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Are there any "text caches" that we still are not sure what's inside? (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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In 1345 he personally discovered a collection of Cicero's letters not previously known to have existed, the collection Epistulae ad Atticum, in the Chapter Library (Biblioteca Capitolare) of Verona Cathedral

So basically a guy goes into a library, rummages for a while, and finds ~1400 years old text no one knew was there

Do we still have places that store texts (like libraries, but doesn't have to strictly be a library) where we don't have everything catalogued and we don't know what might be inside?

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[–] [S] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But do we know if those have been generally indexed?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    In proper libraries, we probably have the author and title in a database somewhere but not the content. In private collections, all bets are off.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I guess the community of private collectors might have (doesn't have to be institutionalized, centralized nor digital, just the fact of knowing is enough) as a group some kind of grasp on who has what. But is that fact known?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Collections might have been inherited over generations. For some of them, the current owners may not have much interest in what they have and therefore not be aware of some rare copies.

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