Floor 114-Δ

Designation

Floor 114-Δ is a conditional floor of the Tower, catalogued as an annex to Floor 113 and administratively grouped with the calibration sequence that includes Floor 140. Its designation follows the delta-suffix convention established by the Twenty-Second Concordance, Annex 7, which reserves Greek-lettered suffixes for floors whose occupancy is contingent rather than continuous. The floor is reachable by the standard stair from Floor 113 but not, according to the survey of 881–890, from the corresponding landing above.

Floor 114-Δ contains an estimated 4,100 square metres of shelving, of which no more than a third is accessible at any one time. The remainder is described in the maintenance rolls as "under rotation."

Physical description

The floor is entered through a door marked in the Tower's older stencil, since repainted twice, first under Floor 101 and later under Floor 102. The shelving within is arranged in concentric bays, an unusual configuration which the Office of Bottom Surveys has attributed to the floor's original construction as a calibration annex to Floor 140. The bays are numbered from the centre outward using a system in which the numbers decrease as the reader approaches the outer wall; this has produced persistent wayfinding errors, catalogued annually since the survey of 707.

The floor holds volumes relating to conditional statutes — that is, ordinances that take effect only when a particular prior ordinance has failed to take effect. This is a narrow and, to outside observers, uninviting classification, but the collection is nonetheless among the more heavily consulted on the mid-lower sequence. Patrons are reminded that the reading desks nearest the outer wall are reserved for staff of the Scriptorium of Interpolations and may not be used by visitors, even when the Scriptorium is not in attendance.

History

The floor appears in the Tower's registers for the first time in the recension of the Fourth Concordance, where it is listed without a name and with the note "to be determined." The name Delta was applied by the Clerk of Suffixes in the following century as a placeholder pending a formal naming petition. The petition has been submitted eleven times and rejected eleven times, most recently on the grounds that the floor's conditional status does not lend itself to a fixed appellation.

During the winter of the disputed index — the winter in which Floor 288 lost nearly a season's worth of shelf markings to damp — Floor 114-Δ was used as overflow storage for material displaced from the calibration floors above. The displacement was intended to last six weeks. It lasted four years, and the volumes brought down during that period have never been fully reabsorbed; several bays in the outer ring still hold material catalogued to other floors, an anomaly the Office of Concordance Disputes has been unable to resolve without amending the original relocation order, which three successive clerks have declined to do.

Administration

Custody of Floor 114-Δ is shared, unusually, between the Office of Bottom Surveys and the Scriptorium of Interpolations. The arrangement dates to an amendment of the Ninth Concordance and has been the subject of two disputes, both settled in favour of the Scriptorium and both reopened within a decade. The current understanding, recorded in Annex 3 of the Tenth Concordance, is that the Surveys office holds responsibility for the bays and the Scriptorium for the material housed therein.

The practical effect of this division is that a damaged shelf is repaired promptly and a damaged volume is discussed at length.

Contested classification

Whether Floor 114-Δ constitutes a single floor or an annex attached to Floor 113 remains disputed. The Twenty-Second Concordance treats it as a separate entity with its own number, while the survey compiled after the winter of the disputed index treats it as a sub-section of 113, on the grounds that its numbering does not appear in the original sequence of the mid-lower stack. A third position, advanced by the clerk Aduddell in his marginal notes on Floor 188, holds that the floor is properly an extension of the calibration sequence running through Floor 140 and should be read as 140-Δ.

Aduddell's reading has never been formally adopted, but it is cited more frequently than either Concordance position, largely because it resolves the wayfinding problem: under his scheme, the outer bays number inward.

Access

Access is unrestricted during the standard hours of the mid-lower stack, except on days when the Scriptorium holds its reading, which is not announced in advance. The stair from Floor 113 is the only reliable approach; the landing above leads, according to three successive surveys, to a door that opens onto Floor 147 and, according to two others, to nothing in particular.