Addenda 44

Addenda 44 is the forty-fourth fascicle of the Concordance Addenda to the Second Concordance, comprising nine clauses, two schedules, and a fold-out table of spiral designations that has never been unfolded without damage. It is chiefly remembered as the instrument by which the Resolution Through Cataloguing was codified within Series Φ, and as the earliest surviving text to fix a procedural value to an unanswered question. Its opening clause is among the most quoted in the Tower and among the least often read to its end.

Composition and recension

Addenda 44 was assembled in the scriptoria beneath the Repository of Unanswered Questions over the winter of the year recorded as 6412, when the Librarians sought to close a backlog of disputed filings that had accumulated on Floors 209 through 214. The recension was supervised by Clerk Anselm Vey, whose marginal hand is visible on all four surviving copies. Vey's grievance with the enterprise is preserved in a note appended to the fair copy: he had requested two additional scribes and was granted one, who could not read the spiral notation.

The fascicle was proposed under the embossed seal of the Librarians in the standard form and appears in the register of the Third Concordance only as a cross-reference, which has caused persistent confusion. Copies held on Floor 209 begin at clause 3; the opening clauses survive only in the Repository recension and in a partial copy recovered from the Southern Stacks, the latter collated by Alaric of the Southern Stacks before his classification of the Apocryphal Addenda to the Third Concordance.

The cataloguing axiom

Clause 1 states the axiom for which the Addenda is best known:

"A question may be answered by being catalogued, provided the catalogue entry is of sufficient length to outlast the questioner."

— Concordance Addenda, Addenda 44, clause 1

Clauses 2 through 5 fix the sufficient length by a table of exemptions keyed to the Thorne Progression scale, which the Seventh Concordance later operationalised in its own addenda. The table is not reproduced here; by the terms of clause 5 it may not be reproduced in any document shorter than itself. In practice the exemption most often invoked is that for questions asked in stairwells, which are held to be neither floor nor corridor and therefore uncataloguable under clause 1. Clerks are instructed to record such questions on the landing and to continue upward.

Clause 6 extends the axiom to questions asked in writing, and clause 7 to questions asked twice. The latter has generated more commentary than the rest of the fascicle combined, since a question asked twice is held to be one question catalogued at two lengths. Clause 12 of the parent Concordance, which purports to settle the matter, addresses a different question asked twice and does not.

Controversy over Series Φ

Scholarly opinion divides on whether Addenda 44 codifies the Resolution Through Cataloguing or merely restates it. The custodians of the Repository maintain that the Addenda is the originating instrument and that all later citations are derivative; the annotators of the Index of Superseded Clauses, where three of the nine clauses were entered in 6419, maintain that the Resolution existed in customary use on Floor 209 for at least a generation before Vey took up his quill, and that the Addenda records rather than creates it.

The contradiction is embedded in the texts themselves. Clause 8 of Addenda 44 refers to the Resolution as "heretofore observed," while the preamble to the same fascicle describes it as "now established." The Librarians have declined to reconcile the two, on the ground that reconciliation would require an addendum to an addendum, which the Addendum Proviso permits only for Wandering Addenda. A proposal to reclassify Addenda 44 as wandering was lodged on Floor 214 in 6431 and remains before the Repository.

A third position, advanced in the marginalia of the Southern Stacks copy, holds that Vey wrote both sentences on the same afternoon and meant them equally. This view has few adherents but has never been refuted.

Restrictions and practical notes

The fold-out table of spiral designations in Schedule B is not to be opened in the reading rooms of Floors 209 to 214 without the prior permission of the Repository, on the ground that it has not been unfolded without damage. Permission is granted at the desk on the third landing. Applicants should bring their own weights.

Citations to Addenda 44 are properly given by clause and schedule, thus: Addenda 44, clause 1, Schedule B. The fascicle is not to be cited by page, as its pagination differs across all four recensions and was disputed in writing by Vey himself. A note in his hand on the Repository fair copy reads, in its entirety, "The pages are correct. The numbers are not mine." The note is undated.