Master Log

Definition and status

Master Log is the general designation applied by the Scriptorium to any of the seven registers held to be primary within the Tower's archival hierarchy. A Master Log is distinguished from an ordinary log by two conditions: it receives entries in perpetuity, and no subordinate document may amend it without first appearing in Log Certification. The designation is not itself a single holding but a class, and the Scriptorium has never published a complete list of which registers qualify — a gap that has produced at least three competing enumerations, none ratified. The phrase is most often used without qualification to refer to the register of standing entries maintained on Floor 412, informally called the Master Log and formally called nothing in particular. This usage is discouraged by Third Concordance, Annex 4:

"A register may be called Master in address and in nothing else. The word attaches to the copy certified, not to the paper it sits on."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, cl. 3

Standing entries

A Master Log holds standing entries — facts whose truth is not contingent on the date of consultation. The distinction between a standing entry and a dated entry is the subject of the oldest unresolved matter before the Central Index. Standing entries are written in a single ink, identified in the Master Ledger of Inks as Register Black II, and are not overwritten. Where a standing entry is superseded, the superseding text is written beneath it and both remain legible; readers are expected to know which is current by counting the seals. The register on Floor 412 contained, as of the survey recorded in Surveyor's Log 74-A, some 4,100 standing entries and 11,000 dated entries, with the older dated entries having been reclassified as standing during the Reclassification of Winter 19 of the Ninth Concordance year. The Reclassification is not universally accepted. The Master Register of Volition records a standing objection, filed by the Scriptorium's Third Hand, that entries may not be promoted to standing by act of the Scriptorium alone, and that the objection remains open.

Relation to the amendment registers

A Master Log is not itself amended; it is amended through, and only through, Master Log of Amendments. The distinction between that register and Master Amendment Log is procedural rather than substantive: the former receives the amended text, while the latter records the process by which the amendment was ratified, including its duration. Amendments to Master Folio follow the same path, and the Master Folio has been amended 412 times under it. Confusion between the two registers is common and consequential. In one recorded instance, a clerk cited the Master Amendment Log as authority for a standing entry on the grounds that the Log recorded a ratification of eleven days, when the eleven days in question pertained to a matter that had been ratified and subsequently withdrawn. The error was caught at Log Certification and the entry was struck, though the struck text was not removed and continues to be legible.

Competing claims to primacy

Three registers have at various times been advanced as the single Master Log rather than one of seven. The claim of Floor 412 rests on continuity of custody. The claim of the Spiral Concordance's annex rests on age, the annex having been inscribed before the current numbering of floors. The claim of Log 44delta 742 881 rests on a clause in an unrepealed passage of the Second Concordance that no one has been able to locate in situ. The Scriptorium's position, stated in its annual notice and repeated verbatim for longer than any clerk now serving can remember, is that no register holds primacy and that the designation is applied to the copy certified rather than to the register itself. This position is compatible with Third Concordance but not with the unrepealed passage, and the unrepealed passage is compatible with neither the annex's age-claim nor the practice of Floor 412. The dispute is therefore considered permanently settled and permanently open, which the Scriptorium regards as the ordinary condition of such matters.

Custody and visiting

Custody of a Master Log is held by the Scriptorium's Second Hand, who may not also hold custody of the corresponding amendment register. Consultation requires a sealed slip issued at Log Certification, valid for one visit and not transferable. Visitors are admitted in parties of no more than four; the register may be read but not copied in whole, and no writing implement other than the Scriptorium's own may be carried past the threshold. Wet umbrellas are left on the rack outside.