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As a researcher of REED patrons' biographies, I have been following the Ingram, Cummings, Johnston discussion with interest. The various comments suggest that ultimately, the selection and presentation of textual material for audiences is a rhetorical issue. Publication of historical material and primary texts is often shaped by several levels of audience: 1) the initial researcher/editor, whose interests and problems guide the selection of material; 2) in-house editors, whose concerns about consistency of editorial policy and press style partially determine selection; 3) external readers, specialists in the academic community who evaluate the work as it is relevant to their interests, to their previous experiences with related scholarship, and thus, as useful/not useful to other readers in that community; 4) funding agencies, which provide grants for research and publication (and to them, the rhetoric of the proposal is just as important as the rhetoric of the product); and 5) the publishers, whose concerns about marketing will also shape what gets out to the academic community. Thus a consideration of the theory guiding records selection and publication must take into account these levels of audience, which function as lenses in the context of textual editing. A discussion of records research and publication as it relates to each level of audience might be one way to approach the problem. Now, if I can apply my own theory to the patrons' biographies.... Elza C. Tiner Lynchburg College