We've probably all heard about the lost Walt Whitman novel by now, but ArchivistLand is minorly pissed about how it is being reported. That one is probably the worst and most over-dramatized, NYT was more fair. Archivists are usually pissed about how archival research is reported, we are a rather high strung people in some ways, but this one does kinda get to me. Now, I don't mean to impugn Mr. Turpin's work, because he is very clever to have made the links to the anonymous work, but it wasn't really "lost." The newspaper was preserved, it was cataloged, and it was professionally digitized for him on request, as every major archives does for people every day they're open. If he really emailed the Library of Congress "again and again" (and I do hope he didn't and the reporter was just trying to pump up the jam on the exciting field of historical research) he probably was told "you'll wait your turn in the scanning queue like everyone else who 'finds these lost treasures' bucko, and you'll say 'thank you ma'am' when I'm done." As we tell everyone. Everyone's scanning request is equally special and important, unless of course you're actually willing to pay that 50% rush order charge we put on the website mostly as a joke, and then you'll find some research is actually more equal than others.

Anyway. This discovery hinges in no small part on the boring, everyday scanning labor of someone whose name will never be published in a newspaper, and all the Library Congress gets for their time is the digitization labor fee and a repeat of the perpetual meme that everything they carefully organize, describe, and provide access to, is "lost" until someone other than them deigns to look at it. And that sucks.

• Fortifications found in central China

• GIS-based landform classification of Bronze Age archaeological sites on Crete Island

• A tale of four skulls: what human bones reveal about cities

• Thulamela: Iron-Age Kingdom in South Africa

• Mystery over male Black Death victims found buried hand in hand

• 9th century sunken treasure will appear in New York despite its controversial 1998 excavation near Indonesia

• Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe, transforming the local population

• Archaeologists discover 'coexistence' between Aboriginal people and settlers in North Parramatta

• Elite ‘Dynasty’ at Chaco Canyon Got Its Power From One Woman, DNA Shows

• 2,700-year-old amphora found at bottom of sea in Israel helps archaeologists focus digs

• 2016 Polish excavations at Kato Paphos-Maloutena completed

• Flint sickles prove grain cultivation in Galilee 23,000 years ago - Archaeology

• Ancient Roman House and Phallic Amulets Discovered in Israel

• Scarcity of resources led to violence in prehistoric central California

• Viking Poo Day - Always a big hit with the kids

• Diet and mobility end up recorded in our bones and in our teeth

• Neolithic hand axe among items found during Hartshorne, England archaeology dig

• Sharpening our knowledge of prehistory on East Africa's bone harpoons

• Kennewick Man has been reinterred.

• Street grid unearthed at site of mysterious ancient Japanese capital

• Chaco's Elites Were Natives of Chaco Canyon, Not Migrants, Their Remains Show

• Exploring The New 3D Biography Of A Roman House

• Cambodia’s hidden jungle temple

• Facial reconstruction made of 'brutally-killed' Pictish man

• Collapse of Aztec society linked to catastrophic salmonella outbreak

• Found 2,000 year old seeds, bronze shield in ancient Chinese tomb, and another 18 single-chamber brick tombs unearthed

• Possible Stone Age large labyrinth in Denmark unearthed with axe, battle axe, flint tools, decorated pottery fragments.

• Three partially intact iron-smelting furnaces discovered, the first ones from the Angkor era ever to be found whole, and samples collected to determine which tree species were used to make charcoal for smelting.

• Two Bronze Age interlocking stone-lined burial chambers with pillow stones unearthed by chance during Northumberland, England dig

• Linguist's 'big data' research supports waves of migration into the Americas

• Otzi the Iceman: Researchers validate the stability of genetic markers

• Ancient shipwreck exposed by wind & tide on south Mayo coast - Research also finds possible monastery or Bronze Age fortress on Kid island

• Divers find submerged Roman artifacts off Tuscan coast: part of wooden anchor, damaged urn

• 75 years after start of internment, archaeologists excavate Hawaii's largest camp