The archive, read as a book
How we know
Part VIII
Every claim on this site carries its confidence. The sources are counted and sorted into records and other people's trees; every source read and found empty is published; and the indexes, the open questions, the errands, the corrections and the work list say what is not yet known. The investigations at the end read the archive against itself.
- VIII.1SourcesEvery citation counted: which are records and which are other people's trees.
- VIII.2What Has Been ReadEverything opened, whether or not it gave anything up.
- VIII.3What the indexes actually holdWhat the indexes actually hold: the difference between a null result and an empty search.
- VIII.4DocumentsReproduced whole, so you can disagree with what has been made of them.
- VIII.5GalleryEverything the archive holds as a picture.
- VIII.6Open QuestionsWhat the archive does not know, ranked by how much finding out would change.
- VIII.7What This Archive Got WrongMistakes this archive made and corrected in public, with what caused each.
- VIII.8ErrandsEvery one needs a login, a card or a reading room; drafted and ordered by what it would settle.
- VIII.9The work listWhat is being done here, as opposed to what is known.
- VIII.10What changedWhat it looked for, what it found, what it did not find, and what it took back.
- VIII.11The PapersA worked example of reading evidence rather than skimming it.
- VIII.12Reading the archive against itselfOpen questions answered out of material the site had already published.
- VIII.13Behind the paywallA marriage never found and four generations called untestable, all one subscription away.