Classification

Classification in the Tower is the act by which a subject is assigned to a category, and thereby permitted to exist in a retrievable form. It is distinguished from mere description by the requirement of a seal: a subject may be described indefinitely, but it is not classified until a Classification Seal has been affixed and its Handling Window closed. Classification is the ordinary business of Floor 44,099 and the subject of more Concordance material than any other procedure, much of it mutually contradictory.

The Classification Bays

Floor 44,099 is divided into 144 numbered Classification Bays, each staffed by a Bench of not fewer than three and not more than five clerks. A Bench receives a subject, examines it, and proposes a category. Where the Bench cannot agree — which is common, and in Bay 71 customary — the subject is held in an interim tray until the second sitting of the following week. Bays are numbered for administrative convenience only; the numbers are unrelated to the subjects handled, so that Bay 12 has not seen a botanical subject since the tenure of Clerk Ondraste, while Bay 113 has handled nothing else for forty years.

The Bays are not sequential along the corridor. Visitors are advised to follow the red floor-tiles, which were laid in Cycle 204 and have not been corrected since.

Orders of Classification

The principal orders of classification recognised by the Standing Table of Orders are the material, the abstract, and the dimensional. The material order is governed by Clause 5, which sets out the criteria for subjects that possess extension; the abstract order covers subjects that do not, and is administered under protest by the same Bench. The dimensional order was formally established by the Addendum on Dimensional Classification to the Third Concordance, which introduced the Axiomatic Coherence Landscape as the register in which dimensional subjects are plotted.

A fourth order, the Provisional Classification, was introduced to accommodate subjects whose category could not yet be determined. It was intended as a temporary measure of not more than eleven days. Provisional holdings now constitute roughly a third of the archive, and the office that would have converted them was dissolved in Cycle 262 without successor. It is from this accumulation that proto-concepts are said to emerge.

Type 2 and the Auto-Generative Loop

The Type 2 classification is the order under which the Auto-Generative Loop is formally recognised, and it remains the standard illustration of classification applied to a subject that alters itself in the course of being classified. The Loop was first examined in Cycle 277 by a Bench of four, which found that each attempt to record its properties changed those properties, and that the record was therefore always one revision behind its subject. The Bench classified the Loop as Type 2 and appended a note that the classification should not be relied upon after the date of issue. The note has been reprinted in every edition since.

A related difficulty attends the Emergent Artifact Classification, under which subjects produced by the act of cataloguing are themselves catalogued; the Bench responsible has requested, four times, that its work be suspended for a cycle to allow arrears to clear. The request has each time been classified as a subject.

Objections and the Abstract Question

Clause 5 is the standing target of a body of opinion, associated chiefly with Clause V, which holds that the materialist principles of Clause 5 are philosophically opposed to the nature of an archive whose holdings are, in the main, records. The Clause V position is that a classification which requires extension will inevitably mis-sort its abstract subjects, and that the correct procedure is to classify nothing until the question is settled.

The Librarians have not settled the question. They have instead twice invoked Clause 5 as a superseding authority for omitting enumeration from certain status reports — a use the Clause V party regards as improper and the Bays regard as convenient. Opinion 881 on the Whispering Atlas Classification turned on precisely this point, and is discussed below.

Opinion 881

The Whispering Atlas was submitted for classification in Cycle 289 with an inventory of eleven maps and one accompanying whisper. The Bench of Bay 44 proposed the material order; the Inquiry Classification Code was invoked by a dissenting clerk, who argued that a map which is heard rather than read belongs to the inquiry order until its mode of apprehension is determined. The matter reached Opinion 881, which held, in part:

"That a subject may be classified under one order without prejudice to its classification under another does not licence the Bench to classify it under both simultaneously, nor to leave it in the interim tray until the question resolves itself, which it will not."

— Opinion 881, §4, on the Whispering Atlas Classification

The Atlas was accordingly classified under the material order, with a marginal note permitting the whisper. The note is not a classification and may not be cited as one.

Disagreement over the Seal

Two readings of the Seal persist. The first, held by the Bays, is that affixing the Classification Seal concludes the matter, and that a sealed classification may be reopened only by a fresh submission. The second, held by the Office of Recensions and supported by the Annex Classification, is that the Seal fixes the category but not the subject, and that a subject which has since changed is entitled to reclassification without a new submission. Concordance 22-D is cited by both parties, since its classification table lists the Seal in column three under the heading "final" and in column seven under the heading "revisable."

The dispute has run since Cycle 231 and is now conducted almost entirely through the wording of schedules. A practical consequence: no Holding sealed before Cycle 240 may be re-examined without the written assent of two Librarians. Assent is requested on the salmon form, which is only printed on the second floor.

Related Practices

Classification is not the only method of assigning category. The Spatial Classification governs placement rather than category and is often mistaken for it, since both are recorded on the same card. The Ontological Classification concerns what a subject is rather than where it sits, and the Dormant Classification applies to phenomena within the Alban Resonance Model whose sentience has not been established. The Categorical Error Practice deals with subjects that resist all orders; it is a practice rather than a classification because it is not permitted to produce a category, and its records are kept in a form that cannot be sealed.

Where a subject appears to belong to no order at all, it is entered in the Proposed Provisional Classification ledger and left there. The ledger is kept in a locked drawer in Bay 1. The key is kept in the drawer.