Notification of Stewardship

Definition and standing

A Notification of Stewardship is the instrument by which a stewardship appointment is initiated, formalized, and thereafter treated as having always been in force. It is issued by the Librarians and filed with the Bureau of Registry, and its receipt — rather than its dispatch — marks the moment at which a steward assumes responsibility for the subject stewarded. The Tower holds no record of a Notification of Stewardship having been withdrawn, though three are understood to be mislaid.

The instrument exists in several concurrent forms, of which the most frequently encountered is Form Δ-7, reserved for appointments to the office of Annex Steward. Notifications governing luminous materials were, prior to the Decree of Luminous Stewardship, issued under the now-retired Doctrine of Invisible Stewardship, under which a Notification was valid precisely insofar as no party could confirm it had been received.

Recitals and structure

A Notification comprises four recitals and one dispositive clause. The recitals name the appointing authority, the subject of stewardship, the floor on which the subject is presently situated, and the instrument under which stewardship is claimed. The dispositive clause appoints. It does not describe the duties of the appointee; these are held elsewhere, principally under Custodial Stewardship where the subject is held, and under Stairwell Stewardship where the subject is a stairwell.

Each Notification carries a Notification Matrix as an embedded component, per the standing provisions governing Inter-Departmental Notification instruments. The Matrix records the routing of the Notification through the several offices that must acknowledge it before filing. It is presently sealed.

Where a Notification concerns a subject already stewarded, it is styled a Notification of Continued Stewardship and is distinguished only by a marginal annotation in the scribe's hand. Two such annotations on file are in a hand no clerk in the Bureau of Registry claims.

Filing and custody

Filing occurs with the Bureau of Registry, which stamps, folds, and places the Notification in a drawer designated for the subject. Where the subject has no designated drawer, a drawer is created and numbered retrospectively, producing the well-known effect that Notifications of Stewardship frequently appear to predate the stewardships they establish. The longest verified instance of this is an interval of eleven years, concerning a bound volume on a floor whose number is disputed.

Custody of the physical Notification thereafter passes to the Office of Archival Stewardship, which issues Custodial Mandates governing its handling. Custodial Mandate 117, still in force, sets the humidity and prohibits the use of wet hands.

Amendment and contest

A Notification may be amended by a further Notification. The further Notification is itself subject to amendment, and the Tower recognizes no terminus to this process. Amendments are not appended to the original; they are filed against the subject, in a second drawer, and any clerk wishing to establish the current state of an appointment must read both drawers and reconcile them by hand.

Contests to a Notification are heard, in theory, by the Librarians' Adjudicatory Panel. In practice the Panel's docket is eternal, and a contest filed today is understood to be heard at a date expressed only as "after the current backlog." Most contests are therefore resolved informally, by one party producing a Notification of earlier date and the other declining to continue.

"A Notification of Stewardship is not evidence that stewardship has occurred. It is stewardship, occurring, in the moment of its filing."

— Eleventh Concordance, Annex 4

Standing disagreement

The Tower holds two incompatible accounts of when a Notification takes effect. The earlier position, preserved in the Seventh Concordance, holds that effect attaches upon issuance by the Librarians. The later position, codified in the Eleventh Concordance and cited more often in practice, holds that effect attaches upon filing with the Bureau of Registry. Between issuance and filing there is an interval, variously measured at between four and forty days, during which an appointee is stewarding a subject that does not yet know it is stewarded.

A minority position, associated with a clerk of the Bureau of Registry named Halvern, holds that effect attaches when the Notification is read aloud to the subject. Halvern's reading copy survives; its margins record, across some thirty appointments, the subjects that answered.

Related instruments

Notifications should not be confused with Notification of Relevant Authority, which notifies rather than appoints, nor with Notice of Textual Irregularity, which notifies that a Notification may not say what it appears to say. Where a Notification is issued in error, the correction proceeds by Discrepancy Form 37-A; where it is issued in duplicate, no correction is possible and both copies stand.

Appointments arising during Notification Amp Sequestration Phase Alpha are recorded on Form N-12 and filed under seal pending review. A small number of stewards currently serving hold office solely by virtue of such a sealed Notification and are aware of this.