Acoustic Cataloguers' Guild

Overview

The Acoustic Cataloguers' Guild, also referred to in administrative correspondence as the Candlemark Choir, is the body charged with the cataloguing of subjects that are heard before they are seen or touched. It maintains a standing jurisdictional overlap with the Guild of Primary Cataloguers over the boundary cases that arise when a subject's audible presence precedes its demonstrable presence by an interval shorter than one candlemark — the unit of measure fixed at 1/1440 of a standard recension day by Concordance 12, Annex 3.

The Guild holds its sittings in the Choir Loft of Floor 88, a chamber deliberately unlit during all cataloguing sessions. Petitioners are instructed to leave lanterns at the stairhead.

History

The Guild's founding charter, the Candlemark Compact, is dated to the reign of the Fourth Scriptorium and is presently held in a sealed sleeve within the Hall of Interim Objects pending provenance review. Early minutes record that the Guild's first four cataloguers were selected by ballot and that two of them declined the position before the ballots were counted.

During the disputes over the Ninth Concordance, the Guild briefly ceded its authority over audible-before-visible subjects to a joint commission with the Speculative Cataloguers. The commission collapsed after eleven weeks when its sole joint session produced two incompatible minutes of the same sitting. Jurisdiction reverted to the Guild by default; no document records the reversion, only its effects.

Jurisdiction and Overlap

The Guild's writ covers subjects whose first sensory registration is auditory. Its overlap with the Guild of Primary Cataloguers concerns the narrow band of cases in which a subject is heard and seen within the same candlemark. In practice the two bodies resolve these by correspondence, a process the Chamber of Unseen Cataloguers has classified as Unverifiably Present, meaning the correspondence itself is not admitted as evidence of resolution.

Relations with the Acoustic Formalists are cordial but infrequent. The Guild regards the Formalists' notation system as over-precise; the Formalists regard the Guild's field notes as illegible. A joint working group met twice in the winter of the Year of the Twelfth Recension and produced a glossary that neither body has since adopted.

Notable Rulings

The ruling known as the Verdict on the Unlit Stair established that a footstep heard on a stair the cataloguer has not yet ascended constitutes sufficient grounds for provisional entry. It has been cited forty-one times, most frequently by Provisional Cataloguers' Guild officers seeking to justify early entries in the Interim Stacks.

The Silence Clause, appended to the Ninth Concordance by amendment, holds that the absence of a sound is not itself a sound and may not be catalogued as one. This clause was invoked successfully in 3 cases and unsuccessfully in 19; the unsuccessful petitions are preserved in a single bound volume under the shelfmark AS/441.

Relation to the Candlemark Choir

The alternate designation "Candlemark Choir" derives from the Guild's practice of timing its listening sessions by the burning of a single candle, rather than by the water-clock used elsewhere in the Tower. Critics within the Guild of Primary Cataloguers have noted that candle length varies with ambient draught, producing inconsistent session durations of up to seven minutes. The Guild has declined to change the practice, citing continuity with the founding Compact.

A small number of Guild cataloguers maintain that the Choir is a distinct body of which the Guild is merely the administrative arm. This position is not supported by any surviving charter and is treated by the librarians as a local tradition.

See Also

• Acoustic Cartographers' Guild
• Acoustic Harmonization Guild
• Counter Cataloguers
• Spire Wardens' Guild