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- 05 Research & archive
Card-drawer desk research is parked, because naming needs the same hours.
The research and archive direction is a desk research method built on an oak card drawer, and it is switched off. Not slowed. Off. Letters sent about it are kept on file and no reply should be expected. This page explains the method, so you know what is waiting, and the reason, so you do not have to guess.
The honest reason
One office, one set of hours, two directions wanting them
Desk research and naming draw on the same thing: long uninterrupted mornings at the same table. A naming assessment needs a clear head for spelling and collision checks. A research question needs the same clear head for sources. Doing both meant doing both badly, and the naming work is the one people are actually waiting on.
So research got parked. That is the whole story. There is no funding problem behind it and no secret pivot.
How the card-drawer method works, when it runs
Written down so the method survives the pause. If research ever reopens, this is how it will be done, and if it does not, someone else is welcome to it.
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One question per drawer
A research job starts as one sentence on a tab divider. If the question needs two dividers, it is two jobs. Most desk research goes wrong at this step, because the question was never narrowed and the answer arrives as forty pages about nothing in particular.
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One fact per card
Each 3 by 5 inch card carries one fact, its source and the date it was checked, in that order. Never two facts. A card with two facts on it cannot be filed in two places, and refiling is how patterns show up.
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Shuffle, then sort
Cards are filed by source first, then pulled and resorted by claim. Contradictions sit next to each other in the second pass. A spreadsheet hides them in separate rows; a drawer makes you hold them in one hand.
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Clippings go in the folder, not the drawer
Photocopies and cuttings live in a kraft folder held with brass clips. The drawer holds only what was extracted from them. Mixing the two is the second most common failure we have seen.
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A short written answer
The output was meant to be two pages at most, with every claim traceable to a card. Anything longer is a report, and reports are where findings go to be skimmed.
While it is parked
What happens to the drawer and to your letter
The drawer stays in Suite 4, shut. Nothing is added and nothing is thrown out. The cards already in it are mostly about the history of invented brand names, which is why the method came out of the naming work in the first place.
If you write about desk research, your letter is stored and filed. It is not answered. That is not rudeness; replying "we cannot help" to every letter would cost the same mornings the pause was meant to free. If you need a desk research service in Austin, Texas, this month, a university library reference desk or an independent researcher will serve you better, and we would rather you went there than waited here.
We will not take a paid research job "just this once". That is exactly how a parked direction quietly becomes an open one without anyone deciding it should.
Personal data in a filed letter follows the retention rules in the privacy policy. To ask what we hold about you, use the data request route, which has its own 45-day clock under Texas law and is never parked.
Asked about the parked direction
When will research reopen?
There is no date, and we will not invent one. If the status changes, the chip at the top of this page changes with it. That is the only announcement there will be.
Can I buy access to the archive?
No. The cards are working notes, not a collection, and they are not for sale or loan.
My question is about a name. Does that count as research?
If it is about choosing or testing a name or a rare domain, it belongs to naming, which is open and has a three-business-day reply target. The fit checker will sort it in a few seconds.