Kelly J. Applegate

Many academic repositories contain a vast amount of material beyond the requisite theses and dissertations. Those that do ingest them often contain such documents dating back to the 1800s or, in some cases, earlier. That might not sound like something to get too excited about. But, do you know who does get enthusiastic about that? The web surfer who stumbles across something her beloved great-great-grandfather wrote in 1886, or his father presented at a conference in 1970, or a whole host of other legacy material that can be found in an institutional repository.