Frequently Asked Questions

The Lost Library is a digital archive that preserves unpublished anthropological research, including incomplete, abandoned, or never-submitted work. It exists to address scholarly loss, research that disappears due to structural, personal, or institutional barriers. Additionally the archive values intellectual contribution over formal completion or publication status.

Though we are in conversation with many people with expertise in digital repositories and archives, the team working actively on the building of Anthropology’s Lost Library is:

• Joshua D. Rubin, Colby College

• Kara Kugelmeyer, Colby College

• Kate McNally, Yale University and McGill University

• Research Assistants Selene Wang and Max Pettite, Colby College

Would you like to assist in the development of Anthropology’s Lost Library? If so, click here and let us know!

While there are a number of excellent repositories that focus on preserving either raw research notes (such as fieldnotes, field diaries, letters, and photographs) or published work, Anthropology’s Lost Library focuses specifically on works that were intended for publication but were never ultimately finished.

The Lost Library also prioritizes putting these unfinished works in their context. Why they were left unfinished is just as important as what these unfinished writings say.

Scholarly writings can go unpublished for reasons that have nothing at all to do with their merit. It may be important to preserve unfinished scholarly works for the purposes of amplifying important scholarly contributions.

By prioritizing unfinished scholarly works and the stories about their production, Anthropology’s Lost Library seeks also to shed light on the broader sociopolitical landscape of academic labor that informs fundamentally how academic research is conducted, documented, and preserved.

Readers who are interested in a more detailed account of the aims of this archive are encouraged to read this essay about the Lost Library that was published in Anthropology News.

ALL is accepting unfinished works on topics in any of anthropology’s subfields (archaeology, physical anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology). Unfinished works can include:

• Drafts, working papers, and incomplete manuscripts

• Unpublished theses, chapters, articles, books, and grant proposals

• Work intended for publication (even if never submitted or finished)

The following will not be accepted:

• Raw field notes or data records

• Personal correspondence, diaries, or informal materials

The work must have been written with the intent to publish.

• The author

• A colleague, student, or family member

If the submitter is not the author:

• They must explain their relationship to the author

• They must justify that the author would have supported submission

Acceptance is based on a small set of required core criteria (Section 1 of the form):

• The work was intended for publication

• Authorship is clearly established

• Author consent is obtained (or justified if not possible)

• Research meets ethical standards (e.g., IRB or equivalent approvals)

These are the only questions that affect acceptance.

We have become aware that there are many reasons why one might want to share unfinished writings—to protect one’s intellectual property, to share one’s favorite ideas despite having left academia, to memorialize a brilliant colleague or friend or family member.

That said, this archive was initially imagined as a counterweight to the ways that academic publishing is most commonly conceived. Every published book and article began as a draft that was written in particular contexts. Drafted works are worthy of preservation even if—in some cases especially if—those contexts prevented the work from ever reaching publication.

We expect that the Lost Library will contain works at many stages of incompletion. These works will necessitate alternative practices of readership and citation, which we are eager to explore in the coming months and years.