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INeedMana @lemmy.world

Are there any "text caches" that we still are not sure what's inside?

en.wikipedia.org

Petrarch - Wikipedia

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?

5 comments

  • Not sure if this is QUITE what you meant, but we've got some we're still not sure how to read without destroying which could be priceless and entirely undiscovered pieces of Classical literature.

    • Thank you, but not exactly. I am more wondering if in general we know what texts we have. Being unable to read does not mean we don't know about it

      To rephrase the question: do we know that for example most of collections are catalogued, we just are not sure what some texts are
      or maybe we know that there are many/few where some work might be just lying on a shelf without anyone aware it is there

      • Ah, in that case, yes, but not so much European libraries. Most European collections are pretty well-categorized and catalogued at this point, including private collections. However, some places, like Mali, still have massive archives that we can read (or rather, at least specialists can read), and have access to, but much of the material is unknown and uncatalogued simply because of decentralized storage and a lack of scrutiny until relatively recently.