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Thursday November 18, 1954Internal Memorandum Regarding the Kincaid Inventory of the Glass Papers The Kincaid Inventory is undoubtedly valuable for itself and needs no apology. Now that it is finished, one can see various things that should have been done, but short of the pre-vision of an angel, I can not see that much of our present difficulty could have been foreseen. We did not, in the beginning, know how many boxes there were nor how many items there were in the boxes (we do not even now have any real estimate of this second figure). We did not know how valuable a job Dr. Kincaid and his assistants could do. We had no idea that it would be as lengthy as it is at present. We perhaps should have gone into the question of where any finished work was to be distributed and how, whether it was to be sold, whether it was to be given gratis, or whether it was to be sent merely on request. We might also have thought ahead to whether or not we would need to print it, and when the question as to how many copies we wanted first came up, it surely would have been wiser to think of some of these elements and to plan for a more realistic figure. The reason we did not do this latter is, I think, because of the impossibility of foreseeing what a monster work would be achieved. All excuses aside, it becomes clear that next time we venture into a thing of this kind, we must take advantage of what has been learned in this Kincaid matter and lay a better foundation for proper handling of what there is. It is all right to do a work of this kind for a small number of copies, but if it turns out to be a giant one wants to have some sense of what will then happen. Planning on this was notably insufficient and must be improved next time. Mildred Adams
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