When beginning his work Barons arranged the manuscripts cut into the slips for editing into cigarette paper boxes. The size of the slips originates from these boxes as they are 14 cm wide and 24 cm long, while the average format is 3x11cm. For his own catalogues (like collector and word catalogues) Barons used still smaller slips. But, as you see, the box is rather deep (8.5 cm), making them too inconvenient for use, especially when full.

Still the frame was created and had to used. To be able to cut the original manuscript, Barons asks the correspondents to write only on one side of each sheet. Not always this instruction was obeyed, so there are cases when texts from one page had to be rewritten in order to be used, as the sheet was cut. But there were also cases when only two lines fitted into Barons' frame or even just half of the two long lines.

The edition of “Musu tautas dziesmas” by Aronu Matiss (published in 1888) was also cut and placed in the catalogue along with the manuscripts, while other previous editions and collections had to be rewritten, as they were either a rarity by the time (like editions of Latvian Literary Society) or unique (like the manuscript collections of Latvian Society).