April 4. I began a piece of work with no circular before it.
At twenty past nine I set out what fourteen days of looking had found.
The list form has no box for writing that things are in one place. The storage location box sits on each material separately, and holding the same value does not group them.
Article twenty of the guidance gives the procedure for registering combined materials.
Two or more materials may be bound as one set and entered under one material number. The individual numbers remain as sub-numbers.
There is one condition. That a consistent relation exists between the materials, and that the relation be written in the relation box.
From ten to eleven I looked at what to write in the relation box.
I wrote three down and struck them one at a time.
I cannot write same imprint. The imprint box says unknown on all four. Unknown is not a relation.
I cannot write in the same box. The procedure carries an example saying that being on the same shelf does not constitute a relation. Storage is not a relation.
I cannot write the third. It is that copying any of the four out makes the numbers grow, and there is no box for that in this room. There was none for fourteen months and there is none today.
At eleven I took the four out and opened them at the last page.
All four have a line stamped under the last page. Not printed but stamped. A different stamp from the one inside the front cover, and ten characters.
'We are watching a little further.'
I saw it in January when I registered them. I wrote then that it is a phrase the imprint puts at the end. I wrote only that four using the same phrase means they came from the same place.
Today I am looking at whether it can go in the relation box.
It can. It is on the thing, it can be verified, and it is on all four.
At ten past twelve I wrote down why I am doing this.
There is one person who asked. He asked where else it may be seen, and I answered that it is held in this office. Three days since the answer went out and nothing has come back.
If the four stand in the list as four, a man who has seen one cannot see the other three. On the screen the three have no relation to that one.
Bound as one set, a man who opens one sees five.
Nobody told me to. The April plan says nothing about combining. Increasing the objects for reading means increasing the count, and combining reduces the count.
What I mean to do runs against head office's plan.
At half past twelve I took out the fifth bundle.
It has no cover. It is a paper bundle and the first page is the text.
The last page is the hundred and seventy-seventh. The sentence stops in the middle. It has not moved from that place for ninety-six days, and today is the hundred and tenth.
Under it there is no such line.
The four have it and the fifth does not.
From one to two I looked at what to do with the fifth.
Leave it out and the four are one set. The four already stand in the list as four. Binding them changes one material number.
To put it in there must be grounds. The same box is not grounds.
At two I held the fifth bundle's last page up to the window.
There is a pressed mark.
No ink. The characters have not taken. Only the outline remains.
I held the four bundles' stamp against it. The outline is the same size.
From half past two to three I looked at whether that is a stamping.
The procedure gives no definition of stamping. Whether ink is required, or whether the pressing is enough, is not written.
In, it is five. Out, it is four.
There is nothing to tell it by, so I tell it.
On the twenty-fourth of February the word choose came from a form. The form said choose and I chose.
Today it came from nowhere.
For fifteen months everything done in this room had a circular before it. Registration, inspection, transfer, reading, verification, all of them. There is nothing before what I mean to do today.
From three to four I wrote the application to combine.
There are eight boxes.
The set's title and material number. The list of sub-numbers. The relation box. The total extent. The storage location. The imprint.
The eighth is the compiler.
The title took half an hour.
The four titles are each the name of what that person did. Tides and soundings and messages and holdings. The fifth had no title, so I gave it one in January.
The set's title has to cover all five.
I looked again at what the five have in common. All of them counted, all of them wrote, all of them diverged.
I cannot use diverged in a title. That they diverged is not in this room's records.
I wrote a record of what was counted. It is true and it fits all five.
It fits and it says nothing, which is what all the records in the world are.
I struck it and wrote again. I wrote Pnakotic Press, five old titles.
I put the imprint's name in the title box. It is the name that cannot go in the imprint box.
The title box has no verification procedure. Any name goes in.
It goes in and it does not catch in the index. The imprint index reads the imprint box only. I wrote it and it does not catch.
I wrote in the relation box, items bearing an identical stamped phrase. It is true.
I counted the total extent. A hundred and thirty and a hundred and fifty-four and a hundred and ninety-eight and two hundred and six and a hundred and seventy-seven. Eight hundred and sixty-five.
I left the imprint box empty. Left empty it becomes unknown on the screen.
At ten past four I opened the right-hand material.
Three hundred and twelve pages. The date of the added page is 3 May 98.
My log is on its three hundred and twelfth page today.
At half past four I opened the box.
Seven. Six impressions. The fortieth day.
At five I looked at the sixth box.
Four hundred and twenty-nine.
At ten past five I went to submit the application.
The compiler box is empty.
It is a required box. Left empty it is not accepted.
The imprint box was accepted empty. It went up empty on the fifteenth of February and has stood unknown for fifty days.
The compiler box, left empty, does not catch.
A box that does not catch when empty and a box that catches when empty are in the same form together.
At twenty past five I looked up the procedure for the compiler box.
It says to write the person who bound it as one set.
There is one person who bound this set.
Tomorrow I will write in that box.