A museum acquires more objects each year than it can catalogue, research or display. Storage grows, but interpretation slows. The problem is not that staff are tired. The problem is structural: acquisition permanently exceeds reactivation. This is ArchiveFatigue. It differs from LatencyDividend because the objects are not waiting for a future condition to become valuable; they are already valuable and have simply been outpaced by the institution’s interpretive capacity. Test it by comparing the annual number of new acquisitions with the number of neglected objects newly researched, exhibited or published. A widening gap indicates fatigue.
ArchiveFatigue:
https://socioplastics.blogspot.com/2026/05/socioplastics-3998-archive-fatigue.html
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20358971