The Dark Directory · Request 09
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Request 11-0530 · class III · returned complete
REQUEST SLIP
Form R/2
Reading Room counter
Received: tick 97, click 22, galaxal 884
Requester: Semmi. Class requested: III.
Description of what is sought, in the requester's hand, reproduced as supplied:
I am a stone dresser and I have six days.
I will describe the sheets first and say why after. The counter says the why is not needed. It is going on the paper anyway.
What I want is every sheet you hold that is a setting out for a stone face. They are all the same animal to look at. A circle drawn at full size, or at a reduction with the reduction written on it. The circle divided. The furrows laid off from a chord and ruled through to the skirt. The draft written small at the outer edge in whatever hand cut it. The count of cracks to the land written at the same edge or on the back. Some are on tracing, and some of those are pricked through where a person has taken the pattern off with a needle. Some are cut out of a bigger sheet and the cut runs through the border.
They will not be filed under any of that. They were made in a works office and a works office files by mill and by job, so a sheet sits under the stone it was cut for and not under the pattern that is on it, and the pattern is the only part I want. The counter says there is no asking for it by the pattern, and that the way to ask is to describe it. So I have described it. I have written this out three times and this is the third, and I have kept the other two in my coat.
I do not know how many there are.I do not know how many there are, and I am not asking anybody to tell me before they look.Now the why. There are stones at Kelder Reach and nobody there dresses them. The man who did died in the spring and taught nobody, which was not meanness, it was that nobody asked him in time. I am going out on the eighth and I am not coming back. What I know I know off one pair of hands at one mill, and one mill's way of doing a thing is not the whole of the thing. Forty patterns laid along a table would be the whole of it, or near enough that a person could teach off it and not be lying to anybody.
I have thirty for this. I know the copying frame is by the sheet and I cannot have it. I will copy by hand at the table. I will bring my own paper and pencil and be no trouble, and I will work the days you are open before the eighth. If the search comes out at more than two hours, say so at the counter and I will take what two hours buys.
RESPONSE
Form R/5, revision 9
Reading Services, Search Room
Reference: Request 11-0530
Issued: tick 98, click 22, galaxal 884
The request is a search of a series against a description, class III. The description supplied is of a physical form. It is sufficient and no further description was sought.
The request asks for everything the repository holds on a subject. The repository does not hold by subject. A holding is described by extent, physical form, condition, arrangement, provenance and access, and is matched to a description. What is produced under this request is everything in the series searched that answers the description supplied. Nothing is held to be on a subject, and nothing is withheld on that ground.
Series searched: series 12, Mill Works, Thurl Reach. The series consists of 1,140 items, 8.2 linear extent, sound throughout with the exceptions stated at series level. Items are cited by the reference given at description, being the mill number, the job number, and the sheet number within the job. Citation is not arrangement.
Forty one items answer the description. All forty one are produced. Extent produced: 0.3 linear. Condition: sound, with four exceptions, stated in the schedule, none of which crosses a drawn line.
The schedule of items produced is attached and forms part of this response.
Fees, per the schedule of fees and charges, revision 12. Search, two hours at the class III rate of 11 the hour: 22. Production, no charge. Copying at the copying frame, 2 the sheet, not taken. Copying by hand at the table is not a service of this office and no charge arises. Receipted at the counter on issue.
Class III service standard is one click. The request was received at tick 97 and the items were on the table at tick 98 of the same click. The return is inside the standard.
Signed for the repository: Reading Services, Search Room. Form R/5, revision 9.
SCHEDULE OF ITEMS PRODUCED
Attached to and forming part of the response above
Reference: Request 11-0530
Written at production, tick 98, click 22, galaxal 884
Forty one items, recorded in the order produced.
| No. | Item | Physical form and condition |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12/903/2 | one sheet, folded twice |
| 2 | 12/44/7 | one sheet, tracing, pricked |
| 3 | 12/611/1 | one sheet, folded once |
| 4 | 12/9/4 | two sheets, sewn at the head |
| 5 | 12/380/3 | one sheet, foxed at the head |
| 6 | 12/118/6 | one sheet, folded twice |
| 7 | 12/752/1 | one sheet, tracing |
| 8 | 12/207/2 | one sheet |
| 9 | 12/860/5 | one sheet, folded once |
| 10 | 12/61/3 | one sheet, cut from a larger |
| 11 | 12/499/8 | one sheet, tracing, pricked |
| 12 | 12/12/1 | notebook, fourteen leaves |
| 13 | 12/677/2 | one sheet, folded twice |
| 14 | 12/301/4 | one sheet |
| 15 | 12/88/9 | one sheet, tracing, torn at the foot |
| 16 | 12/540/1 | one sheet |
| 17 | 12/921/3 | one sheet, folded once |
| 18 | 12/155/2 | two sheets, loose |
| 19 | 12/733/6 | one sheet |
| 20 | 12/26/1 | one sheet, water line to the lower third |
| 21 | 12/468/4 | one sheet, tracing |
| 22 | 12/809/2 | one sheet, folded twice |
| 23 | 12/113/5 | one sheet |
| 24 | 12/595/1 | notebook, eight leaves |
| 25 | 12/342/7 | one sheet, pricked |
| 26 | 12/70/2 | one sheet |
| 27 | 12/884/1 | one sheet, folded once |
| 28 | 12/229/3 | one sheet, tracing |
| 29 | 12/636/2 | one sheet |
| 30 | 12/17/5 | one sheet, repaired at the corner |
| 31 | 12/771/4 | one sheet |
| 32 | 12/404/1 | one sheet, folded twice |
| 33 | 12/98/6 | one sheet, tracing |
| 34 | 12/850/2 | one sheet |
| 35 | 12/263/3 | one sheet, cut from a larger |
| 36 | 12/519/1 | one sheet, folded once |
| 37 | 12/141/8 | one sheet |
| 38 | 12/706/2 | one sheet, pricked |
| 39 | 12/33/1 | one sheet, foxed at the fore edge |
| 40 | 12/958/4 | one sheet, tracing |
| 41 | 12/187/2 | one sheet, folded twice |
Every item answering the description is on this schedule. The schedule is retained with the request.
REQUEST SLIP
Form R/2
Reading Room counter
Received: tick 99, click 22, galaxal 884
Requester: Semmi. Second production under request 11-0530.
Second production of the same forty one, under the number I already have. I got through twenty nine on the first day and I want the rest, and I want 12/499/8 out again, because I rubbed something out on my own copy and I do not trust my memory of it. That is the pricked one with the draft written twice, once small at the edge and once upside down at the foot where somebody had the sheet the wrong way round.
One other thing, and the counter says it is not a request, so put it wherever notes go.
Why are they in that order? They did not come off the trolley by the number. They did not come off by the mill. They did not come off in the order I asked for them in, because I did not ask in an order, I described them and you found them. I am not complaining and there is nothing to complain of. I laid them along the table in the order they were handed to me and worked down the line and it went well. I would like to know whose order it is, so I can say it was sensible of them.
RESPONSE
Form R/5, revision 9
Reading Services, Search Room
Reference: Request 11-0530, second production
Issued: tick 99, click 22, galaxal 884
Second production. The forty one items produced under this request on tick 98 are produced again on this tick. Item 12/499/8 is among them and is at the position it carries in the schedule.
A schedule of items produced was written at this production, as one is written at every production. Two schedules exist for this request and they do not differ. The second was made because a second production was made. Both are retained. The repository does not discard a schedule on the grounds that it is duplicated.
No further search was undertaken and no further search fee arises, the items having been identified at the first production.
The order in which the items were produced. The request asks under what arrangement the items were produced. The arrangement of a series is stated in the description of that series. The description of series 12 is produced at enclosure A. A description is reproduced as it stands, and a field carrying no value is reproduced carrying no value.
No procedure of this repository prescribes the order in which produced items are placed on a trolley or set out on a table. The production standard, PS/2, requires that every item answering the description is produced, that the items are produced together, and that a schedule is written recording what was produced. It does not prescribe a sequence. No other standing instruction prescribes one. Enquiry was made of the office that maintains the production standard before this paragraph was written, and the reply is filed with this request.
The note. A note is not a request. It is filed with the request to which it relates. It is not entered in the register and no fee arises.
Signed for the repository: Reading Services, Search Room. Form R/5, revision 9.
ENCLOSURE A
Description of series 12, as at the last inventory
Extracted from the general index. Certified as a true copy of the entry held.
Series 12. Mill Works, Thurl Reach.
Extent: 8.2 linear at the last inventory. 1,140 items.
Physical form: sheets, loose and folded, in tied bundles; eleven notebooks; three rolled sheets in a tube.
Condition: sound throughout. Foxing to the head margins of bundle 7. A water line to the lower third of one bundle, not reaching a drawn line.
Arrangement:
Provenance: transferred at the closure of the Mill Works office, Thurl Reach, under the transfer procedure then in force. The deposit record is held and is described at 2/31.
Access: no restriction. Retrieval available on production of a description. No subject entry is made for any holding. These are separate statements and both are current.
Scope and content: setting out sheets, job sheets, orders, accounts and correspondence of a works office that cut, hung and dressed mill stones.
Dates of description: entered at the inventory of galaxal 883, amended at the inventory of galaxal 884. The amendment was to condition. The entry before amendment is retained.
COUNTER NOTE
Reading Room
Reference: Request 11-0530
Filed: tick 100, click 22, galaxal 884
The requester attended on tick 98 and tick 99 and copied by hand at the table. The items were returned to the shelf at the close of each day and the production was complete on each occasion. The fee is receipted.
A communication was left at the counter on collection of the receipt. A communication received at the counter is filed with the request it relates to. It is reproduced.
Two days and I have all forty one. The hand is a poor copy of some of them, but a poor copy of a pattern is still the pattern, and I can cut off it, and so will somebody after me.
Say this to whoever sets the trolley out. The second day it came off the same way as the first, in the same order, and the one I wanted was eleventh along both times, and I never once had to hunt for it. That is an hour I did not have and it was given to me. I would shake the hand of it.
Semmi. Tick 99, click 22, galaxal 884. I go out on the eighth.
The communication is filed. Nothing further arises.
RETRIEVAL NOTE
Reference: Request 11-0530
Written on issue, tick 100, click 22, galaxal 884
Holding cited: Series 12, Mill Works, Thurl Reach, forty one items, scheduled. Enclosure A: fonds 1, series 1, the entry for series 12.
Extent and condition: 0.3 linear, forty one items, sheets loose and folded and two notebooks, sound; four items carry the conditions stated in the schedule and none of them crosses a drawn line.
Access: No restriction applies. The items are not catalogued by subject and retrieval is by description. These are separate statements and both are current.
Requests in class not assigned: 4,149
Found in collection at last inventory: 64
This description is of the holding. It is not a copy of the holding.
This finding aid describes the holdings of the repository. It does not describe the repository.