Down two levels in the sub-basement, the librarian unlocks first the door to the special collection and then the cabinet door. Retrieved from within is a substantial leather-bound volume, the third in the collected works of Girolamo Cardano, containing De Rerum Varietate. The thick pages are in good condition, sa ve for the bleedthrough of the print. The volume has survived for over three centuries, outlasting so many, many people. And before its printing in 1663, its contents had survived a century from their penning in 1557. Cached amidst a variety of things is an illustration of how to cut a (2a × 3b)-rectangle into just two pieces that rearrange into a (3a × 2b)-rectangle. The Latin text now obscures an explanation. Written by a man who embraced the then-new notion of shared knowledge, his contribution has endured to lie buried in a basement, locked within a room, within a cabinet, within a now-dead language.