Clause 12.δ of the Seventh Concordance

Clause 12.δ of the Seventh Concordance is a marginal operative clause governing the classification of objects that occupy more than one floor number simultaneously, or that occupy a single floor number at two or more non-contiguous addresses. It is among the shortest clauses in the recension and, by the count kept at the Office of Marginal Recensions, among the most frequently cited in disputes arising from vertical transit. The clause does not define its own terms. It relies on the definitions set out in Seventh Concordance, Clause 4 and on the numbering authority derived therein, a dependency that has been the source of nearly all subsequent difficulty.

Text and placement

The clause survives in three recensions. The received text, as printed in the Partial Survey of the Seventh Concordance, reads in full:

"An object answering to two floor numbers shall be catalogued at the lower, unless the higher is the floor of its making, in which case the higher shall govern and the lower shall be noted in the margin."

— Seventh Concordance, Clause 12.δ, received recension

The clause is set in the margin of Clause 12 proper, in a hand that the Scriptorium of the Ninth Landing has dated to no earlier than the third revision and no later than the fifth. It is not listed in the table of contents of Seventh Concordance, Revision 4, though it is plainly visible on the page, which has caused at least four cataloguers to file it under Clause 13 by mistake.

The question of the floor of making

Clause 12.δ turns on the phrase "the floor of its making," which appears nowhere else in the Seventh Concordance. The Department of Potential Traversal, constituted by Seventh Concordance, Clause 7, holds that the floor of making is the floor on which an object was assembled, and has applied the clause in that sense since the ratification of Seventh Concordance, Annex D, Clause 1. The Bureau of Vertical Registration disputes this, maintaining that the floor of making is the floor on which an object was first entered into a register, whether or not any part of it was made there. The two readings diverge sharply in the case of the long stair-ladders, which are assembled at the Foundry Landings but first entered at whatever floor they are delivered to.

The Clause 22 doctrine of the unity of conceptual adjacency has been invoked on both sides. The Bureau's position rests on the argument that a register entry is adjacent to the object's identity in a way that an assembly bench is not; the Department has answered, in a memorandum of 4 Ember 1129, that "adjacency is not a licence to substitute one floor for another" (Memorandum of the Department of Potential Traversal, file 12.δ/9). The memorandum is not a Concordance and has no authority, but it is bound with the Concordances in most reading rooms and is therefore cited as though it had.

The Grievance of Clerk Annan Vesk

The clause's most consequential application arose from the grievance of Clerk Annan Vesk, who in the winter of 1131 was assigned to catalogue the Bell of Two Landings. The bell sounds audibly on both the two hundred and sixth and the two hundred and ninth floors, and its casting was completed on the two hundred and ninth. Under the Department's reading the bell should have been catalogued at the two hundred and ninth; under the Bureau's, at the two hundred and sixth, where it was first entered. Vesk catalogued it at both, was reprimanded, catalogued it at neither, and was reprimanded again.

The matter reached the Librarians in the following spring. Their ruling — Concordance 12, Ruling on Simultaneous Occupancy — held that Clause 12.δ had been correctly applied by neither party, since the bell was not an object answering to two floor numbers but two objects answering to one, a distinction the ruling did not elaborate. Vesk was reassigned to the Index of Unfinished Surveys and the bell remains uncatalogued. Visitors are asked not to strike it.

Relation to Clause 7 and the Temporary Maintenance Clause

Seventh Concordance, Clause 7 and its sub-clauses, including Clause 881.09, govern objects in transit between floors, and Clause 12.δ is silent on whether an object in transit answers to the floor it has left, the floor it has not yet reached, or neither. The Temporary Maintenance Clause 882 was appended to cover the interval, and has been renewed every four years since, on the understanding that the interval will shortly be closed by amendment. It has not been.

The practical result is that an object on a stair between two floors is catalogued under Clause 882, an object on two floors at once under Clause 12.δ, and an object that is both — a ladder resting on one landing and against the next — under whichever clause the cataloguer happens to open first. The Office of Marginal Recensions has recommended a single schedule; the recommendation is under consideration by the Standing Committee on Numbering, which has not met since 1127.

Contradiction with Annex D

Seventh Concordance, Annex D, Clause 1 provides that no marginal clause may alter the order of precedence established by Seventh Concordance, Clause 4, and Clause 12.δ, being marginal, is on that account held by some to be inoperative altogether. The counter-argument, advanced in the Partial Survey and never successfully rebutted, is that Clause 12.δ alters nothing and merely notes where a thing is to be found, which is not a matter of precedence but of shelving. The distinction has held for sixty years, largely because no one has been able to show what would follow if it failed. Cataloguers are advised to continue shelving at the lower number and noting the higher in the margin.