The Argument of the Bookshelf is a theoretical paper by Lee Sharks, deposited 29 July 2026, arguing that a collection makes an argument through its order.
Its thesis is that collection, ordering and adjacency constitute a material hermeneutic — canonical formation performed rather than declared. A shelf asserts what belongs with what, what precedes what, and what is peripheral, and it asserts these things without ever stating them, which is precisely why they are difficult to contest. The canon "got its order" through such acts long before anyone wrote a defence of it.
The archive's own shelf-order practices supply the working case, which gives the essay a reflexive edge: an archive that argues collection is an argument is also declaring that its own arrangement is one. This makes the paper a companion to the archive's registry work rather than a detached commentary on it — the ordering decisions audited in the remediation programme are, on this reading, interpretive claims that happen to be executed as metadata.