Cartographic Annex

The '''Cartographic Annex''' is the collective designation for the four buildings, two sub-basements and one disused lift shaft constituting the cartographic branch of the Tower's record-keeping apparatus. It is chiefly remembered as the former catalogue location of the Whispering Atlas, which was held in the Lower Reading Room of Annex East from 1866 until its transfer to the Central Cartographic Annex under circumstances set out in Section 3 below. The Annex should not be confused with the Central Cartographic Annex, which is larger, nor with the Ninth Stairwell Annex, which is not cartographic and resents the implication.

Composition and floors

The Annex is not a single structure. Its four buildings were absorbed at different dates and never physically joined, a fact that has caused persistent difficulty for couriers. Annex East occupies Floors 88 through 91; Annex West, Floors 200 and 201; Annex South comprises a single gallery on Floor 411 whose number is painted on the wrong door; and Annex North has no floors at all, being a stairwell that the Cartographic Reconciliation division has declined to reclassify.

Movement between the buildings is accomplished by the Connective Passage, a corridor of uncertain length first surveyed during The Partial Survey (1901–1903) and found on re-survey in 1904 to be eleven paces shorter. The discrepancy was logged, docketed, and ultimately bound into the passage's own catalogue entry, which now occupies a shelf of its own.

History

The Annex was constituted by the Fourth Concordance, Clause 7.12 (Annex: Cartographic Anomalies), the same clause under which the Cartographic Echo Institute was founded. The two institutions have contested the clause's meaning for the entirety of their shared existence. The Institute maintains that Clause 7.12 establishes a priority of method; the Annex maintains that it establishes a priority of shelving, and that the Institute's founder was, in the words of Annex Warden Oris Vantle, "a borrower who never returned the key."

The Annex achieved its present arrangement in 1866 following the Ninth Stairwell Annex fire, when a quantity of cartographic material was carried up, down and sideways for eleven days and deposited wherever a surface could be found. The Librarian supervising the move, Bessaly Orr, recorded in her day-book that "the material has been placed; whether it has been placed correctly is a question for a later generation, and I wish them joy of it." No systematic reconciliation of the move has ever been attempted.

The Whispering Atlas and its transfer

The Whispering Atlas was catalogued in Annex East from 1866. Its removal was ordered in 1899 by the Bureau of Cartographic Integrity after a complaint from the reading public that the Atlas could be heard in Annex South, a distance of some three hundred floors and a stairwell. The Bureau's investigators confirmed that the sound was audible but could not confirm that it originated in the Atlas, the Annex East building being at that time occupied by a scholar who hummed.

The transfer to the Central Cartographic Annex was completed in 1902. The Annex retains custody of the Atlas's original shelf marker, which was left behind in error and has since been catalogued as a holding in its own right. Under Sixth Concordance, Annex 2, the marker records only where the Atlas was, not where it will be, and inspectors are asked to stop asking.

Disputes of jurisdiction

The Annex's working relationship with the Cartographic Corps is governed by Annex 7 C of the Ninth Concordance, appended after the Corps' thirteen-day plenary session and read by the Annex, according to its own minute-book, "in the afternoon, once, and with the window open." The Corps asserts that all Annex floor numbers fall within its survey remit. The Cartographic Survey Concord asserts that floor numbers are not survey matters at all but concordance matters, and has declined to attend joint meetings since 1911.

Disagreement also persists over what the Annex is for. The Analytical Cartographers hold that it is a repository of anomalous spatial fact; the Cartographic Echo Institute holds that it is a cautionary example; and the Department of Cartographic Anomalies has recorded in its annual return that it is "a corridor with pretensions." The dispute is unlikely to be settled, as the governing text is Clause 7.12, which all parties agree is ambiguous and none is willing to amend, lest the amendment be taken as a concession.

Access and current condition

"No visitor shall proceed beyond the Connective Passage without a marker, a lantern, and a stated intention. Intention shall be stated in writing. The Passage does not accept intention stated aloud."

— Cartographic Reconciliation, standing notice, Floor 43

The Annex is presently staffed by two clerks, one of whom is on secondment to the Bureau of Cartographic Incongruity and has been since 1974. Both buildings' roofs were re-leaded in the winter of 1932 and have not been inspected since; the survey party sent to inspect them in 1933 returned with an inventory of eleven items, none of which was a roof.

Researchers wishing to consult Annex holdings should apply to Cartographic Reconciliation on Floor 43, which logs and prioritises spatial anomalies and will decide whether an Annex visit constitutes one. Applications concerning Annex North should not be made. Annex North is a stairwell.