Unfinished Metacollection

Definition and custodianship

Unfinished Metacollection is the classificatory aggregate under which the Tower files every collection of collections that has not been completed. It is not a shelf. It is the standing entry under which shelves are, in principle, to be understood, and it is held jointly by the Spiral of Unfinished Symphonies, the Spire of Unfinished Symphonies, and The Chamber of Unfinished Symphonies — three bodies who agree on the custodianship in writing and on very little else.

The term first appears in Clause 14 of the Concordance of Unfinished Works, where it is used twice and defined neither time. The Unfinished Metacollection proper comprises collections of collections each of which omits its own defining metaphor; the omission is treated by the Clerks of the Unfinished Spiral as a feature of the aggregate rather than a defect in any member of it. Material is received for cross-reference from the Garden of Unfinished Symphonies by way of the Spiral of Unfinished Symphonies, and the whole is collated at the Reading Room of Unfinished Arguments, where the arguments concerning it are longer than its inventory.

The physical question

Whether the Metacollection occupies a shelf at all is the archive's oldest open dispute, and the one most often re-opened in the wrong season. The Third Concordance, Annex 7 endorses the reading of it as a standing notation rather than a physical assemblage, and this reading has the weight of age behind it. Against it, the Clerk of Unfinished Business has entered a standing objection, on the ground that a notation without a physical shelf cannot be resisted when a courier arrives asking where to put something.

"A notation cannot be shelved and cannot therefore be refused; I have refused it twice and been overruled by nothing at all."

— Clerk of Unfinished Business, marginal entry, undated but recorded before the fourth recension

The practical consequence was set out in the Memorandum on Standing Notations of 1 Fl. 1904: a collection entered under the Metacollection is recorded in the register, stamped, and not carried. The prohibition on carrying is printed on the docket in the same size as the title. Couriers who have attempted to carry a standing notation report the docket as unusually heavy.

Relations to subordinate holdings

The Metacollection intersects with several collections whose boundaries are only partly its own. The Catalogue of Unfinished Bridges joins it at tier four, an arrangement that has never been clear to anyone but has been observed without interruption since the tiering system was introduced. The Vault of Unfinished Metaphors supplies the defining metaphors that the member collections omit, and so stands to the Metacollection as a genus stands to a set of examples it declines to name. The Curatorium of Unfinished Likenesses deposits portraits of unfinished collections here; they are catalogued under the collections they resemble, which is why the Curatorium keeps its own index.

The Register of the Office of Unfinished Sentences — forty-one volumes — is collectively referred to in the Tower as the poor relation of The Unfinished Metacollection, a phrase that entered the record through a scribal note and has never been withdrawn. The Office has asked twice for the phrase to be struck. Both requests were referred to the Spiral, which is where the phrase originated, and which has not met since.

Dispute of the fourth recension

In the winter of Fl. 1877 the Clerks of the Unfinished Spiral and the Chamber of Unfinished Symphonies issued recensions of the Metacollection's entry that differed by a single word: the Clerks entered it as uncompleted, the Chamber as unfinished. Neither would withdraw; both married their recension to the docket, and for eleven years the reading rooms kept two copies of the same entry with different words in the same place. A reader consulting one copy could be shown the other and be told, correctly, that the wording had been settled.

The matter was resolved by the Concordance of Standing Entries, Annex 2, which declared the two words synonymous for the purposes of the Metacollection and permitted either, on condition that a body elected one and kept to it. The Spiral has kept the Chamber's word since. The Clerks have continued to write theirs in the margin, which Annex 2 does not forbid.

Later accretions

Unfinished Systems passed to the Chamber's supervision in Fl. 1911 and were entered under the Metacollection in the same year, without discussion. The Collected Prefaces to the Unfinished Catalogue were acquired by bequest and added at tier three; their prefaces are themselves unfinished, and the bequest was on condition that they not be finished, which the Tower has honoured. The Epistle of the Unfinished is held in the Vault of Unfinished Business but listed under the Metacollection for the sake of its correspondence, a double listing the Vault objects to and the Spiral permits.

The most recent amendment, recorded in the Register of Amended Entries at entry 44, adds nothing to the collection and removes nothing from it, and is accordingly considered the most successful amendment to date.

Consultation notes

The Metacollection may be consulted in the Reading Room of Unfinished Arguments during ordinary hours. Aggregate entries are produced on request; individual member collections are not, and requests for them are answered with the aggregate.

Visitors are reminded that the stairwell between Spiral 21 and Spiral 22 is one-way descending after the fourth bell, that the porters will not hold a standing notation overnight, and that no material may be removed from the Metacollection without first being entered under it. The Reading Room keeps a box of pencils by the door.