April 16. The colophons of the four came by fax.
At twenty past nine I read the procedure for confirming whereabouts.
It is confirmed from the colophon entries of the publication, it says.
The place of publication and the publisher are to be checked, it says.
At twenty to ten I took the four out of the box.
I looked for the colophon page.
There is none.
On the inside cover there is the stamp of six characters. Under the last page there are the ten.
Everything between is text.
All four are like that.
At ten I queried the union catalogue.
I searched by imprint. Four come up.
The titles are the same as the four in the box.
There are four holding libraries. All different.
This room does not appear in that catalogue as a holder. The four in the box are registered material and are not entered as publications.
At twenty past ten I took out the copy request form.
It has a field for the receiving side, a field for the sending side and a field for the pages requested.
I wrote four. For the pages requested I wrote the colophon page.
In the sending field I wrote this room's name and this room's fax number. The reply comes to that number.
From twenty to eleven to ten past eleven I sent them by fax.
Twenty to eleven, ten to eleven, eleven, ten past eleven.
Four transmission slips came out.
At one the first page came.
The surveyor's volume.
The colophon is laid out in fields. The field names are printed.
In the author field there is the surveyor's name.
The compiler field is blank.
In the publisher field there are six characters.
The place-of-publication field is blank.
At twenty to two the second page came. The librarian's volume.
At ten past two the third came. The lighthouse keeper's volume.
Both have the same fields. The author is there. The compiler is blank. The publisher is six characters. The place of publication is blank.
At twenty to three the fourth page came. The telegraph operator's volume.
The same.
The compiler field is blank in all four.
At three I read the procedure for confirming whereabouts again.
The place of publication and the publisher are checked.
The publisher is six characters. There is no place of publication.
From the colophons, the whereabouts cannot be confirmed.
There is no field on the reply form for entering that.
I wrote it in the margin. It is seventy-seven.
At ten past three I looked at the compiler field again.
The name of the field is printed, and after it there is nothing.
The type is the same as the other fields' lettering. The field is as wide as the others.
I do not know whether it is blank because of the form. It may be that this press's colophon always had a compiler field and it was always empty.
I do not know whether it was left blank. It may be that each time one of the four was published, it was decided to put nothing in that field.
Looking at all four does not tell the two apart. If all four are blank, that is so whether it was the template or a decision.
At twenty to four I looked in the stacks for other books of the same period.
I opened three. All from different publishers.
None of the three has a compiler field in its colophon.
The only colophons with a compiler field are this press's four.
It made the field and left it blank four times.
This room's compiler field was made by the one before, last April. The log says that on the day it was made, the one before put their own name in it.
This press made the field and put nothing in.
In both places the field came first. Only putting something in and not putting it in differ.
At four I thought about how a fax does not send what is faint.
Something written lightly in pencil does not come through.
There is no field on the request form for asking whether that field is blank in the original.
I wrote it in the margin. It is seventy-eight.
At ten past four I opened the list.
In the compiler field of the set's row there are six characters.
The compiler fields of the four volumes are blank.
What this room bound shows this press as compiler, and what this press published has no compiler.
At twenty past four I opened the box.
Seven articles. Seven impressions. The four hundred and seventeenth day.
The sixth box reads eight thousand one hundred and fifty-two.
Yesterday the set's row was opened a hundred and eleven times. Seventy-eight by way of the imprint.
At half past four I opened the right-hand material.
Six hundred and eighty-nine pages. The page that grew is dated the fifteenth of May, ninety-nine.
The third line of page five hundred and thirty-nine is blank. The hundred and ninth day.
The fifth bundle, the original, is a hundred and seventy-seven pages. It has not grown for four hundred and eighty-seven days.
At ten to five I laid the four pages in order to file them.
Along the top of each page one line is printed. The line a fax prints.
The sending number and the time sent.
The first, second and third are the holding libraries' numbers.
I looked at the fourth.
The number is this room's number.
The time is twenty past ten.
I sent the fourth request at ten past eleven.