Why yes, yes this has happened. Many, many, years ago on at least one e-list people were being actively discouraged from recreating the gear Anne of Cleves wore for her portrait by Holbein. And the reason was the Rule of Three. Well, an incorrect application of it. That because there weren’t three examples of the same style it wasn’t to be trusted.

At the time there only a handful of readily accessible portraits by Bruyn. But I did have some and made a page for my Frazzled Frau site but that wasn’t good enough because they didn’t include all the elements of her clothing and accessories.

Then through a wonderful exchange with Katherine Barich (yes of Drei Schnittbucher fame) the language of the region was made available and I made a “good enough” document and thought I was done.

In editing my printed out copy with a red pen of doom I realised I was relying on interpretations. So I traced my way back through cited references and realised that so was everyone in that chain.

At least though I was able to follow that chain back as each author used a footnote per term. Where everyone went back to though was a single footnote for multiple terms.

Thus began the scope creep.

I used the manuscript reference numbers to hunt and peck through online archives, through digitised books, and just kept coming up to the same wall.

I also had to keep asking myself if my narrow focus meant I missed more obvious links and shared influences.

Thus the scope creep became entrenched.

But I’ve had to. Because I keep winding up with the same assumptions about sources and I keep wondering what I’ve missed because I don’t think it’s that complicated and more complicated at the same time.

And obviously in that time the quality of digitised records has increased so I have to keep checking in on what’s been digitised, and that’s why I have 1T of files just for the North Rhine.

I mean yes, that’s also because of my damaged harddrives but even that has contributed to scope creep. Take for example a corrupted jpg. It might be the image is corrupted or the file name, rarely both, so I wind up searching by file name for one and reverse image searching for the other. And in doing so I might wind up finding similar files. I can’t pretend they don’t exist. And it’s not just adding another folder of references, sometimes they totally change my curation.

I have a few programs to help with this- automated filename shortening, filename pattern matching, even image comparisons- but oh boy do I wish I could automate so much more of this.

It’s still utterly exhausting playing the Red Queen* game. But also- wow. In doing so I finally have two more direct links between the visual and extant record. Even if they are 100 years apart. The archives are in much the same state or I’d be more hesitant to use them.

* Running ever faster just to stay in the same place.