Concordance 88 Annex 3

Scope

Concordance 88, Annex 3 is a holding of the Third Concordance recension governing the transit of shelved items between floors whose numbers are not adjacent in any reconstructions yet attempted. It is one of nine surviving annexes to the Eighty-Eighth Concordance, and the only one that has never been amended, owing to a filing error that placed it under the wrong Concordance for four centuries. Annex 3 is cited most often not for its own provisions but for its definitions, which other documents import wholesale. Its opening article defines "adjacent" for archival purposes as "contiguous by custody, not by stair," a formulation that has settled at least eleven disputes between the Office of Stairwell Maintenance and the scriptorium of Sixteenth Concordance Annex Delta.

Text and recensions

The Annex survives in three recensions. The First Recension, held at the scriptorium on Floor 88 itself, is the shortest at eleven clauses and contains no schedule. The Second Recension, the standard citation, adds the Schedule of Permitted Crossings appended under Seventh Concordance, Annex Q, which adopted the schedule of Annex Delta and its supersessions wholesale. The Third Recension exists only as a marginal note in a single copy and is considered defective. Scholars disagree on which recension governs. The Office of Concordance Custody holds that the Second governs by virtue of its inclusion in the standard concordance of concordances; a minority position, associated with the clerk Hesiod Vane, holds that the First governs because the Second was never sealed. The dispute is recorded but not settled, and Concordance 712, Annex D has been invoked by both sides.

The Schedule of Permitted Crossings

The Schedule occupies fourteen folios and lists, for each pair of non-adjacent floors, whether an item may be carried between them without a written pass. Three outcomes are recorded: Permitted, Permitted on Even Days, and Not Permitted. The middle category was introduced by Seventh Concordance, Annex 4 and has never been satisfactorily explained. The Schedule's principal defect is that it presumes a stable floor numbering. Since Annex D established provisional holding protocol for Annex 19b, the numbering of the floors between the 400s and the 900s has shifted twice, rendering approximately one entry in six of the Schedule's 4,112 lines inapplicable to any floor that currently exists. These lines are marked with a small cross and are, formally, the reason the Annex has needed amendment eleven times despite never having been amended.

Application

In practice, Annex 3 governs the daily business of moving a book from a floor where it is catalogued to a floor where a reader can reach it. A reader requesting a volume held on a floor two numbers away must present a pass issued under Annex 3, Clause 4, which the nearest Librarian countersigns. The pass is valid for one transit and expires at the stairhead. Failure modes are well documented. In the winter of the Long Inventory, a reader on Floor 1,204 was refused a pass to Floor 1,207 because the stairwell between them was recorded as serving only the intermediate floor, and the intermediate floor's Librarian had been posted elsewhere. The reader waited eleven days. The incident is cited in Twenty-Second Concordance, Annex G as precedent for the delegation of countersigning authority to junior custodians, a delegation that has since been reversed twice.

Related holdings

Annex 3 cross-references Third Concordance, Annex VII on the definition of a floor, Sixth Concordance, Annex Theta on the marking of stairheads, and Concordance 417 Annex C, from which the Annex C Document derives its authority and to which Annex 3 defers in all matters of seal. It is not to be confused with Third Concordance, Annex 7, which governs the Annex of Withheld Conclusions and shares only its numbering convention. Visitors to Floor 88 should note that the annex reading room is unheated between the first and last snowfall, and that no hot liquid may be carried past the second landing.