Skip to Content
Blog

Field notes from the world's archives.

This is where our researchers write up how a record was actually found: the dead-end emails, the reading-room credential, the script that needed transcribing. One monthly long read, plus shorter case notes in between.

Recent post

Updated monthly
When a Book Becomes a Resource: From Freud to Heidegger and Beyond
EssayProvenance 13 Sep 2026

When a Book Becomes a Resource: From Freud to Heidegger and Beyond

From Freud to Heidegger, 7 philosophers reveal what's really lost when AI companies destructively scan books to train their models.

Read article ↗

All posts

4 published
Case notes
How a single request was traced and retrieved, archive by archive.
Methodology
Reading Kurrent, Latin hands, and Ottoman script. The craft of retrieval.
Newly opened
Collections that just became reachable through Source researchers.
From the field
Researchers on the cities and records they know first-hand.
The Paper Trails · monthly

Get the next one first

One email a month from the field, written by researchers who were actually there. New posts land in your inbox before anywhere else.
By pressing Subscribe you agree to receive monthly emails from Source and accept our Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe in one click, anytime.
No spam. Unsubscribe one click. One email a month.
Prefer email? Write [email protected]