Proposed Provisional Classification

Proposed Provisional Classification is a formal submission for the recognition of a state of provisionality, distinct from the administrative implementation of Provisional Classification itself. It is the documented hypothesis that a subject warrants such temporary ontological status, filed prior to any official determination. The process is governed by Article 14 of the Department of Provisional Holdings' charter and is a prerequisite for the opening of a Provisional Shelving case file.

Formal Requirements

A Proposal of Provisional Classification (Form PPC-7) must be submitted to the Office of the Provisional Census and must contain, at minimum:

• The precise designation of the subject under review.
• A cataloguing location, even if that location is described as "unfixed," "shifting," or "theoretical."
• A preliminary temporary accession number.
• A statement of provisional attributes, detailing why the subject cannot be permanently classified under current Concordance 4 schemata.
• A proposed duration for the provisional period, which, per convention, cannot exceed ninety-nine Tower years without renewal.
• Citations to at least two potentially contradictory Concordances that the subject’s existence may reconcile or further complicate.

Incomplete submissions are returned via pneumatic tube to Floor 314 (The Atrium of Submitted Forms), where they are held in a state of "procedural limbo" for no less than forty days.

Review and Assessment

Upon receipt, the proposal enters the assessment queue of the Office of Preliminary Verifications. The primary assessment criterion is not the truth of the proposal, but its structural viability as a provisional holding. Assessors evaluate whether the proposed classification would create a logically consistent, albeit temporary, pocket within the Tower's ontology. A proposal to classify "the sound of a page being turned in an empty reading room" was rejected not because the sound doesn't exist, but because its provisional framework was deemed "insufficiently porous to allow for subsequent re-cataloguing."

Successful proposals are granted a "Provisional Permit" and forwarded for Provisional Shelving logistics. Unsuccessful proposals are archived in the Annex of Superseded Hypotheses, where they may be cited in future, more successful proposals.

The Selvage Corollary and Procedural Loops

A significant area of procedural debate concerns proposals that are themselves about the nature of provisionality. The Selvage Corollary, while originally pertaining to botanical cataloguing, has been invoked to argue that proposals concerning meta-provisional states (e.g., "The Temporary Status of 'Temporary'") must be assessed in zones where two classification systems overlap, such as the border between the Department of Provisional Holdings and the Physical Principles Directorate. This can create recursive assessment loops.

The most famous instance, Proposal PPC-44109-Δ ("On the Provisional Classification of Proposals for Provisional Classification"), spent 212 years shuttling between departments. It was finally resolved not by ratification, but by being quietly re-catalogued as a case study appended to Provisional Annex 8812, under the clause covering "self-referential cataloguing anomalies that resolve through administrative inertia."

Distinction from Related Processes

It is critical to distinguish a Proposed Provisional Classification from several adjacent administrative acts:

Provisional (Class V)

An implemented classification for subjects that alter their own status. A Proposal of Provisional Classification may suggest a subject be placed in Class V, but it is not the classification itself.

Proposal of Resolution

A document seeking to end a provisional status, often filed concurrently with or in opposition to a new Proposal of Provisional Classification for the same subject.

Provisional Attribution

The act of assigning origin or authorship to a provisionally held item. This occurs after a Proposal of Provisional Classification has been accepted.

Controversies and Amendments

The doctrine of "Provisional by Proposal," argued for in the dissenting opinions of Supplemental Register Vol. XV, holds that the very act of submitting a formally correct proposal imbues the subject with a low-grade, anticipatory form of provisionality until the assessment is complete. This view is rejected by the mainstream interpretation of Concordance 4, Article III, which states that provisionality begins only upon "the stamp of the Librarian-Provisional's sanction."

This conflict led to the Aperture Amendment of 1922, which created a new form, PPC-7b, for proposals concerning subjects theorized to exist entirely within the "conceptual space between proposal and ratification." These are assessed under a separate, accelerated protocol, though no such proposal has ever been fully ratified, as their subjects are deemed to evaporate upon the granting of official provisional status.