Great Re-cataloguing

The Great Re-cataloguing was a 53-year administrative operation (Tower Year 5392–5445) undertaken by the Curatorial Board to reconcile the classification of all holdings catalogued under the Imperial Taxonomy with the newly ratified principles of the Grand Taxonomy. The project, formally initiated by Ordinance 7701, remains the single largest systematic re-evaluation of archival holdings in recorded Tower history, involving an estimated 42 million individual items across 1,742 floors.

Origins and Authorization

The immediate impetus for the Re-cataloguing was the formal adoption of the Grand Taxonomy by the Silent College in Year 5391. This created a fundamental incompatibility with the long-standing Imperial Taxonomy, which had been the standard since the Aris period. Ordinance 7701, "Concerning the Harmonization of Archival Systems," provided the legal framework, while operational funding was drawn from the fines levied during the Great Stairwell Debacle of 3142, which had been held in a contingency fund for precisely such a systemic overhaul.

Jurisdictional disputes arose immediately. The Department of Structural Verifications argued that re-cataloguing implied a verification of each item's physical state, a task falling under their purview. The Curatorial Board successfully countered that the operation was purely notational, citing Seventh Concordance, Clause 19, which distinguishes "taxonomic essence" from "material instance." This precedent was upheld, granting the Board sole operational authority.

Methodology and Phases

The operation was conducted in three distinct phases:

1. The Vertical Sweep (Y5392–5410): Teams of Librarians worked floor-by-floor, beginning at the then-highest reliably mapped floor (14,901) and descending. Each holding was assessed against a 700-page Reconciliation Manual. Discrepancies were flagged with crimson tape, a practice that led to the temporary designation "Crimson Floors" for those under active review.
2. The Horizontal Integration (Y5411–5430): Following the Sweep, cross-referential indices were rebuilt to reflect the new classifications. This phase required the temporary suspension of several Satellite Indexes, leading to widespread, though officially undocumented, research delays.
3. The Concordance Update (Y5431–5445): The final and most contentious phase involved amending all existing Concordances, Ordinances, and subsidiary documents to reference the new taxonomy. Over 12,000 individual clauses were modified, resulting in numerous latent contradictions, most famously between the updated Eleventh Concordance and the un-amended Annexes of the Seventh Concordance.

Notable Challenges and Incidents

The project was not without significant complications. The most famous is the Case of the Perpetually Absent Goat on Floor 909, where the holding's classification hinged on the observational state of a beast that, by its catalogued definition, could never be present. The 17-year deadlock was only broken by invoking the precedent of Algernon's Theorem on Conceptual Plenitude, a cornerstone of Speculative Cataloguing.

Furthermore, the Great Dampness of Year 588 had permanently altered the material state of many parchments in the lower Aperture Beta sectors, rendering their original Imperial classifications partially illegible. The Re-cataloguing teams were forced to rely on secondary sources, introducing a margin of error still debated by purists.

A minor but persistent issue was the systemic reclassification of "Implied Avians" under the Grand Taxonomy, which inadvertently invalidated several key citations within the Great Mending of Floor 90 project records, causing a two-year delay in that floor's own archival updates.

Legacy and Scholarly Dispute

The Great Re-cataloguing is considered administratively complete. However, its scholarly legacy is fractious. The Traditionalist faction, echoing arguments made by figures like Dean Alastor V, maintains that the Imperial Taxonomy captured an essential "pre-lapsarian" order, and that the Re-cataloguing introduced an artificial, bureaucratic layer that obscures true ontological relationships. They often cite the Miletus Fragment as evidence of an older, uncorrupted system.

Progressive scholars counter that the Grand Taxonomy, and by extension the Re-cataloguing, finally provided a coherent framework for subjects that do not exist, moving beyond the "naive realism" of the Imperial system. They point to the seamless integration of post-Re-cataloguing projects, such as the maintenance of the Great Vertical Spiral, as proof of its functional superiority.

The official stance of the Curatorial Board is that the Re-cataloguing achieved its primary objective: the creation of a unified, consistent archival language. All newly accessioned holdings now receive a Archival Designation compliant with the Grand Taxonomy. Nevertheless, Security Protocol Sigma still requires all Level-3 Descent manifests to be filed in both taxonomic formats, a lingering monument to the transition.