The Forgotten Room (2015) novel

Original Novel Title: The Forgotten Room
Author: Lincoln Child
Publisher: Doubleday, 2015.

Lincoln Child, who also has collaborated on a series of well-received novels with Douglas Preston, sets his sixth solo novel in the rareified world of a Rhode Island think tank known as Lux. The forgotten room of the title references a hidden room within the huge mansion that houses Lux, the former home of the eccentric and wealthy Edward Delaveaux whose wife's ghost was said to still haunt a hallway of Lux.

The forgotten room contains a secret which one Lux researcher has already paid for with his life in a grisly suicide. Jeremy Logan, a Yale University professor who moonlights as an enigmalogist by solving unexplainable mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster or ghosts, is hired by Lux's director to investigate this out-of-character suicide. In doing so, Logan places his own life in jeopardy.

Early on during his investigation on behalf of Lux's director, he visits the institute's archives, located as archives usually are, in the mansion's basement. The think tank does not provide him with maps or signage nor did it occur to him to ask, so he has to find the archives on his own, where he eventually

"arrived at an open door with a sign that read ARCHIVES. Beyond the door, the walls and ceiling fell away, revealing a most impressive space bathed in bright yet pleasingly mellow light. Row after row of filing cabinets ran from front to back in achingly regular lines, but they were spaced far enough apart to forestall any sense of oppressiveness. At the far end, Logan could just make out another, smaller door, with what looked like a security station beside it. He stepped inside. ...

"Just inside the door, an elderly woman was seated at an official-looking table. A nameplate on one side of the desk read J. RAMANUJAN. She ran her eyes up and down Logan, lips pursing with an expression he could not decide was appraising or disapproving." (p. 78-79)

He's initially denied access because he has only a temporary ID card. He quickly overturns the archivist's decision with a letter the director provided him entitling him to unrestricted access. Not knowing exactly what he's looking for other than files pertaining to the 1930s, the archivist provides him with "blank document requisition forms." (p. 79)

After some discussion over the nature of his archival research and request to look for documents himself in the stacks, the archivist reluctantly agrees with the caveat that he "take no more than five folders from the stacks at a time. And please be careful when you refile them." (p. 80)

He spends a total of three hours at this research, "scribbling his observations into a small notebook with a gold pen," and realizes in the end that the files do not contain any records more recent than 2000 even though he was only interested in files from the 1930s. (p. 81)

The archivist informs him that more recent records are either with the scientists themselves or "'in archive two, beyond that door.' And she pointed toward the far end of the room." Archive two turns out to be off-limits to Logan even with his special letter of access. Seems he required "a level-A access or greater" according to the security guard who's armed with a nightstick and a can of Mace. "Then he [Logan] nodded, turned, and made his way back through the stacks and into the basement corridor beyond." (p. 81-82)

So the main archive stacks have no security other the guard who's at one end and who's purpose is guard against intruders to archive two. Filing cabinets for storage are so 1970s. Any archives worth its upkeep would more than likely not permit the use of pens to take notes. At least the part about the archives being relegated to a basement seems to accord with the location of many archival facilities with which I'm familiar.

Airframe

Original Novel Title: Airframe
Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996 (hardcover); New York, NY: Ballantine Books, November 1997 (paperback).
The tragic deaths of three people and numerous injuries on a trans-Pacific jet flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles set in motion an internal investigation. Norton Aircraft, builders of the plane, conduct their own investigation to determine cause. Much of the novel centers on records-keeping practices required by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and electronic data recovery processes.
Quotations are from the hardcover edition:
During the initial inspection of the aircraft, a counterfeit part is the prime suspect for the pilot losing control. In order to foil counterfeiting (in this case after the fact) and to guarantee accountability

The FAA required commercial carriers to keep extraordinarily detailed maintenance records. Every time a part was changed out, it was noted in a maintenance log. In addition, the manufacturers, though not required to, maintained an exhaustive ship's record of every part originally on the plane, and who had manufactured it. All this paperwork meant that every one of the aircraft's one million parts could be traced back to its origin. If a part was swapped out and repaired, that was known. Each part on a plane had a history of its own. Given enough time, they [the investigators] could find out where this part had come from, who had installed it, and when. (p. 100)

Norton Aircraft maintained operational records for each "ship":

The ship's record consisted of a mass of documentation--a million pieces of paper, one for every part on the aircraft--used to assemble the aircraft. This paper, and the even more extensive documentation required for FAA type certification, contained Norton proprietary information. So the FAA didn't store these records, because if they did, competitors could obtain it under the Freedom of Information Act. So Norton warehoused five thousand pounds of paper, running eighty feet of shelf space for each aircraft, in a vast building in Compton. All this was copied onto microfiche, for access at these readers on the floor. But finding the paper for a single part was time-consuming, she [Casey Singleton, Quality Assurance/Incident Review Team, Norton Aircraft] thought, and--- (p. 118)

Having determined that a failed part was a counterfeit, when she viewed electronic repair records

Paper for the part appeared to be proper; a photocopy came up on Casey's screen. The part had come from Hoffman Metal Works in Montclair, California--Norton's original supplier. But Casey knew the paper was fake, because the part itself was fake. She would run it down later, and find out where the part had actually come from. (p. 123)

A counterpoint plot in this very suspenseful novel has Jennifer Malone, a TV investigative journalist, also tracing the historical record of the same problem with the Norton Aircraft model whose current accident Casey Singleton is probing. A videotape taken by one of the passengers becomes a crucial piece of evidence for both women. The company probe eventually becomes a race against time and a test of the evidentiary multimedia record to discredit the reporter whose story could prevent certification and production of a new Norton airframe.

After Many a Summer

Original Novel Title: After Many a Summer
Alternate Title: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
Author: Aldous Huxley
Publisher: London: Chatto and Windus, 1939 (hardcover); New York. Harper & Brothers, 1939 (hardcover).

---

According to archivist John Sanford, this novel about the search for immortality by the author of Brave New World is

about life and death, rather than Archives, but the principal character, Jeremy Pordage is rather clearly an archivist/manuscript scholar imported from London to LA to catalog a collection of British aristocratic manuscripts. It has perhaps the most accurate distillation of the inoffensive yet purposeless existence that is archivist.

---

Submitted by John Sanford, 2000.09.18.