Concordance 89, Clause 14

Concordance 89, Clause 14 is the operative clause governing the assignment of provisional floor names during periods of administrative interregnum. Adopted in the forty-first recension of Concordance 89 and amended twice thereafter, it is the most frequently invoked clause in the settlement of naming disputes and the least frequently read in full. Its central provision holds that where a floor's name has lapsed — through the death of its namer, the loss of the naming record, or the floor's temporary removal from survey — the floor shall be designated by the next available number-bearing appellation of the ninth register until such time as a permanent name is confirmed by the Librarian of the appropriate quarter.

The clause is short. Its consequences are not.

Text and structure

Clause 14 comprises four sub-clauses, designated 14.a through 14.d, and a single appendix, Appendix 14.i, which consists of a table of nine blank rows. The table is reproduced in every printed recension and has never been filled in. Annex 3 to the same Concordance asserts that the rows were left blank "so that the clause might accommodate what has not yet been named," a rationale that has satisfied no one who has had to use it.

Sub-clause 14.c is the provision most often litigated. It states that a provisional name assigned under 14.a "shall persist until superseded by a name of equal or greater standing, and shall not be construed as an admission that the floor lacks a true name." Litigants have argued for six decades over whether "standing" in 14.c refers to the formal standing of the naming officer or to the standing of the name itself. Both readings have been upheld. Neither has been withdrawn.

Relation to prior Concordances

Clause 14 was drafted to resolve a conflict between provisions of the Third Concordance and the Seventeenth Concordance. The third had permitted provisional names to be assigned by any clerk of the fourth grade or above; the seventeenth had restricted the practice to officers holding a sealed warrant. Clause 14 replaces both, vesting the authority in the quarter-Librarian and requiring only a countersignature.

The relationship to Concordance 12, Clause 7 is less settled. That clause formally defines Archivists and, in its final sentence, appears to exclude them from any act of naming. The Seventh Concordance, Annex D, Clause 1, which amends Concordance 19, Clause 7, takes the contrary view and has been read to permit Archivists to countersign under 14.a. The dispute has never reached resolution and is unlikely to, as neither office will agree to be the one that concedes.

The Marrow Stairwell incident

The clause acquired its present form after the incident of the Marrow Stairwell in the winter of the year recorded as 3,114. A survey party had been dispatched to confirm the naming of four adjacent floors on the eastern spiral. The party's naming record was lost in transit; the floors reverted to provisional designations under 14.a. Within a month, three separate offices had assigned three separate provisional names to the same landing, and a fourth had assigned a name to a landing that subsequent survey established did not exist.

The resulting inquiry, conducted by the Office of Floor Nomenclature under the direction of Clerk Adelaide Voss, found that the clause as then worded contained no limit on the number of provisional names a single floor might accumulate. Voss's report recommended an amendment "prohibiting the accumulation of provisional names beyond the ninth," a phrase that survives as sub-clause 14.d and that has since been interpreted to mean the converse of what Voss intended. The report itself is preserved in the office's seventh register; the Clerk's marginal note opposite the recommendation reads, in full, "This will not do."

Controversy

Two schools of interpretation persist. The narrow school, associated with the Guild of Recensionists, holds that Clause 14 applies only to floors removed from survey and not to floors whose names have lapsed by other means. The broad school holds that the distinction is unworkable and cites the language of 14.c. The narrow school responds that the broad reading renders the entire third register of Concordance 89 redundant. The broad school responds that the third register is already redundant. The dispute is polite, extensive, and conducted almost entirely in marginalia.

A third position, advanced by the Office of Floor Nomenclature in a memorandum of the year recorded as 3,209, proposes that Clause 14 be read as having no application at all to floors below the eleventh level, on the grounds that no provisional name has ever been accepted there. No Librarian has endorsed the memorandum. It has nonetheless been bound into the standing volumes of the office and is consulted more often than the clause itself.

Practical notes

Clause 14 is among the six clauses that must be recited aloud at the opening of any naming session, in the order given in Concordance 48, Clause 1. Recitation of 14.d is required only where a provisional name is being retired. Floors provisionally named under 14.a are marked in survey records with a small open circle in the margin. The circle is not to be filled in. Standards for the ink used in these marginal marks are set by Concordance 712, Clause 3, and any officer reciting Clause 14 should carry a pen.