Memorandum

To:	Judge John H. Ruffin, Jr.
From:	H. Sparrow
Subject:	Court History Book
Date:	March 30, 2007

Bob, Ashley and I have been looking at the Chapters of the book sent to us last Friday by Mr. Adams. It is our understanding that we need to calculate the approximate length of the text and the number of photo pages for the book in order for Mercer University Press to provide an estimated cost of the project to the Tom Watson Brown Foundation by April 12th. In an effort to see what the length of the book would be with editing and pictures, we have done a quick edit and layout on Chapter Two. Attached you will find the original of 24 pages and the edited version of 17 pages. You will see that in the edited version I have trimmed the text by tightening up the wording and removing or shortening lengthy quotations.

We have several concerns about the project estimate and the status of the project. First, the total number of pages in the five drafts is over 138 which is quite large considering that no pictures have been added. The 9" x 12" Michigan book is only 105 pages with all the pictures included. It also appears there has been no editing of the text since the initial drafts were written. Currently, there is no title page, table of contents, bibliography or endnotes which will all have to be added to the book. Bob has noticed some differences in the data presented in Chapter Two and the information he has collected about the Court. For example, he had slightly different dates for the terms of the judges listed in Chapter Two and had a different number of judges from that period who were initially elected to the Court. There is no way to verify what information is correct without a listing from the authors of the sources of the data or for Bob to research it himself. Even after each Chapter is edited, the overall book will have to be edited again to eliminate duplications across the chapters and to make the text flow as one document. Therefore, there is still much work to do on the contents of the book and calculating the length accurately is very difficult at this point.

The three of us would like to know what our responsibility is to edit, layout, and verify the data in the drafts. We are willing to do whatever is necessary to complete the book as expeditiously as possible, but feel we need clarification as to our authority. In order to keep the book on the timeline established just a few weeks ago, we believe we need to move very rapidly to bring the writing and editing phase to an end. Should we proceed to edit the Chapters as soon as possible and present them to Mr. Adams ? Should we ask Mr. Adams to ask the authors for endnotes and bibliographies for their Chapters? He will not be visiting the Court again until April 13th.

I believe that in order to move the project along Bob, Ashley and I need the authority to edit the remaining chapters, and ask Mr. Adams to obtain the bibliography and endnotes from the authors of the chapters by April 13th at the latest.

Furthermore, although we will make an estimate of the book length and present it to Mr. Adams before April 12th as requested, we cannot vouch for its accuracy.

cc:	Chief Judge Anne Barnes