COVER STORY
the wider width of the pages and give the reader a closer look at the members in the photo. Ultimately, this proposed design was discarded due to publishing restrictions. Scott’s vision was for the book to be published in three formats: hardcover book, e-book, and audiobook. Time was the primary consideration regarding the book's completion, so the audiobook version was postponed to be released later potentially.
obstacles from the onset of taking on the task of writing the publication. Grand Historian Scott conferred with Grand Historian Emeritus Bryson about obtaining the 5 th ed. master copy so that edits could be easily performed, and digital files of images could be ac- cessed. Bryson informed Scott that he did not have the master file or digital copies of the photos. Scott realized he had to establish a template to create the 6th ed. He contacted the publisher and obtained the PDF file of the 5 th ed. Scott converted each chapter to Microsoft Word documents, for editing purposes. High-resolution photographs were taken of each 5 th ed. image being considered for use in the 6th ed. Scott cast a wide net to acquire an array of information needed for 6th ed. content. Scott distributed a “Don’t Be Left Out of History” message to the membership via email and social me- dia. The “Don’t Be Left Out of History” message was published in numerous Journal issues. International Head- quarters (IHQ) emailed the message to the membership three times over 18 months to ensure no one missed it. IHQ also set up a web portal on the national fraternity website for members and chapters to easily submit content. Scott and Williams reviewed and evalu- ated numerous submissions for consid- eration to be included in The Story.
Complications and Laborious Toils With Composing the 6 th Edition
oughly explained, and some topics not addressed. Scott began the meticulous job of line editing in 2016, and earnest writing started sometime in 2019. Scott and Williams maintained the majority of existing text from the 5 th ed. but periodically made grammatical or sentence structure edits. Scott and Williams created a list of topics they deemed important for inclusion in the 6 th edition. The research and a scrupulous review of archived Kappa published material, historical photographs, manuscripts, and documents were conducted to obtain the new informa- tion. Some of this information was acquired from previous editions of The Kappa Alpha Psi Journal, The Handbook of Kappa Alpha Psi, The State of the Fraternity, The Confiden- tial Bulletin, and numerous Fraternity history manuscripts composed by several Fraternity luminaries, includ- ing Founders John M. Lee, Byron K. Armstrong and Grant and 2 nd Grand Polemarch Irven Armstrong, current and past IHQ leadership, former Grand Chapter officers and Chiefs of Staff to past Grand Polemarchs, among others. Additional material was sourced from archived newspapers, books, and Grand Historian Scott and Aaron Williams reviewing and organizing past Kappa Alpha Psi Journals at IHQ.
Founder Grant provided additional recollections of the ordeals he experi- enced when attempting to accumulate historical source material for the 1st ed., “Writing the early history of the Fraternity in detail presented many perplexing problems. Many parts of the early history were veiled in mystery. My task was to unveil these mysterious facts and bring them to light for who knows but somedayust one seemingly insignificant statement or deed might change the whole concept of action describe there to.” Drawing compari- sons to the difficulties Founder Grant experienced when he began to collect source information for The Story, Scott and Williams also encountered several
Scott decided early on that the best way to resolve issues he discovered in the earlier editions was to perform line-by-line edits of the entire 5 th ed. content. Some of the matters of concern he observed were typographical errors, ambiguous information, some content not thor-
Aaron Williams
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