Coherence Directive

Definition

Coherence Directive is the collective designation for a series of instruments issued under the authority of the Committee for Catalogical Coherence, governing the manner in which catalogued entries maintain referential stability across recensions. The term is applied both to individual documents and to the genus itself, a distinction which has produced no small amount of floor-level confusion and at least two recorded disputes settled by Concordance citation rather than by resolution. The earliest surviving Coherence Directive, numbered 12.7, concerns the Borrowed Coherence value assignable to stable Oneiric Unitarics and remains in force. Its successor instruments, principally Coherence Directive 301.45-b, govern cross-reference practice for generated forms.

Scope and instrument class

Coherence Directives are distinguished from Custodial Directives in that they address the internal referential behaviour of an entry rather than its physical handling. The distinction was drawn explicitly in the wake of the Custodial Crisis of 740, in which Custodial Directive 743-A and Coherence Directive 301.45-b issued irreconcilable instructions regarding the treatment of echo-doppelgangers. The resulting impasse is documented at length elsewhere in this archive and need not be rehearsed here beyond noting that both instruments were left standing, a outcome the Librarian of Coherence later described as "the correct one, and the expensive one." Directives of this class are numbered by decimal sequence, but the sequence does not correspond to order of issue. Directive 301.45 predates its own codicil by an interval the records do not agree upon: one recension places the gap at eleven years, another at four months.

Principal instruments

The following are the Coherence Directives most frequently cited in current practice:

• Coherence Directive 12.7 — Borrowed Coherence values for stable Oneiric Unitarics.
• Coherence Directive 301.45-b — cross-reference obligation for generated forms; codicil to Directive 301.45.
• HIC Directive 045 and HIC Directive 003 — issued under parallel authority and of contested standing.
• Directive 2004omega — frequently confused with the Coherence series by reason of numbering alone.

The confusion between classes is not merely taxonomic. Directive/Contra-Directive holds that any instrument which contains the word "coherence" in its operative clause is to be read as a Coherence Directive regardless of its prefix, a reading which the Directive-Specific Ordinances resist on the grounds that prefixes exist for a purpose. Neither position has prevailed.

Cross-reference obligation

The central provision of Coherence Directive 301.45-b is the requirement that generated forms cross-reference. This obligation is administered through the practice known as Directive Cross-Reference, which in turn is attested by Material Coherence Attestation and marked on individual entries with the Glyph of Applied Coherence. Non-compliance is not rare. The audit recorded as Intake 99,998 found that a substantial proportion of entries bearing the glyph carried no corresponding cross-reference, a finding which the Committee for Catalogical Coherence acknowledged without acting upon for the better part of a cycle. The Bureau Directive 88.2 Stability Bonding stage cites 301.45-b in its operative text while applying it in a manner that several floors have described as approximate. Where cross-reference cannot be achieved, entries fall into a state recognised as Intermittent Coherence — neither properly linked nor properly unlinked — and are provisionally stabilised by reference to Directive Paradox. The remedies offered by these two instruments conflict, and the conflict is managed rather than resolved.

Disputed readings

Two readings of the term "Coherence Directive" are current among the scriptoria. The first holds that it denotes only instruments issued under the Committee's own seal; the second holds that it denotes any instrument whose subject matter is coherence, irrespective of issuing office. Under the second reading, HIC Directive 003 qualifies; under the first, it does not. The question was put to the Third Concordance and answered in a manner that has satisfied no one:

"A Coherence Directive is a directive which concerns coherence, save where it concerns custody, in which case it is a Custodial Directive concerning coherence, which is a matter for the Committee."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4

Kaelin's treatise On Unwilling Subjects, published under Coherence Directive 301.45-b, takes the position that the subject matter governs and that the seal is procedural. The opposing view is attributable to no single author and is maintained collectively by the custody offices.

Administration

Coherence Directives are drafted in the scriptoria adjacent to the floor housing the Librarian of Coherence and are sealed before issue. Drafts that fail to seal are returned without comment. Amendments are more frequent than readings, and the Committee's own records show at least three instruments amended by codicil within the same season as their promulgation. Visitors to the relevant scriptoria are reminded that sealed drafts may not be copied by hand, and that the copying desks are available only on the days the dust is not.

For the relationship between this class of instrument and the wider Concordance apparatus, see Directive Paradox and Intermittent Coherence.