Features · From the 72-page private printing

The Filing Briefcase

Systems & methods, incl. the M Crisis

Systems & Methods §

THE FILING BRIEFCASE

A practical guide to carrying an industry.

The collection’s permanent housing, its sorting doctrine, and the settlement of the M Crisis — documented here as guidance for fellow collectors, of whom a thorough census located none. Standards must nonetheless be kept.

A collection is only as good as its retrieval. Brochures in a pile are rubbish that happens to be interesting; brochures in a case, behind tabs, in an order that means something, are an archive. Ours was a briefcase-style filing case, chosen because it latched, carried, and looked, when closed, entirely unremarkable — which is the correct look for infrastructure.

The primary sort

Alphabetical by marque, one tab divider per marque. This was never controversial: the alphabet is the only ordering that survives contact with a new acquisition. No marque can launch a machine that changes where the marque files. Stability first; meaning second.

The secondary sort

Within each marque, the question was harder, and the department sat with it seriously. By paper size was considered, and rejected: it rewards the wrong ambition, and half the market parks at A3. By acquisition date was considered, and rejected: it files the postman’s diligence rather than the industry. By fondness was considered longest of all, and failed its trial in a single afternoon — the rankings moved between filing sessions, and an archive whose order changes with the archivist’s mood is a diary. Ascending copies-per-minute won on merit. Speed is the spine of the market: it is how the trade tiers its ranges, how buyers shortlist, and how this magazine’s Big Matrix on page — is ruled. Under this system, a brochure’s position in the case states its position in the world.

The M Crisis

The system’s finest hour arrived dressed as its worst congestion. Mita and Minolta both demanded space behind the M divider — two full marques, one tab, retrieval slowed to a crawl of second-guessing. Intolerable. The remedy lay in the case itself: the tab set, built by the stationery trade for surnames, included an “Mc” tab with no conceivable function in a photocopier context. It was deployed. One of the two marques received a divider of its own — the department remains coy, thirty years on, about which — and retrieval recovered overnight. No apology is offered. The mark of a good system is not that it never strains; it is that it bends somewhere harmless, and holds.

THE ARCHIVE, OPEN FOR INSPECTION: cutaway of the filing briefcase at full operating order. Twelve tabs, eleven marques — alphabetical by marque, ascending copies-per-minute within, the Mc tab redeployed under the M Settlement, the red one sleeved at the rear and outranking everything. The N divider stood ready all decade; the market never rang back.

The House Rules

Rule	Rationale
1. Alphabetical by marque; ascending cpm within.	The alphabet finds the marque. The speed finds the machine.
2. One marque, one divider.	Congestion is how archives die. See the M Crisis.
3. Nothing is filed folded.	A fold is permanent. A folded brochure is a wounded brochure.
4. Plastic is reserved for the red one.	Protect everything and you have protected nothing.
5. The case is latched after every session.	An open archive is an invitation to the household.
6. Contents leave the case for reading only, and return the same day.	Lending is deaccessioning with extra steps.

The weight problem

Hundreds of brochures on coated stock weigh what they weigh, and at full complement the case handled less like luggage and more like ballast. Carrying doctrine, arrived at empirically: two hands on stairs; change sides at agreed landmarks on level ground; never run, since a dropped case undoes a year of filing in one second; and never let a helpful adult carry it, because helpful adults set things down in the wrong rooms.

Retrieval drills

The standard of readiness was a drill: name a machine, produce its brochure. Any machine, any marque, self-timed. The alphabet takes you to the divider, the cpm ordering takes you to the document, and a properly run case yields the brochure before the adult who asked has finished explaining that it was only a joke. Drills were conducted regularly and, the record must show, always between the same two participants: the examiner and the archive. Both performed well.

Acquisition methodology

Stock was acquired by telephone. One rang the sales office of each marque and explained, gravely, that the material was needed for a school assignment — a statement true in every particular, in that the caller attended a school and had assigned this to himself. Sales departments are the great unthanked patrons of the archival sciences: they posted full-line literature to a minor with no budget and no premises, and asked only for enthusiasm, which was held in volume. One Canon gentleman’s generosity in this regard is disclosed elsewhere in this issue.

Admissions & the plastic protocol

Full brochures held the main sequence. A single spec sheet was admitted on probation only — filed at the rear of its marque, pending upgrade by a further telephone call. Posters were not filed at all: rule 3 forbids folding, and a poster that cannot be filed must be displayed, which suited everyone.

Thick protective plastic was maintained for exactly one occupant: the red one, the market-wide special this masthead has already saluted. The protocol was never extended. Plastic for everything would have been vulgar, and scarcity was the point — the sleeve did not say this is protected; it said this is the one.

One marque, one divider. Congestion is how archives die.

THE RETRIEVAL DRILL — OFFICIAL SCORE CARD

Cut out and retain. Name a machine; produce its brochure. Timing begins at the last syllable of the model number and ends at presentation, face up, correct way round. Consult the House Rules in the event of a dispute. There were never any disputes; there was never anyone to dispute with.

MACHINE NAMED:
TIME TO PRODUCE:
FILED BACK CORRECTLY: YES ☑ YES ☐