The margin notes

Who keeps the book

Every note in the book is written by Dana Whitlock at the records table and checked over by Pauline Verey, who minds the exhibits: the lettering, the cross-references, the state of the sources. The photographs that open each note are produced for this book by Sam Arledge; each caption names its scene, and each scene is staged as a reading of a document, never as the document itself.

How a note is made

A note starts as a question a borrower once asked across a desk: what is my equity, what does the lien see, why does the note matter more than the deed. It is then checked the way a careful clerk would check it, against statute, recorder's practice and the public archive of the address itself. Whatever the record cannot settle is said plainly inside the note, at the point where a careful reader would ask it.

Writing to the records table

Corrections, documents and reading suggestions reach the records table at [email protected]. A correction that changes a note is entered on the record with its date, not silently folded in: the book keeps its own history the way it asks lending history to be kept.