#3052: Archive Request

XKCD comic, described below.
Transcript

[A side view of Cueball, sitting on a wheeled office chair, at a desk with a laptop on it and his hands on the laptop. A jagged line comes from the laptop screen presumably representing text on the computer screen from an online page, with the underlined text representing a hyperlink to another online page.]

Computer: To request data from the archives, fill out this form. The pages will be scanned, encoded to CD-ROM, and mailed to you within 10 business days.

Computer: Download the decoder for our proprietary format here (Requires Windows 98® or XP®)

Cueball: Ugh, fine...

[Caption below the panel:]

Archivists actually have everything in digital repos now, but they still do this to provide enrichment for researchers, the way zoos hide food for animals in hard-to-open boxes.


(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)

Title text:They just want researchers in the enclosure to feel enriched and stimulated. ('The Enclosure' is what archivists call the shadowy world outside their archives in which so many people are trapped.)


ExplainOriginal