Curious to see how Steemit / Steem can become a financially empowering resource for archivists, but also how blockchain could serve as a 21st century backbone for professional "collectors"...
If by logging artifacts onto a transparent ledger, it might be easier for collections to assemble a narrative and discover missing pieces held (in unintended secrecy) between one institution to the next.
An open-source ledger would be a hell of a lot better than idiosyncratic finding aids, which are put together with the typesetting/design quirks of the archivist at the fore, preventing a universal form. there are conventions, of course, but omg the idea of solving research tailoring to each archive/copyright issues with blockchain....that would be swell.
Maybe this idea can be tested and demonstrated outside of the realm of established (and more cautious) institutions and then presented to them as an attractive solution? I wonder what it would look like as a platform to catalogue images and artifacts. Absolutely true that there's a problem with "unintended secrecy" that becomes something like unintended ignorance.