The date on the print differed from the date in the catalogue by seven years. Researcher Ada feared the reservoir archive had confused two surveys. The image showed a shoreline feature used to compare water levels over time.
The earlier date was written on the negative sleeve. The later one appeared beside a stamp recording when the print was made for an exhibition. Both belonged to the image's history, but only one described the exposure.
Ada checked neighboring frames and the survey notebook before correcting the catalogue field. The photographer had died, and no single handwritten date could be treated as self-explanatory. The surrounding sequence made the earlier date well supported.
She retained the printing date in a separate note instead of deleting it. Future readers could now distinguish when the landscape was photographed from when someone decided the photograph mattered enough to reproduce. The correction improved the comparison without erasing the later exhibition through which the image reached most of the people who remembered seeing it.