Can some explain how it is possible that an official archive would have this document and never look at it? The missing script for a never-made movie should attract attention, but nobody cared until this one writer found it? Why?
Even if a collection is processed, because of the volume of information in a given collection archivists typically don't typically describe every document. In a library you can catalogue every book, but that's not possible in an archive. And in an artist's papers, how can you know which document will be important to someone? How can you know what's artistically significant? The time it would take to research the background of every document (Was this script ever made? Is it interesting to anyone?) would be prohibitive.
Add into the mix that archives are chronically underfunded and archivists underpaid. This is coming from the unpaid intern who was asked to process a $33,000 acquisition last year. Fun times.
Do you know which authors have archives at your nearest state school? Is that info even on the internet?
This is very apt description. In this case it sounds like they have 91 boxes (78 Document boxes, 13 cartons of research files)
Not sure if they are in the basement but the record locations says: Aisle 9A -- Shelves 1-4
> and submissions aren't catalogued as thoroughly as you might be expecting
That is also true in this case. By the sounds of it Frank Herbert boxed up all his papers and donated them to the library. Later on family donated more as they found more.
There is a very high level inventory, such as “Container 7: Maps” Maps of what? Doesn’t say. How many? Doesn’t say. One has to go there physically to find out.
There is also a “Flat file drawer tbd” containing a “Dune Atlas”. Which to be honest sounds very intriquing. And a “Small document box A-204” with “personal items” which is decidedly less so.
Source: http://archives.fullerton.edu/repositories/5/resources/56
“Beware of the leopard”