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Question
Research Questions
Precisely framed historical questions and the evidence that would be needed to answer them.
Research Notebook
Show how the evidence changes the history.
The Rosetta Research Notebook is a curated public record of historical inquiry: questions asked, searches undertaken, evidence recovered, interpretations revised, contradictions preserved, and gaps that remain unresolved.
Question → Search → Evidence → Evaluation → Revision → Next Question
Foundation Edition
The research process belongs in the historical record.
Historical reconstruction rarely moves in a straight line. A promising lead can fail. A missing attachment can change the meaning of a memorandum. A later report can expose an earlier assumption. A negative archival search can narrow where the next search should begin.
The public notebook will preserve selected examples of that process without exposing the private Master Evidence system, personal information, unpublished sensitive material, or unsupported speculation.
Notebook principle
WHAT WE THOUGHT → WHAT WE FOUND → WHAT CHANGED
Rosetta will make substantive changes in interpretation visible. Revision is not treated as a weakness; it is evidence that conclusions remain answerable to the source record.
Notebook structure
Record the path, not just the destination.
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Search
Archival Search Notes
Repositories, record groups, finding aids, search terms, references, retrieval paths, and the boundaries of the search actually performed.
Research Guides →▣
Discovery
Newly Recovered Evidence
Records that materially change, strengthen, narrow, or complicate an existing historical proposition after source verification.
Public Evidence Explorer →⇄
Revision
Changed Interpretations
Entries explaining why a prior understanding was revised and identifying the evidence responsible for the change.
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Conflict
Contradictions & Competing Records
Documentary conflicts preserved side by side rather than silently harmonized when the evidence does not justify a single conclusion.
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Negative Search
What Was Not Found
Carefully bounded negative searches that document where Rosetta looked and what was not recovered—without converting absence of recovery into proof of nonexistence.
Missing Evidence →!
Open Issue
Questions Still Unresolved
Issues that remain open after review, including the specific evidence still needed to resolve them.
Research Leads →◆
Method
Evidence Status Changes
A visible explanation when an item moves between Research Lead, Unresolved, Indirectly Documented, Documented, or Missing-Evidence status.
Evidence Status Key →Public notebook entry
Every published entry should be reproducible.
Future entries can identify the question, date, source trail, repository or collection searched, documents recovered, relevant citations, evidentiary status before and after review, what changed, what did not change, and the next documentary target.
Initial Proposition → Search Record → Source Recovery → Evaluation → Revised Finding
Boundary
Curated public notebook—not the private research workspace.
The Research Notebook publishes selected, review-cleared research history. Working notes, private correspondence, personal information, unpublished source material, and the private Master Evidence system remain outside the public website.
Evidentiary discipline
A failed search is information, but it is not proof of absence.
Rosetta may document that a defined repository, series, date range, or retrieval route produced no relevant record. The conclusion must remain limited to the search actually performed. A missing link remains a missing link until evidence changes its status.