What's next for Adams? A limited-series podcast about Madeline Kripke: Dictionary people talking about what it was like to be in her apartment. "A wild ride, to say the least." #ThatWordChat

He never made the trip. He hasn't found it in the collection yet, but every time he goes into an inventory box — he's still looking! #ThatWordChat

Kripke kept emailing him: "When are you coming to New York? I have something I think you'd really want to see. I don't think I'm willing to sell it but you'd really want to see it." #ThatWordChat

The King and Queen weren't accepting gifts on the trip. So the press reframed it as "the sort of book any gentleman would want in his library." They accepted and received a specially bound and plated copy of all four volumes. #ThatWordChat

In 1939, the marketing director at the University of Chicago Press had an idea: give King George VI and Queen Elizabeth a copy when they visited the United States. #ThatWordChat

Adams: "She absolutely was a scholar. She was part of the community of lexicography." She was a founding member of the Dictionary Society of North America in the mid-1970s. She attended every meeting until 2019, when she was too infirm to make the trip to Bloomington. #ThatWordChat

Adams: "It had never occurred to me how much time and care it would take to put together a collection like this, volume by volume." #ThatWordChat

Adams on what working with the collection taught him: For rare book fairs, festivals, sales, you have to be there in person. You can do some of it online, but it's risky. #ThatWordChat

Kripke managed to collect the copy that had been owned by King James I of England — James VI of Scotland. How do they know? Adams was examining the cover and noticed, alongside a coat of arms, the emblem of the Royal Order of the Garter. #ThatWordChat

The symposium lectures will also become a special issue of the journal Dictionaries, so the scholarship reaches people beyond those who attended in person. #ThatWordChat