24 July 2009
Lucinda Brown, Director
Boone County Public Library
Cindy,
I am sending the following notes for a meeting I thought would take place weeks ago. I am disturbed at the direction our project has taken in the last month or so, and I think you should become aware of the problems before it is too late to act in an effective manner. It may take the new director months to figure out what we were supposed to be doing, and what went wrong.
I was under the impression the project (after weeks of semi-secrecy) was being turned over to me to complete, so I began the next afternoon, a Friday (in the two hours I had before I went on the desk for the evening), by adding 99 new pages. I completed some of them, intending add the text to the rest on Monday. Monday I found myself locked out of the project. Bridget said I had changed the structure of the wiki "behind her back", etc. (I pointed out that it would have been senseless to think I was doing anything behind her back, since I knew she would be in Monday morning.) She decided she did not want me to add any pages, as she disapproved of the structure I have been developing for the last two years for the page tags. She said I could edit her pages, but not add any of my own. That I said would cause nothing but trouble, and predicted that if the current direction was continued that whole thing would become a nightmare very soon. I offered to resign from the project, so then she decided that I would only supply "content" (a word to watch), and she would edit everything.
I do not think this is a good resolution to the difficulty, for reasons that should become apparent below, but I thought it was a good tenative solution until we could have a meeting. Time is now slipping away. I tried to cooperate by sending her a great deal of material. I sent her that week 150 items, some things short notes, some long papers (I send you documentation that I supplied these items), as well as additional essays and papers in the period following. There should have been enough material there for at least 500 entries in the wiki, but I have not noticed any appreciable addition since then. I cannot at this point promise you that the Annals of Boone County will ever appear in anything like the form we initially agree on if the current rate and kind of progress continues. I think this is explained sufficiently in the essay I drafted, which appears below. I hope it will be clear that I have thought this over well, and hope that the project can take a new direction.
You can well understand that I do not wish to go head to head with Bridget. Since I am now fully at the mercy of this department I do not wish to aggravate any problems here. However, I think that there will be nothing but problems if I am locked out of the project, when I proposed it, and am supposed to be responsible for its ultimate success. I see now that she proposes to be the editor, but she does not understand how the material fits together. I know how it fits, but I cannot hand someone else the pieces and hope they get things right. It will never do for me to be constantly standing over her shoulder pointing out yet another mistake, or stylistic misjudgment, or . . . anything at all! I am not happy with what is there now; I think it can only get worse; but, I have a proposal for constructive changes that should
make everyone happy. So please consider carefully the following, which I have also attached as a pdf document, so that you may print it, and consider it carefully, if you will.
James Duvall, M. A.
Local History Research Specialist
Annals of Boone County
Boone County Public Library
1786 Burlington Pk.
Burlington, Kentucky 41005
859-342-2665
Note: Attached to this letter was a 14 page essay outlining the importance of the structure of the material, and the problems with the direction it was being taken by Bridget Striker and Jennifer Gregory, who had assumed editorship. This document will be posted else where, and a link established.
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
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