Filed & Forgotten

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    A filed archive of broken systems

    Deaccession Disposal Codes

    The Deaccession Desk removes records from active custody. Nothing here is destroyed; the codes below describe the shapes a departure is permitted to take.

    Current codes, in the order they are usually confessed:

    Code Disposition
    RELEASED Allowed to leave through the ordinary exit. Rare. The desk maintains a candle for this outcome.
    DEEP-FILED Moved to a lower shelf, where retrieval remains theoretically possible. The record is not gone; it is farther.
    PULPED Reduced to fiber and reissued as blank intake stock. The archive eats its mistakes and serves them again as fresh paper.
    TRANSFERRED-ANNEX Relocated to an annex whose holdings are locally canonical and globally unobserved; see reference/FREF-0815-MAP.
    DONATED-BACK Returned to the originating office, which no longer exists. Custody transfers; the address does not.
    MUMMIFIED Wrapped in successive policy clarifications until retrieval would constitute archaeology. Formally active.
    SHADOW-RETAINED The record was destroyed. Its citation remains in force and is cited as though the record were intact.

    The codes describe custody, not fate. A record's code states where the desk believes it went; belief is load-bearing here, and is not independently verified.

    Filing Rules

    1. One code per deaccession event. A record may be deaccessioned more than once; prior codes accumulate in its custody history, not here.
    2. DEEP-FILED and MUMMIFIED may not be applied to the same record in the same quarter. The desk calls this combination "composting," and it requires a waiver.
    3. SHADOW-RETAINED requires countersignature per the Countersignature Registry.
    4. The desk does not adjudicate whether a record deserved its code. Deserving is not a field.

    Living Document Protocol

    • Codes are added only when a departure occurs that the existing vocabulary cannot hold politely.
    • Retired codes are retained in the table with a strike-through. There are no retired codes.
    • Exhumed records re-enter through the Exhumation Protocol, not through this desk. This desk only lets go.

    Steward's note, taped inside the desk drawer: We have never used RELEASED. The candle is decorative. Once a year we file a form confirming the candle is fine.

    • Deprecatia Fade — patron of the DEEP-FILED shelf
    • mascots/M-0434 — steward of the scaffolding the desk keeps meaning to dismantle
    • reference/FREF-0923-MANENE-PROTOCOL — the door back in
    • reference/FREF-0815-MAP — classification authority for annexed states
    • reference/FREF-0939-CSR — countersignature authority for SHADOW-RETAINED