Warfield decided to write this handbook in 1990, declaring that although he never wanted the labor of writing yet another book, he realized he would have to do so, because his methodology was not being used correctly and he feared it would disqualify the entire concept of using ISM for solving complex problems.
"If I am not able to do Interactive Management workshops here at the university, and others are starting to do IM workshops in other places, at least I can provide something those workshop clients can read, so that they will be able to know whether or not they are paying for the real article" was the gist of Warfield's remarks when he began the Handbook.
Versions
Warfield printed several early versions at his GMU office as draft, review copies distributed to colleagues. The 1991 versions were all authored singly, by Warfield. He sent out his first draft of the Handbook between February and April of 1991. There were at least three more printings of the draft manuscript, each printing with corrections and additions.
When Roxana Cardenas was in Virginia as a visiting scholar she was able to read it, and in September of 1991 she wrote a long memo to Warfield, outlining some changes she would like to see in the text. (Her memo is titled "General Comments and Ideas on The Handbook" in filename Roxana's Critique), After reading the memo Warfield asked her to help draft the next version. The 1992 and 1993 versions were issued with Roxana as co-author, and she is also the co-author of the 1994 Iowa State University Press publication.
The original WordPerfect manuscript was finished in February 1993 and published in review form by IASIS.* The hard cover book was officially published by Iowa State University Press in November 1994.
In Box numbers 20, 32 and 50 of Warfield Special Collection at George Mason University are manuscripts, correspondence and draft copies of earlier versions of the Handbook. The1994 published hard cover copies at GMU are in Library stacks, Call Number: T57.6 .W37 1994. For printouts of the book: There are 12 graphics pages which at one time had to be printed separately and inserted into the volume at the correct page number. This was corrected with later software, but the figures are so large that separate printouts are still a nice extra, so we kept the graphics files for that purpose.
Publishing notes: *The reason that the Iowa State issue is a "second edition" is because IASIS (Warfield's Institute for Advanced Study in the Integrative Sciences) had already printed and circulated the February 1993 version as a formally labelled "First Edition", and it had been cataloged as such by the Library of Congress. However there were no hard cover copies until the second edition which has Library of Congress Call number: T57.6.W37 1994 LCCN: 94-30917 ISBN number: 0-8138-2407-9.
In June 1997, Iowa State University Press, under new editors, having decided to pursue an agricultural niche in publishing, discontinued publication of the Handbook, even though all copies of the Handbook had been sold. No additional printings were planned, so this title became out of print.
The book was still in demand, so Warfield began selling soft-cover spiral bound photocopies of the Handbook to people who asked for it until 1999 when all his soft cover versions were also sold out. U.S. copyright can be held by only one person. Warfield held the copyright AT FIRST, until the year 2000, when he formally transferred copyright ownership to Roxana. This transfer was recorded officially at U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. on 3 May 2000. The copyright registration number is TX-3-989-491 registered to John N. Warfield Jan 09, 1995.with effective date of transfer to Roxana Cardenas of 19 April 2000. Warfield chose that date because it is her birthday. The transfer of copyright registration is recorded in Volume 3452, Page 598 of records book at Library of Congress U.S. Copyright Office, Washington, D. C. (r.w. circa 1999, updated April 2000)