Nothing is scanned by accident. Someone chose, and the choice is almost never
recorded next to the result.
What drives the choice
- Demand: the collections people already ask for get scanned first, which
makes them get asked for more - Condition: too fragile to handle is a reason to scan and a reason not to
- Rights: clear copyright is a green light, uncertain copyright is a wall
- Funding: a grant names a collection, and that collection gets scanned
whether or not it was next
The compounding effect
A researcher searching from home sees the scanned tenth. They cite it. The
citations become evidence of demand. The demand justifies the next round of
scanning, on the same tenth.
This is not a conspiracy, it is a ratchet, and it runs on its own.
What a good project publishes alongside
- The selection criteria, in writing
- What was excluded and why
- The capture specification, so a later project knows whether to rescan
- A stable identifier scheme, so the links survive the next migration
That last one is where most projects fail. A URL like
https://archive.example/viewer?id=4471&session=99 is not an identifier, it
is a coincidence, and it will not resolve in five years.
The one that works
Persistent identifiers, resolved centrally. The Handle System
and DOIs both do this, and both work because the resolution is someone’s job
rather than a side effect of a web server’s routing table.
What I want in every viewer
A visible, copyable citation string. That is it. Half the linkrot in my
bibliography exists because I copied what was in the address bar.