carter Glass, Jr. should go -when his copy of "the inventory is sent and that it might perhaps bear -5the signature of Mr. Allan Sproul along with the gratitude of the Committee for facilities to make this thing. It probably would also be wise if a letter of thanks went to Dr. Berkeley at Charlottesville library, although as a matter of fact, he is getting something very valuable for nothing. However, he has made facilities available to the Kincaid group throughout the whole summer, so perhaps he feels that the Inventory is merely a just reward for services rendered. So far as costs are concerned, Dr. Kincaid has no more complete a statement than he has already given us. He will, however, add everything together and send us a complete statement. I told him that the Committee had no intention of penalizing him, and that if the additional costs were under $200.00, I was sure that the Committee would meet them without question. This may have been too much of a commitment, but I think not, and I think that we can wind this thing up before very long. The remaining question is how many copies we want and whether we need to have another set run off. Mr. Edel tells me that this project has been a wonderful thing for Dr. Kincaid in that it has given him something to do after he was retired more or less forcibly from the University of Virginia. He says he does not know what Dr. Kincaid will do from now on but hopes there may be something of the kind in store for him again. Both men were very keenly interested in the Parker Willis Papers, and it is obvious that they would like to do a similar job on them. Mr. Edel did his thesis for his Master's Degree on Parker Willis and is eager to do more work on him. They asked in detail about the attitude of the sons of Parker Willis toward the papers. Dr. Kincaid talked quite frankly about his financial state and sounded as though he felt the need of continuing to earn because his pension was not enough to keep him and his wife at their present standard of living. Mildred Adams
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