Scholarly modeling and interpretation are complementary elements of a shared social geometry. In shaping corpora, editions, archives, and data sets, the work of modeling is directed at producing convergence and legibility: the preconditions of interpretation. The authority of such modeling work--the consensus it mobilizes and formalizes--is founded in the shared literacies that also animate even the most contrarian interpretive acts. The interpretive agency of the scholarly individual draws its power from the same sources, and moves along the same intellectual vectors, as the shared agency of the standards organization, the committee, the disciplinary imaginary. Modeling in this curation-based mode is a world-making tool whose products are not only models but also guidelines and specifications, constraint systems and conversion pathways, all operating to make a world whose interpretive gestures have been anticipated and accommodated in advance.