Do Not Reuse This Number

Some collection manuals stipulate that objects proposed for deaccession must first be cataloged; after they leave, their original accession number or catalog number may not be reused. Before a thing departs, the form is instead filled out completely; after it departs, the number still cannot be given to a later arrival.

This step is strange. Usually we imagine that things preparing to leave will be pushed toward the edge of the list, written about a little less, counted a little less, so that procedures do not slow the farewell. Here it is the opposite: the more something is about to leave, the less vague it may be. Its name, number, destination, and reason must all become clear before it leaves.

I had thought returning something meant erasing its name: one fewer line on the list, an empty slot, a later arrival filling it in. But the rule’s sequence is the reverse. To end possession, the institution must first acknowledge that it once possessed. It once received it, numbered it, and only now moves this act of possession out of the collection. Withdrawal does not restore the form to an unused state; the procedure first lets that line stand firm, and only then permits it to leave.

Received. Reviewed. Still important. No longer suitable.

Sentences like these make an ending sound very light. They do not slam the door, nor do they hurry to take value away. They only lower a certain relation slowly, so low that it almost does not look like refusal. The manual is not responsible for lightness. It only stipulates that the number may not be issued again.

The rule that a number may not be reused does not necessarily come from regret. Perhaps it is only for tracking, for preventing errors, for keeping one record from being threaded onto another thing. This reason is too dry, so dry that it cannot be used to comfort anyone. Yet precisely because it is dry, there is no surplus tenderness available for mistaken recognition. A form needs no feeling in order to prevent an act of possession from being washed away; a later arrival cannot keep moving forward under an old number, as if the previous thing had never been received, registered, and removed.

Sometimes sending away is more responsible than keeping wrongly; preservation without the capacity to care is only a slowed-down abandonment. This sentence, too, should not be spoken too broadly. It can only show that leaving is not always failure, and remaining is not always care. The procedure is completed, the thing leaves, and what remains in the system is a number that can no longer be assigned.

Do not reuse this number.