The original version, authored and supervised by Warfield, is a draft report dated August 7, 1979, consisting of Part A and Part B. Part B is 222 pages in length.. The report was titled "A USER'S GUIDE TO PUBLIC SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY." Twenty-one methodologies are described.

The User's guide to public systems methodology materials are all in box 76, folders 6 through 10 at Fenwick Library in the Warfield Special Collection, with later versions and title changes by other authors. . Fenwick Library has only Part B of Warfield’s 1979 report; Part A is missing. In Box 76 Folder 9 is Warfield’s letter to Wiley and Sons stating he he would not sign any author's agreement for book publication of the report. (r.w. Dec. 12, 2015)

NOTE: At Fenwick Library, The User's guide to public systems methodology materials are all in box 76, folders 6 through 10 of the Warfield Special Collection. There are several spelling errors and changes in the titles, and I can't straighten them out long distance now that I am living in Arkansas, but for more information on this title please read this single database record for all versions of "A User's Guide to Systems Methodology." The word "Public" was dropped from the title. R.w. August 2013 ===========================================

Part I is a collection of one-page drawings, each accompanied by a 1-page outline of the methodology. Part II more fully describes each of the methodologies, with a DELTA chart drawn for each one. AUGUST 1979 VERSION in Box 76, Folder 8: The original version, authored and supervised by Warfield, is a draft report dated 7 August 1979, consisting of Part A and Part B. Part B is 222 pages in length.. The report was titled "A USER'S GUIDE TO PUBLIC SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY." Twenty-one methodologies are described. We have only Part B of the 1979 report; Part A is missing. (Part A became Part I in later versions; Part B became Part II.) JULY 1980 VERSION: There is a July 1980 version which has 43 methodologies and still has the original title "A USER'S GUIDE TO PUBLIC SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY". Part I has 86 pages, and Part II has 571 pages. We have both Part I and Part II in the file folder. JANUARY 1981 VERSION: The 1981 version, received in 1981 at the National Technical Information Service, has descriptions of forty-three methodologies, with 162 pages in Part I and 624 pages in Part II, and is titled "A USER'S GUIDE TO SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY' (This entire 1981 report was here for a while, but in 1998 Davidson Anyiwo wanted to borrow our file copy, so we gave it to him. Before giving it to Anyiwo, Rose made photocopies of the front matter, and placed the copies in a spiral binder, along with some other misc papers dealing with this report..) The original title of this report AND of the National Science Foundation grant which paid for it was "A Users Guide to Public Systems Methodology" so called because the grant was awarded for the purpose of interesting state governments in systems methods usable by the GENERAL PUBLIC, rather than the highly technical & mathematical systems methods which could be used only by persons with specialized training. The grant funding came to University of Virginia through the Communications Program of the NSF Office of Planning and Resource Management, Washington, D.C.

During the mid-seventies, while he was Electrical Engineering department chairman at UVA, Warfield was approached by a National Science Foundation official and asked to develop a reference manual based on Warfield's initial survey of systems methods which he had done at Battelle Memorial Institute. The NSF wanted to spend $250,000 for the project, which Warfield could not undertake because he was too busy as department chairman, and also this was a systems project and Warfield had no systems graduate students. Andrew P. Sage, chair of the Systems Engineering department, had graduate students in the Systems field, so Warfield invited Sage to be a co-principal investigator, and to have the work done by systems students. Sage gladly agreed, and appropriated all the $250,000 to his own department budget, without Warfield’s knowledge. Warfield designed the format of the work, planning a "Part I" with brief thumbnail descriptions of systems methods, accompanied by a comprehensive "Part II" which described the methodologies in fuller detail, with DELTA charts. Warfield wrote the first draft of the report, in which 21 methodologies are described, drawing from a similar survey which he had begun while working at Battelle Memorial Institute. Warfield also produced many of the one-page drawings which display the essence of each methodology. (Some of these same drawings are to be found in Warfield's own papers and books, e.g. Organizations and Systems Learning and A Science of Generic Design) Wil Thissen, a student or visiting scholar from the Netherlands, compiled most of the rest of the book, under Warfield's direction. Toward the end of the project, Davidson Anyiwo, a graduate student from Nigeria, was hired to field test the methodologies, working as an intern in the Minnesota state government. In 1981, after Warfield had left the University of Virginia and moved to Iowa, Thissen had returned to Holland and Anyiwo to Nigeria, Warfield learned (by a letter which he received from John Wiley and Sons) that Sage was arranging to get the report published as a book by John Wiley & Sons, without Warfield’s knowledge, review, or consent. Not only was the NSF project report unfinished and unedited, but also it was a work which Warfield, not Sage, had developed and supervised, and it was being readied for publication without Warfield's knowledge, using a CHANGED TITLE which misrepresented the intent and function of the original NSF grant. Warfield informed John Wiley & Sons that he would not sign any author's agreement for book publication. Warfield put away his copies of the report in the basement. Wiley did not publish it as a book. (Warfield's letter to Wiley & Sons is in Box 76 Folder 9.) In 1992 Rose Warfield discovered that the report, naming Warfield as a co-author, was listed in the World Catalog databases. It seems that in 1981 someone had sent it to NTIS ( National Technical Information Service, a Government Printing House for technical reports). The report remains at the National Technical Information Service to this day, and copies can be ordered for a fee. The report available from NTIS still contains uncorrected items, but is embellished with a glossy introduction written by Sage, in which his university Systems department is glorified. Furthermore it contains added methodologies which Warfield did not endorse, and would never have publicized because he considered them inferior or worthless. The first version of the report, designed by Warfield to be a careful helpful resource, had been turned into a later version which was a grab-bag. Faded copies of the 1979 draft version, and a July 1980 version could be found only in our basement file cabinet at home. We have no reprints of the 1981 NTIS VERSION (which holds extra pages of puffery added by Sage) but reprints may be ordered from the address above. Prices in 1997 were $39.00 for Part 1 & $106.00 for Part 2. Related documents also in our files: 1977: User's Guide to Public Systems Methodology: Proposal to National Science Foundation 1978: Understanding Delta Charts.

R.w. August 2013