an entry · unsigned
A name not given. A signature withheld. The opposite of secrecy: the work is here, on the table, only the hand is missing. Anonymous is the largest single contributor to most archives in most countries.
In the labyrinth, anonymity is administrative — there is no register at the door, no ledger of guests. Most letters in the archive are signed, but some are not. Most of the marginalia in the books are unattributed. The pencil notes in the household manual are in three different hands; only one of them has a name.
The keeper takes the position that this is not loss but a property of the building. A house can be lived in without all the occupants being known. A small register of recurrence is enough.
field note · the most anonymous text in the library is also the most copied — a single small paragraph that begins "there was, at one time, a small staircase here." No one knows who wrote it; it appears, faintly, on the inside cover of seven different books.
— unsigned