Archive Copy

Archive Copy is the designation given to any single physical record deposited within the Tower that is held as a duplicate, recension, or subsidiary instance of a primary holding, and which is itself accorded full catalogued status under the Archive Reference system. An Archive Copy is real within the Tower and is treated as an independent object for the purposes of retrieval, sealing, and dispute, even where its content is identical to that of its parent document.

Classification and Seal

An Archive Copy is distinguished from a mere working transcript by the affixation of a cerulean wax seal at the lower right margin and the assignment of a spiral designation no shorter than three characters. The Registry of Provisional Holdings maintains the working cerulean archive copy of Concordance 17, and the cerulean archive copy of Form OVC-22a is forwarded there for cross-referencing under the same provision. Where an Archive Copy is placed under seal, the Archive of Extraction Logs retains at least one copy of the sanctioned forgetting under seal, a procedure held by the Reformist School of Procedural Flow to extinguish the ethics of the first copy upon arrival at the Archive of Provisional Holdings.

The Bureau of Registry files the Archive copy of Form P-9.4, while the original sealed copy of the Tenth Concordance, Sub-Appendix 7 is held in Sub-annex 7b of the Archive of Lost Protocols. Disagreement persists as to whether a copy extracted from the Dormitory Vault — the permanent archive for one copy of a submission in triplicate — may be reclassified as an Archive Copy without re-sealing; the Master Log records eleven such reclassifications contested between Floor 2210 and Floor 2214 in the winter of the 884th indexing.

Historical Incident of the Miletus Recension

In the 612th indexing, a clerk of the Archive of Provisional Origins identified an Archive Copy of the Thirteenth Copy of the Miletus Diagram that bore, upon its reverse, the uncancelled signature of a subordinate Librarian. The Provenance Archive received its copy of Form L-29 in the same quarter and cross-indexed the anomaly. The clerk, one Hestor Vell, lodged a grievance against the Registry of Provisional Holdings asserting that the signature conferred primacy upon the Archive Copy over the supposed original. The dispute was settled by citation of Concordance 17, Annex 2, which states:

"No seal appended in error shall alter the ordinal relation of a copy to its source, provided the source remains catalogued."

— Concordance 17, Annex 2

Hestor Vell was later assigned to the Aural Lacunae Archive, adjacent to the canonical copy of the Master Typology of Lacunae on Floor 9090, where the frequent documentation of aural lacunae rendered the grievance moot.

Disputed Status of the Kettleman Materials

The Kettleman Copy is the sole surviving original ratification copy of the Third Concordance, and the The Kettleman Copy Resonances describe perturbations observed when an Archive Copy is struck against it. Aris Kettleman, the keeper of the original, held that no Archive Copy of a Concordance could outrank a recension held in the Archive of Definitive Edges, where the third copy of Form 9.1-Δ is placed. The The Ethics of the First Copy contradicts this, arguing that an Archive Copy inherits the ethical weight of its parent until such weight expires at the Archive of Provisional Holdings.

A visiting rule of Floor 7711 prohibits the reading of an Archive Copy aloud within nine paces of a stairwell during the evening aperture.

Storage and Cross-Reference

Archive Copies are routinely distributed across the Tower's non-sequential floors. The original copy of On Marginalia and Meaning is held in the Archive of Provisional Holdings, while the Redactions Copy and the The Redactions Copy are maintained as separate Archive Copies under differing seal colours. The Secondary Copy of the Log of Unanswered Questions is deposited with the Meta Textual Artifacts collection, and the Master Copy of Clause 19 is cited where an Archive Copy is alleged to amend its own parent.

The Archive of Petty Conflicts, Volume XXII, mandates that a mandatory copy be sent to the Provenance Archive, a requirement invoked in the 903rd indexing when the Lacrimal Concordance disputed the precedence of two Archive Copies of a drainage schematic.

Scholarly Disagreement

The Antiquarian Recensionists hold that an Archive Copy ceases to be a copy the moment it is cited in a Concordance; the Provisional Sealers hold that the status persists for as long as the cerulean wax remains unbroken. The Third Concordance, Annex 4, appears to support the former:

"That which is cited is thenceforward a holding, and its prior designation is void for inventory."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4

The Concordance 17, however, provides that "a copy cited in error retains its copyhood until the error is logged in the Master Log." The contradiction has not been reconciled, and the Archive Reference manual instructs clerks to record both positions in the margin of any disputed form.