The Academy Client's Guide

Notes

Note to Submissions Heralds on Summarizing Documentation in LoIs

There has recently been some discussion about summarizing name documentation in LoI entries. This started with some items which had as the summary a S. Gabriel client number and the names of the people who had worked on it. This caused some relatively harsh criticism.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the critics. Section V.B.2.d of the Administrative Handbook states that a "summary of all supporting evidence provided for the submission must be included on the letter of intent". Now, a "summary" like the one that started this discussion is essentially similar to saying simply "the name is found in Withycombe", without mentioning what Withycombe writes about the name. Both these "summaries" may fulfill the letter of the rule (although even that can be doubted) but they most certainly don't fulfill the intent, which is to make sure that each commenting member of the College can judge the merits of the documentation.

Granted, the Academy of Saint Gabriel has its letters publicly available on the Web. Also, their work is excellent, although the goals are not quite the same as those of the College of Arms. We have recently renewed the agreement whereby the letters of the Academy are accepted as documentation, so that a copy of the letter is sufficient without attaching copies of the sources cited.

All this, however, does not mean that the client number is a sufficient summary of the documentation. Immediate and affordable net access is something we neither do nor can require from commenting members of the College; for instance, the default method for distributing letters is by regular mail and people have to specifically request e-mail commentary. However, this is in fact beside the point: even if everyone had such access we would still need a summary, just like we need a summary when a name is documented from the reference works listed in Appendix H of the Administrative Handbook.

Starting with the July 2000 LoI's we are going to tighten our interpretation of V.B.2.d. so that items that don't have a proper summary of supporting evidence may be returned instead of pended. Blatant cases (such as " is Saint Gabriel Client #1234", or " is Irish" or " is in Withycombe") will be returned unless the College of Arms is able to provide appropriate supporting evidence in its commentary.

If you are unsure about how to properly summarize name documentation, help is available. One possibility, at least for the majority who have e-mail access, is the submission heralds mailing list ; another possibility is to ask either Laurel or myself. Asking for help is no reason to be ashamed; on the contrary, knowing when to ask for help is a major part of the skills needed for any serious office.