Registry Form 17-σ

Registry Form 17-σ is the standardized instrument of the Bureau of Registry by which newly catalogued objects, substances, and conditions are formally entered into the Tower's holdings. Its full title, as printed on the upper left of the first folio, is Notice of Accessions; the designation 17-σ is the form's registry number and is the name by which it is cited in nearly all procedural writing. The Notice of Accessions is filed whenever a floor reports the acquisition of an item not already on its shelf-list, and a copy is retained by the reporting floor, a copy by the Bureau, and a third copy sealed into the accession ledger of the Standing Column of Accessions on Floor 4,411.

The form consists of four panels: the claimant's declaration, the physical description (mass, dimensions, and the number of surfaces, counted by the method set out in Concordance 12, Annex 2), the provenance panel, and the certification panel, which is left blank until the Bureau's logging clerks have checked the entry against the Silent Registry. A completed Form 17-σ is the ordinary precondition for any later request to observe the item directly under a Notice of Intent for Direct Observation.

History and adoption

Form 17-σ replaced the earlier Notice of Accessions sheets, which were plain and unnumbered and consequently were filed in whatever order the porter carrying them happened to reach the Bureau. The disorder was tolerated for eleven recensions of the Bureau until the winter of the year recorded as 3,208, when the entire accession record of the East Stair Annex was found to have been interfiled with a shipment of laundry inventories. The Ninth Concordance, Article 40, accordingly established a single numbered instrument for accessions, and the sigmate suffix was appended to distinguish it from the earlier Form 17, which concerned staircase repairs and remains in use.

The change was not universally welcomed. The Keeper of the East Stair Annex, Ovin Marrach, objected in writing that a form requiring the counting of surfaces could not be completed by porters carrying crates, since the crates had surfaces of their own. His objection is preserved as Appendix C to the Bureau's ruling of the following year and is still cited by clerks who wish to explain a delay. The Bureau's answer — that the porter should count the surfaces of the object and not of the crate — is generally regarded as having settled the matter without addressing it.

Filing and common defects

A Form 17-σ must be submitted to the Registry in triplicate, together with a completed Bureau of Registry Docket Form Ir 9 where the accession is intended for the Botanical Registry, and accompanied by Form P 112 7 where the item was recovered rather than acquired. Where the provenance panel cannot be completed — a frequent occurrence, since many objects arrive on a floor without any record of how — the claimant files a Registry Form 44-ψ, the Notice of Incongruent Fact, and the Bureau will thereupon generate a fresh docket and require a Registry Form 88-G before the accession may proceed.

The most common defect in submitted forms is the omission of the surface count, which the Bureau treats as a material omission rather than a clerical one. In the case of the Nine-Sided Basin of Floor 2,206, the claimant recorded "several" in the surface field; the Bureau returned the form four times, and the basin was not formally accessioned until the fourth return, when the claimant wrote "nine" and appended a note that the ninth surface was on the inside. The note was accepted. A marginal instruction on the reverse of the current printing advises claimants to count the inside.

Scholarly dispute

Two readings of the form's scope persist. The prevailing view, held by the Bureau of Registry and set out in its commentary on the Ninth Concordance, is that Form 17-σ governs only objects that can be pointed to, and that conditions, atmospheres, and recurring sounds are accessioned under Form N-12 instead. The minority view, advanced by the Society of Shelf Historians and never formally answered, is that the form's own wording — "any thing newly held" — plainly includes conditions, and that the Bureau's practice of redirecting them to Form N-12 is an administrative convenience dressed as a reading.

"The word is thing, and the Tower has never defined it, and the Bureau has never asked it to."

— Society of Shelf Historians, Memorial to the Bureau, clause 6

The dispute has practical consequences. A fog that settled permanently on Floor 881 in the year 3,214 has never been accessioned, because the floor's clerk filed Form 17-σ, the Bureau redirected it to Form N-12, and the clerk — who had counted the fog's surfaces as zero and did not wish to repeat the exercise — declined to refile. The fog remains uncatalogued and is listed in the Marginalia Registry under "pending, indefinitely."

Physical specification and custody

Form 17-σ is printed on the Bureau's standard folio stock, ruled in eleven lines per panel, and is issued in pads of fifty from the Scriptorium of the Lower Landings. The pads are numbered and a torn pad must be returned whole, with the stub, to the issuing desk. Clerks are reminded that the σ is written in the left margin and not in the title field, since the title field is reserved for the Notice of Accessions as printed, and a form with the title field altered is treated as a Notice of Contested Interpretation and routed accordingly.

Completed forms are bound into the accession ledgers in the order of their certification, not the order of their receipt, which is why the ledgers appear disordered to anyone reading them without the Bureau's index. The index is kept on Floor 4,411 and may be consulted by appointment. Visitors are asked not to lean on the ledgers.