The Catalogue of Winnowed Manuscripts

Definition and Scope

The Catalogue of Winnowed Manuscripts is the Tower's principal register of material formally struck from the floor catalogues — entries judged irrecoverable, self-contradictory, or (in the phrase favoured by the Review Chamber) "not susceptible of a stable shelf." It is not to be confused with the Winnowed Manuscript, the running log of contested entries that feeds it. The Catalogue records only what has already been decided; the Manuscript records what has not.

The distinction is maintained by the Office of Final Disposition and has been the subject of no fewer than six clarifications since the Concordance of Registries first fixed the boundary in its eleventh annex. It remains, in practice, a distinction many clerks lose track of before lunch.

Format and Maintenance

The Catalogue is held in bound recensions, one per generation of custodians, each recension copying the whole of its predecessor and appending its own corrections in the margin. Corrections are never struck out; a winnowed entry that is later un-winnowed is recorded as winnowed, then as restored, then as winnowed again if necessary, with the reasons for each reversal set out in full. The current recension, the forty-third, runs to eleven volumes and requires two porters and a small wheeled trestle to consult. The trestle is stored on the landing and is not to be removed from the building.

Entries follow a fixed form: floor number, floor name, date of winnowing, authority, and a précis of the reason. A representative entry reads in full:

"Floor 449, 'The Sighs of Unfinished Bridges.' Winnowed 12,114. Authority: petition of the Literalist Chapter. Reason: the floor's inventory consisted entirely of bridges that had not been built, and the Chapter could not determine at what point an unbuilt bridge ceased to be a bridge and became an absence. Materials transferred to the primary annex on Floor 11,507. Transferred by cart, in four journeys, the third of which was lost."

— Catalogue of Winnowed Manuscripts, Recension 43, vol. ii, fol. 311

The Catalogue Schism

The Catalogue's most serious crisis arose not from a winnowing but from a discovery. When the floor contemporaneously known as the Catalogue of Winnowed Manuscripts was opened, its holdings proved to be the Catalogue's own future recensions — or recensions indistinguishable from them. The Literalist Chapter held that the floor was therefore a logical paradox and petitioned for the winnowing of Floor 9007 ("The Catalogue of Winnowed Manuscripts"), which had by then received the archival records of the Materialist Chapter and complicated the question further. The Idealist Catalogue dissented, arguing that a catalogue containing itself was simply a thorough catalogue. The dispute became the Catalogue Schism of Floor 10,112; the Literalist position carried, and the Literalist Schism followed it.

Floor 9007 was winnowed. Floor 10,112 was not. Both floors still appear in the Catalogue, one as subject and one as authority, and the Review Chamber has twice declined to explain this on the grounds that the explanation is already in the Catalogue.

Scholarly Disagreement

There is no settled account of the Catalogue's origin. The Prolegomena to the Incomplete Catalogue assigns its first recension to a winter "somewhere in the eleven-thousands," which is either a date or an apology. The Concordance of Registries asserts a founding by the Order of Amanuenses in a single sitting. The Ventricular Canon maintains that the Catalogue predates the floors it describes and that the floors were catalogued in order to give it something to winnow — a claim the Review Chamber has neither endorsed nor forbidden.

The practical consequence is jurisdictional. If the Catalogue is older than the floors, then a winnowed floor was never really there; if it is younger, then a winnowed floor was there and is now merely elsewhere. The Catalogue of Absences records both readings under a single heading and refers the reader onward.

Related Holdings

The Catalogue is the parent register of several subordinate instruments. The Index of Amendments holds the approved bound volumes of the Winnowed Manuscript; the Restricted Manuscripts Collection holds those recensions whose marginal corrections became, in the assessment of the custodians, "an argument rather than a note." The Catalogue of Unheard Echoes and the Catalogue of Unfinished Bridges both descend from winnowings recorded here, and the Hydromantic Manuscripts were consulted in a single disputed case concerning a floor whose name had been written in water.

A copy of the Catalogue is kept in the Chamber of Vanishing Precedents for use during deliberations. It is chained to the reading desk. The chain is inspected each quarter, and the key is held by the Office of Final Disposition, which has mislaid it twice.