—Talk to Index Team. DFO 1656 10/83

1. I THINK I GOT A REVELATION! You know, sometimes the answers & solutions are so simple we can't see the forest for the trees—or we can't see the trees for the forest! Now you may think I'm crazy—& maybe I am—& a bit revolutionary, fanatical & radical, & probably no Index was ever this crazy or ever done this way before‚ but I have cooked up a scheme whereby we could assemble the Index‚ at least the present Indexes, those that have already been printed, & merge them together.

2. I GUESS YOU KNOW WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO WAIT ON CONSTANT ADDITIONS & INPUTS ETC. By the time we get to the deadline I've laid down, whatever he's got in is it & the rest will have to come later in a Supplement. In other words, whenever we're ready to publish this Index, we will just simply put in whatever we have ready & all the rest of the additions & the stuff he didn't get in & the Letters he didn't finish will have to come later—which means it will have to come in another little booklet, sad to say. But they can always bind or glue'm together & at least they'd then only have to look into two Indexes.

3. I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU HEARD ABOUT DOING THE INDEX IN GN FORMAT, BUT IT DIDN'T COME FROM ME! When I was reading your report I was really suddenly shocked & surprised when I saw you were planning to do it GN-size. I had thought about doing it GN-size, but considering the problems in reforming & that all the originals were done in FN-size I finally abandoned the idea. I figured that because it's going to be a pretty big thick book & since virtually all of the original Volumes are in FN size‚ it would be far better to do it that size.

4. THE OLD EXISTING INDEXES OF ALL THE VOLUMES ARE ALL THE BIG SIZE‚ so if we're going to do a quick comprehensive merged Index covering all the Indexes that have already been published, I think we should do them the same size as the big Mo-Book volumes to which this Index will pertain. Then later when you've got all the supplements & everything from the new GN-size volumes, we can publish the Supplement in that size to go along with that size on your shelf, so to speak. Just like the encyclopedias do—they publish a big volume of a comprehensive Index to fit the whole thing, & then publish a supplement, same-size volume, from year to year.

5. JOSIAH'S IN-DEPTH ADDITIONS FROM THE FIRST 300 REALLY OUGHT TO BE DONE FOR ALL 1600‚ SO THAT'S ALMOST AN ENDLESS JOB & WILL TAKE A LONG TIME. We will have to have a Supplement that will include all these new words that he didn't get in the other Indexes anyhow, plus all the new Letters he didn't get. So we cannot avoid a supplement unless we want to delay this thing till doomsday.—In fact‚ he'll probably never get it done at the rate he's going.

6. REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT PRAYER? I just got desperate about this thing when I realised how long it's going to take to type it & how it's just going to take months, optimistically two months. Well, I've got an even better idea to save your typist a lot of work & a lot of trouble, but which will give your layout man a lot of work & a lot of trouble instead!

7. YOU'LL PROBABLY SAY THIS IS CRAZY‚ but as far as I can see, all of those former Volumes have virtually exactly the same size pages & columns, or close to it, close enough that we could merge what is already in print. Think of all the proofreading & everything else that will save if we simply put together the existing already-printed Indexes! Take the A's for example:

8. WE TAKE THE A'S FROM THE FIRST INDEX IN VOLUME 1 JUST LIKE THEY ARE, we come to the end of the Volume 1 A's & we start right at the bottom of that column, make a little insertion of what Volume of Letters the next column covers, & we start right there & lay out all the A's that were in Volume 3, 301-400. Then we start at the bottom of that column & lay out all the A's from 501-600 etc. Got the picture?—No typing, no reprinting, no nothing but just a layout job that perhaps could take not more than a couple days, or maybe a week is more like it. Excuse me‚ I'm always getting in too big a hurry.—I'm in a hurry for this Index, let me tell you!

9. YOU COULDN'T CALL IT A COMPLETELY SYNTHESISED INDEX AT ALL, but do you realise what he's got to do in typing these things? Take for example the word "Aaron". He takes the Index in Book 1, he types the word "Aaron" & then he has to type all those figures. Then he has to add to those all the references for "Aaron" that are in Book 2 at the end of that line of figures. Then he has to go over & add all those in Book 3 etc., which of course manually is about the fastest way you can do it if you're going to really integrate & synthesise it. But that is going to take months, whereas this idea of mine of getting up a quick book of what we would call a combined Index—it's not a completely integrated Index but a combined Index—will only take a week! We would only combine Volume 1 A's, then add on Volume 2 A's, Volume 3 A's etc.

10. IT'S KIND OF HARD FOR ME TO EXPLAIN THIS TO YOU, BUT IT WASN'T HARD FOR ME TO GET THE POINT! I was praying desperately about it & I got a picture of it, just like that!—So simple! So easy! All you have to do is cut these pages right out of the books & lay'm out! In fact, probably somewhere somebody's got the negs or plates or positives or something. But if worse comes to worst you can just rip'm out of your books & it would only take two sets of books to do it, using the fronts & backs of pages. Don't worry about losing your Indexes 'cause you won't need'm any more!

11. A GOOD LAYOUT MAN OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO DO THE WHOLE WORKS WITHIN A WEEK & WE WOULD HAVE US AN ORIGINAL READY-MADE COMBINED INDEX that all you'd have to do is quickly scan instead of having to look through ten books! You've got one combined book of Indexes‚ but you don't have to turn pages to this next Index of 300-400‚ & then turn over several pages to find the next Index 500-600. I don't mean just combining Indexes that way, but I mean combine all the A's, then all the B's! Got the point? For example, there's only a little over one column of A's in Volume 1, then immediately would begin the next column of A's from Volume 2 & that has about 2-1/2 columns of A's & they're only for that Volume.

12. SO MAYBE THE LORD WAS IN THEM DOING THE INDEXES THAT WAY, VOLUME BY VOLUME. I got so mad because each time they didn't update it & they only put in an Index for just that Volume, but this is great because it avoids duplication. Each Volume has its own separate Index, in other words its own separate A's. So to find what you're looking for you would only have to scan a few columns & look for the word "Aaron" in each one. You'd only have to turn about one page in each case & you'd find the next "A" listings for the same word under the next group of Letters & you've got it made!

13. THAT IS THE FASTEST POSSIBLE WAY TO PUT TOGETHER AN INDEX‚ CONSIDERING THE WAY THEY'VE BEEN DONE NOW. You've also got the 900-1300's all combined‚ so there we are, we've got our Index finished from A to 1300! He's still working on 1300-1600 & I've given him three months to do it. I figured he could do 100 Letters a month, so that would be our first Supplement. But you can take the 900-1300's & reduce them to the size of our other Indexes & take the columns & cut'm up & add'm as we need them. It doesn't matter if they're not exactly the same kind of type as long as they fit the size of the columns.

14. SO TO HAVE YOUR POOR TYPIST GO THROUGH THIS WHOLE THING & REALLY SYNTHESISE THEM WORD FOR WORD LIKE YOU WERE DOING, THAT WILL BE SOMETHING FOR THE FUTURE. Because even though the computer's doing the sorting, he's still gotta type'm all in & there's still always the definite certainty of error, particularly reference errors. You're more likely to make numerical mistakes than word mistakes, because words make sense & numbers don't, so we found out that the worst mistakes & the greatest number are in the numbers.—Which means it's a colossal, monumental job of comparing every figure of every reference with the originals. Why do that when we can just use the originals?

15. SAYING LAYOUT IS QUICKER IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT CONSIDERING ONE WEEK COMPARED TO SEVERAL MONTHS!—And God knows whether our poor typist would hold up under the strain! He could have a nervous breakdown trying to type these damn numbers! The hardest kind of stuff to type is numbers, you know, because it requires much more concentration. Words flow easily & you can just type as fast as you can read it if you're a good typist, but with numbers you've got to take each number separately or each group of digits separately‚ or each reference, in other words, about as far as he could type at a time. He'd have to look at the reference‚ type it, look at the next reference, type it. You don't have to do that when you're typing words—a good typist can type along almost as fast as slow readers can read.

16. SO IT IS A NERVE-WRACKING PROPOSITION TO DO A COMPLETELY SYNTHESISED INDEX WORD FOR WORD with all references under each word, & it may turn out to be a far more colossal project than you realise. Because right now you don't even have your computer program perfected & you don't even really know if you can do it! I appreciate your faith & your trying, but why do that when we could just combine'm? Which would you rather have?

17. WE HAVE TO LOOK UP THINGS ALL THE TIME & GO THROUGH A WHOLE BUNCH OF BOOKS TO TRY TO FIND WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR, turn a Hell of a lot of pages to find the references or even the Letter etc. & look through the references. If you were in my position‚ wouldn't you find this a whole lot easier? It may not be synthesised, maybe all the references aren't under just one word, but I could jump from column to column to the next group of A's & quickly see that word in the next group by only turning a page or another page or whatever it is. It would be absolutely the simplest way to put it together now & we could have the thing ready to print in a week instead of months from now! And Brother, we needed it last year!—We needed it ten years ago, that's why I started it!

18. ALL I CAN SAY IS WHEN I GOT DESPERATE & PRAYED ABOUT IT I SAW A PICTURE OF A PAGE JUST AS CLEAR AS ANYTHING & that all we had to do was add the next group of Letters for the same words. And it's not going to be all that tremendous an amount of layout. Each letter has a column or two or so. You set up your format with your blue-pencilled outlines & you take the first A's of Book 1 & you start laying them out in columns till you finish‚ then the A's of Book 2 immediately following.

19. I'M TELLING YOU, I THINK A GOOD LAYOUT MAN COULD ALMOST DO THE WHOLE WORKS IN LESS THAN A WEEK! It's that simple, just a matter of cut-&-paste, cut-&-paste! It's all done, it's all typed, it's all proofread, it's all in final type, & Brother, we've got our Index! Forget all this retyping‚ we may not have a chance to finish it! The bottom may drop out & the financial system collapse before this month is over & we wouldn't have a chance to publish it!

20. IF WE CAN'T HAVE A COMPLETELY SYNTHESISED INDEX OF ALL THE REFERENCES UNDER ONE SINGLE WORD‚ WOULDN'T YOU AT LEAST RATHER HAVE A COMBINED INDEX where all the A's are together & all the B's?—And besides that, it's all done! The printing is all done, they were supposed to have been proofread years ago‚ so all we have to do is start slappin' it together. Okay‚ let's go! We've got our combined Index already, all we have to do is stick it together!

21. SEE HOW MUCH EASIER THAT IS THAN HAVING TO LOOK THROUGH ALL THESE BOOKS? Every time you look through a book, first you've gotta find the Index, & it's only the first two Indexes that happen to be on the same page. You've gotta thumb, thumb, thumb through to find the Index, then you've gotta thumb through to find your Letter, then if it's not in that book you've gotta pick up the next book & thumb, thumb to find the page where the Index is, then thumb, thumb through the pages to find your letter. Can you imagine how much more time that takes?

22. WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR TIME STUDIES, but it would be interesting to actually time somebody & figure out how much time it would take'm to look up a word. Give'm a word & have'm look through all the books & all the Indexes just to find that word & see how long it takes them as compared to taking our new-style Index where you can just run your finger down the columns to find that word & all the references under "A" etc.

23. I'LL BET IT WOULD TAKE JUST ABOUT TEN TIMES AS LONG, BECAUSE THERE'S ABOUT TEN VOLUMES!—In fact longer, because you've gotta find the Volume‚ find the Index, find the Letter‚ find the Word, four searches! But this way all they've gotta do is pick up one Volume & they know what Volume it is, it's all Index! All they have to do is pick up the Volume, flip it open to the letter & run their finger down a few columns to check the references on that word in each group. And look how fast we can put it together!

24. SO THAT'S THE SOLUTION, BROTHER! I never even dreamed of that, never thought of it until I got desperate & thought, "My Lord, how long is it going to take?" I knew that it was taking some time because I hadn't gotten those first sheets yet from the typist, & then‚ oh brother, there's so much typing to do! Then we'd practically have to get the whole thing together before we could proofread it & you'd have to figure out your system & you're not sure yet whether the program will even work or if you can even figure out a program.

25. BUT THIS WILL GIVE US TIME & WE'LL GET A READY-MADE HANDY INDEX WE CAN USE RIGHT NOW & THAT WE CAN HAVE READY TO PRINT IN ONE WEEK! There are no Alps! We could have an Index to send to be printed almost immediately while we still have the money, because God knows how long we'll have it! At least that would be our salvation & at least we'd have some Index.

26. AS LONG AS WE USE THAT SIZE PAGE‚ ANY OF THOSE COLUMNS COULD FIT ON ANY PAGE. I don't give a damn if some lines are slightly longer than the others or some columns are just a fraction wider than the others. I don't care that much about their looks, I want utility! We're not making this thing for a decoration nor for the System, we're making it for an emergency utility that we've gotta have now & we've needed already for years!

27. MY LORD‚ WE COULD HAVE SAVED THOUSANDS OF HOURS OF TIME OF OUR POOR DEAR EDITORS' READINGS & TRYING TO LOCATE REFERENCES IF WE'D HAD THIS KIND OF AN INDEX ALREADY! I can't remember what Letter it was in or what Volume it was in or where it was, so give these poor readers the credit for how much hard work they do. I would say they spend at least half their time looking for references—where was that said, where was that talked about?

28. WELL, AT LEAST WE'VE GOT A SYNTHESISED CONCORDANCE FOR BIBLE REFERENCES, YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK UNDER ONE WORD & THERE IT ALL IS! But for these ML references‚ you know what I usually do?—I just give up before I even get started! I just put down there (rf.) & let the poor proofreaders try to find it, & a lot of times they can't even find it. It's just too big a job having to look through ten volumes to find it. It's ridiculous!

29. SO THIS WOULD SOLVE THE WHOLE PROBLEM! We've got all references grouped in just a few columns & we've got it all printed out & proofread. We've got the stuff right here in front of us! All we have to do is have somebody cut-&-paste & lay it out, & we can have it done within a week, I really believe we could. I'd be willing to delay the mail for these GNs & the Poster & the works if we could stick the Index in with'm! I started to say the insect! Well, at least it's not incest anyway‚ but we're going to kind of mix it up here so it might be incest! Index incest of the insects of all these minute particles of references. They look like insects when you look at'm.

30. LIKE THE IDEA? WELL, DON'T GIVE ME CREDIT FOR IT, ALL I DID WAS ASK! It was a picture‚ clear as anything. Now see how easy my job is? You guys fret & worry over programs & all this typing & everything else. I mean, the time that you've already spent working on trying to figure out how to do it & typing it, you could have had it half done by now!

31. FOR SOMEBODY WHO WANTS TO BE REAL PARTICULAR, well, we'll let Josiah keep his job awhile & rock along updating it & trying to find more words that belong there & blah blah, & also doing the last 300 Letters, 1300-1600. We'll have him do that first‚ a fairly thorough Index of 1300–1600 & we can put that out in another Supplement, God knows how many months from now.

32. BUT THIS WAY WE CAN HAVE THESE PRINTED INDEXES IN OUR HANDS NEXT MONTH! And for our poor worn-out absolutely haggled harassed proofreaders & others who have to try to find references, they could have xerox copies in their hands by next week! How about that? Like the idea? I want to see a sample right away! Tell your layout man to drop everything that doesn't have to be done right now & let's roll'm! Get your Index Team organised & put'm to work now! Drop everything else! I don't think there's anything that has more priority than this Index!

33. ANYHOW, THAT'S THE GOOD NEWS!—And if there's any bad news at all it just means you're going to have to drop everything else while we do it real quick. Maybe your layout man can listen to this tape to give him a shot in the soul & inspire him to do the job! It will also help explain to him what we're doing. Everybody's got to have their inspiration for the job! I wouldn't care if we had to forget the WND forever for the sake of this Index, so don't worry about that at all‚ but if you can get somebody else to finish it up, fine.

34. ARE YOU CONVINCED? DID I SELL YOU? HALLELUJAH! WELL, THE LORD SOLD ME! He doesn't have to talk so long & use so many words, He just shows me pictures. It's a terrific system! He's really got the best system in the World! He doesn't have to waste a lot of time explaining things, He just shows you pictures & sometimes He puts the words right in your mind or He gives the impression or He even talks out loud & there you've got it! It doesn't take an hour tape to explain it! All set?...Get ready!...Go!

35. LORD BLESS & HELP THEM & GIVE THEM WISDOM & SKILL & ACCURACY ON THIS, & SHOW'M JUST LIKE YOU DO ME, LORD, HOW TO DO IT! Help'm to start getting pages done immediately so they can send me a sample right away, maybe all the A's!—In Jesus' name, amen! I don't want to push you too hard, but every outfit's gotta have a pusher. I've got my little pusher here‚ she really works me over, & I've got my Big Pusher up there! They keep pushing me, God bless'm, so I have to kind of push everybody a little bit & I hope you don't mind.

36. LORD BLESS & KEEP'M, STRENGTHEN THEM FOR THIS TASK, LORD, & GIVE THEM GREAT WISDOM, LOVE, PATIENCE, FAITH & EVERYTHING THEY NEED‚ INGENUITY & REAL COURAGE TO SEE IT THROUGH, A REAL PIONEERING SPIRIT‚ LORD! We're really pioneering a different type of Index probably nobody ever did before. It's kind of crazy, Lord, but at least it's quick, & at least it's going to make it a lot easier than the way we're doing it now. And if we ever get time & You ever give us time, maybe we can do the perfect Index in the future. But in the meantime‚ Lord, we've got some Index.—In Jesus' name, amen. GBY! ILY!

37. LOOK AT ALL THE TIME I COULD HAVE SAVED YOU IF I HAD JUST GOTTEN A LITTLE DESPERATE & PRAYED A LITTLE HARDER QUICKER! You've gotta learn how to do that! I got this revelation before I even got your letter! I just raced through your letter‚ I got so impatient I didn't even hardly want to read it because I already had the answer! But I thought it wouldn't be fair unless I read your whole letter & studied it thoroughly so I could really answer. But all the letter did was convince me all the more & confirm what I already got this morning!

38. SO THAT LITTLE PRAYER TIME EARLY IN THE MORNING REALLY HELPS. You ought to try that before your days' work every day. Ask the Lord about what's the solution to problems. I mean, that's the easiest way in the World to get it. Don't think, "It's hard to pray & I haven't got time to pray, it's a waste of time to pray, blah blah"—if you spent a little more time praying you'd spend a Hell of a lot less time working & getting it done! It's just that simple. And the Lord loves to give you the answer. He knows exactly what to do & how to do it, so why don't you ask Him instead of going to all this trouble trying to figure it out yourself?

39. I GUESS HE WANTS TO SHOW YOU THAT YOU STILL NEED ME! If you had all the answers you wouldn't need me any more. Well, that day's coming. In the meantime the Lord knows I like to feel useful & it's a good thing to feel like you're needed. So go to work on that Index—I just saved you about two months! The Lord solves problems so easy if you just ask Him, but He likes you to ask Him!—Amen?

(After receiving the "A's":)

40. WOW! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE US AN INDEX BY THE END OF THE WEEK! Isn't that terrific? Doesn't that save a lot of time? It's not as perfect as it could be if we had time to synthesise the whole thing, but it's sure one Hell of a lot quicker!

41. LOOK AT THE MAZE OF REFERENCES IN THE 901-1300'S! He's got all 400 Letters in this one alphabetising instead of doing it by Volumes. Well, of course this is the way we hoped to do it in the long run, so maybe this will cure us & show us this other way's better! Look at the maze of references! These all should have had more subdivisions, don't you think? These are such general categories & classifications. Can you imagine having to look through all those references to find what you're looking for? It's almost ridiculous!

42. THAT'S WHAT I SAID BEFORE, HE MADE HIS CATEGORIES TOO GENERAL & TOO ALL-INCLUSIVE. While he was at the job & he had the reference there, if he'd only had some more specific minor categories it would have been so much easier for somebody looking through for a reference. What in the World are they going to do when they're trying to find a reference on American Government & Politics in the last four Volumes? Well, at least it's better than having 14 books to look through!

43. BUT WHEN YOU SEE THAT MAZE OF REFERENCES YOU JUST ABOUT GIVE UP & think, "Oh well, forget it! I don't have time to look through all those references to find what I want. I want to see something about the Republican Party or the Democrats." But here he just lists all the general references. He had'm!—For God's sake, why in the Hell didn't he make'm separate? It's pitiful! It was a real easy way out just to give it a general broad category & throw everything in the soup.

44. I MUST HAVE BEEN VERY FOND OF AMERICA & THE ARABS, I NEVER SAW SO MANY REFERENCES!—And an awful lot on Africa too. Then there's a major category on Animals which is very good & very interesting & makes me want to get into it right now & read the whole thing! I never realised I said so many things about animals! He really did better on that one because he has more subdivisions. That way you can look a little more specifically for the particular topic on animals you're looking for & you don't have column after column of references to look for.

45. I DON'T KNOW WHO FIRST STARTED THIS GENERALISING, BUT THOSE SUBDIVISIONS ARE ENTIRELY TOO GENERAL. What was the guy thinking about? He must have been in a hurry! Well, we're learning & we'll do better in our final great really synthesised totally alphabetised Index with every word in the English language!—Ha! Well, not that bad! But I did tell them to be sure to include every single proper name & proper noun‚ especially of persons & places that people would be interested in. In the early ones they seem to have done that, but he seems to have gotten away from that in his 900–1300's.

46. WHY DON'T WE BOX IN THE MAJOR CATEGORIES SO WE CAN SHOW WHERE THEY BEGIN & END? That doesn't require too much additional work or anything & that would make it clearer yet. That way you can just jump over those things to continue your alphabetical listings of the word you're looking for. You don't want to have to wade through all those sub-headings wondering if you're reading the alphabet or what. Then if it's a major category that has no sub-headings that are going to be confused with the continuation of the alphabet, it doesn't need to be boxed.

47. AND YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO MAKE THOSE NUMERICAL DIVISIONS STAND OUT BETTER IN BIGGER TYPE, boxed, with spacing above & below the box so they'll definitely see the next numerical division. And how about putting a big heavy black bar about a centimeter thick clear across the column after your Letter A, B etc., to make it really stand out where the next letter begins. I liked your idea of beginning each alphabetical letter at the top of a new page because that'll give'm a little space at the end in case they want to add a few themselves‚ which they probably will. Then we can even add Supplements by continuing the last column to the bottom of the page & inserting pages. So I liked your A's, now you can start on the B's—the busy B's!

48. I WAS JUST TICKLED PINK TO SEE HOW FAST WE CAN DO IT! Isn't that a lot faster & easier to use? Even though we're not completely synthesised & alphabetised word for word—which is going to be a monumental job & God knows if we'll ever get it done—at least we'll have a handy one-Volume Index that we can use quickly & easily right now‚ & it's all done! It's all printed, it's typed, it's supposed to have been proofread & the works. Don't you think this is going to help?

49. PLEASE TELL THE INDEX TEAM I'M JUST THRILLED TO PIECES & I LOVE IT & I LOVE'M & KEEP'M ROLLING! We're going to knock this thing out right now so the whole Family can have them by next month! Wouldn't that be wonderful? Even if they're not the best in the World & not totally complete, at least it's better than nothing.—And it's sure better than 14 volumes of Indexes! Thank You Lord for solving the problem with the Index, it's such a revelation, such a miracle! It's not perfect, Lord, but it's sure better than what we've had! TYJ!—In Jesus' name, amen.—Amen? GBAKY Indexed!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family