{"actors":["Metadata librarian serving as accountable condition owner","Discovery-systems librarian","Digital-collections curators","Cataloging and authority-control staff","Library IT staff responsible for indexing","Researchers and community users seeking collection materials"],"affected_objective":"Preserve reliable discovery access to digitized local-history collections as metadata, authority files, and search indexes change.","arm":"COMMON_P1","authority_safety":{"authorized_first_step":"The metadata librarian may run a read-only shadow pilot, review sampled records, and draft remediation tickets without changing production metadata, ranking, access controls, or interfaces.","decision_authority":"The metadata librarian interprets condition signals; the discovery-systems librarian approves index or configuration work; collection curators approve descriptive changes; existing privacy and access-control owners retain authority over restricted records.","excluded_actions":["Do not infer collection condition from identifiable patron search histories.","Do not automatically rewrite metadata, merge identities, suppress records, or alter search ranking.","Do not treat low use as evidence that an item lacks value or should be removed.","Do not expose restricted metadata or records during sampling.","Do not evaluate individual catalogers from record-level defects."],"halt_rollback":"Halt the pilot if sampling reveals restricted information, produces unmanageable false alarms, or encourages personnel evaluation. Delete pilot-derived query traces, withdraw unapproved tickets, and retain the unchanged production configuration."},"baseline":"Business as usual monitors outages and index completion, while retrievability problems are repaired after user reports or one-time audits. It does not preserve a stable query panel, interpret cross-round deterioration, or connect warning thresholds to named remediation authority.","candidate_id":"deterioration_monitoring__library_information_science__COMMON_P1","causal_chain":["Authority-file revisions, metadata edits, schema crosswalks, and reindexing introduce small mismatches between records and discovery behavior.","Each mismatch is locally tolerable, so records remain preserved and the search service remains operational while access paths gradually weaken.","A versioned panel of known-item and subject queries makes that latent loss observable through retrieval failures, rank displacement, broken facets, unresolved identifiers, and cross-interface disagreement.","Repeated measurements preserve direction, persistence, rate, and collection-level localization instead of treating each observation as an isolated defect.","Predefined warning and unacceptable bands distinguish noise from sustained retrievability deterioration.","Threshold crossings create owned diagnostic and repair tickets while records remain identifiable and corrections remain bounded.","Post-repair reruns test whether the affected access paths recover and feed false alarms or missed failure modes into recalibration."],"cell_id":"deterioration_monitoring__library_information_science","consequence":"Materials can remain technically preserved yet become progressively harder to find, causing incomplete research, unequal access for users who lack workaround knowledge, misleading impressions of collection coverage, and a larger later metadata-reconciliation burden.","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not assessed against prior proposals because runtime isolation prohibits inspecting them; within the supplied domain, this candidate targets decay at the metadata-to-discovery interface rather than physical preservation, general documentation freshness, or acute search outages.","experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp13_second_slot_policy60_20260806","intervention":"Create a Retrievability Condition Register for selected digitized collections. Curators establish a versioned panel of known-item, name-variant, subject, date, and identifier queries with adjudicated relevant records. A read-only runner executes the panel on a fixed cadence and records disaggregated signals: relevant-record retrieval, rank band, facet availability, identifier resolution, broken links, and disagreement between catalog and discovery interfaces. The metadata librarian reviews trends by collection and failure mode. A warning band requires diagnosis when deterioration persists across two rounds or accelerates across multiple signals; an unacceptable band is reached when an adjudicated record loses all intended access paths. Thresholds generate scoped tickets for metadata correction, authority reconciliation, crosswalk repair, or reindexing, followed by reruns and periodic recalibration of queries, cadence, and thresholds.","mechanism_mapping":[{"counterfactual_removal":"Without repeated quality sampling, discovery drift would remain dependent on complaints or conspicuous failures.","mechanism_slug":"quality_drift_monitoring","role":"Executes a stable, adjudicated query panel to detect changes in retrievability quality."},{"counterfactual_removal":"Without a recurring inspection, the register would be a one-time audit and could not reveal direction or persistence.","mechanism_slug":"preventive_inspection","role":"Rechecks selected access paths before users encounter complete retrieval failure."},{"counterfactual_removal":"Without a disaggregated condition display, a single aggregate could conceal deterioration concentrated in one collection, field, or query type.","mechanism_slug":"health_scoring_dashboard","role":"Displays separate condition bands and trends for retrieval, facets, identifiers, links, and interface agreement rather than collapsing them into one score."},{"counterfactual_removal":"Without an owned repair queue, detected deterioration could accumulate as passive reporting.","mechanism_slug":"maintenance_backlog_review","role":"Routes threshold crossings into prioritized, reviewable metadata and indexing remediation tickets."}],"nearest_rivals":["One-time metadata quality audit: identifies current defects but lacks recurring trend memory and escalation based on deterioration.","Search-analytics dashboard: describes patron queries and clicks but may not test whether adjudicated collection materials remain retrievable, and can introduce privacy concerns.","Automated schema validation: detects malformed or missing fields but not valid-looking metadata whose discovery access paths have weakened.","Fixed metadata-refresh schedule: performs upkeep by calendar regardless of observed condition and does not localize emerging failure modes."],"negative_tests":{"intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified if threshold crossings do not correspond, on blinded record review, to reproducible and correctable losses of intended access paths, or if scoped repairs do not restore the flagged paths on rerun.","problem_falsifier":"The inferred problem is falsified if repeated measurements and available historical snapshots show no directional retrievability loss, or if observed failures are abrupt random outages with no precursor condition signals.","risks":["The query panel may privilege documented expert search practices and miss community vocabulary.","Routine ranking variation may create false alarms.","Aggregate displays may hide deterioration concentrated in marginalized or small collections.","Staff may game indicators or interpret them as individual performance measures.","Repair demand may exceed available metadata and systems capacity.","Test queries could expose restricted descriptions unless access controls are preserved."],"strongest_counterevidence":"The strongest counterevidence would be stable intended-access retrieval across metadata and platform changes while reported discovery failures are instead explained by changing user intent, incomplete collection scope, or abrupt infrastructure faults."},"next_evidence_step":"Run an eight-week read-only shadow pilot on two curator-selected digitized collections using 20 adjudicated queries per collection and weekly measurements. Freeze the initial query set and condition bands, preserve signal histories, and have two staff reviewers independently classify every warning as metadata drift, indexing drift, expected variation, or indeterminate. Draft but do not execute repair tickets. Continue beyond the pilot only if warnings reproducibly identify correctable condition loss before total access-path failure and the review burden, privacy controls, and authority routing are acceptable.","observable_state":"For each sampled collection and query, the register retains timestamped relevant-record presence, rank band, expected facet presence, authority-identifier resolution, link status, catalog-to-discovery agreement, failure mode, and remediation status. Healthy means all adjudicated access paths behave as recorded at baseline; acceptable allows documented benign variation without loss of intended access; warning means persistent or accelerating degradation in one or more signals; unacceptable means an adjudicated record has lost every intended query or identifier path, or a restricted-access boundary is breached.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","problem":"Digitized collection objects may remain intact while their intended access paths slowly decay. Incremental authority-file changes, metadata normalization, schema crosswalk revisions, and reindexing can detach names, subjects, identifiers, facets, or links from discovery behavior. Because each change affects few records and the service still returns results, staff may normalize scattered defects until portions of a collection are effectively undiscoverable.","proposal_index":1,"remaining_contrastive_claim":"Unlike audits, usage analytics, schema validation, or calendar-based cleanup alone, the proposed register acts on persistent change in adjudicated retrievability condition: it preserves a baseline and trend history, applies warning bands, assigns interpretation authority, and routes threshold crossings to specific repair pathways.","revision_record":{"claim_changes":["Initial version; no claims of novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect size are made."],"conceptual_changes":["Initial version maps gradual deterioration to loss of intended metadata-mediated access paths."],"evidence_changes":["No external evidence was inspected; prior art remains unsearched."],"operational_changes":["Initial version bounds the first step to a read-only eight-week shadow pilot with no production changes."],"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Complete archetype-to-domain causal mapping","Explicit authority and safeguards","Problem and intervention falsifiers","Bounded first evidence step"]},"schema_version":1,"structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Condition to preserve","domain_realization":"Reliable intended retrieval of digitized collection records through names, subjects, dates, facets, identifiers, and links."},{"archetype_element":"Baseline condition and bands","domain_realization":"A curator-adjudicated query-to-record panel defines healthy, acceptable, warning, and unacceptable retrievability states."},{"archetype_element":"Leading and lagging deterioration indicators","domain_realization":"Leading signals include rank displacement, facet disappearance, interface disagreement, and unresolved identifiers; lagging signals include complete known-item failure and reported broken links."},{"archetype_element":"Inspection cadence","domain_realization":"The query panel is executed weekly during the pilot, with later cadence subject to observed decay speed and repair lead time."},{"archetype_element":"Trend interpretation","domain_realization":"The register retains histories by collection and failure mode so staff assess direction, persistence, and acceleration."},{"archetype_element":"Thresholds and escalation","domain_realization":"Persistent or accelerating warning signals require diagnosis; loss of all intended access paths escalates to the relevant metadata, discovery, or IT authority."},{"archetype_element":"Response pathway","domain_realization":"Findings route to scoped metadata correction, authority reconciliation, crosswalk repair, link repair, or reindexing and are then retested."},{"archetype_element":"Monitoring recalibration","domain_realization":"False-alarm reviews, missed defects, collection changes, and repair constraints inform revisions to the query panel, bands, and cadence."}],"title":"Retrievability Condition Register for Digitized Collections","version":0}