The Ginkgo Institute
The Vault · a branch of the Ginkgo Institute

All sealed. Would you like to unseal them?

A cavern in the mountainside, held at 18°C and 45% humidity by Gerald, the dehumidifier. Inside: every Field Note the Institute has filed, newest first. The Vault is a subscription. The Field Notes are what it holds.

Complimentary dispatches

Two Field Notes from the archive, offered as a courtesy — free to read here, no subscription asked. They are representative of what Readers of the Vault find inside.

  1. Edition I · Read in full

    They only found it because a plane crashed

    The short of it — A language made entirely of whistles, spoken on one Greek mountain for some 2,500 years — so nearly gone that the wider world only stumbled on it when a plane crashed, and today perhaps six people are left who can truly speak it.

  2. Edition II · Read in full

    A temperate world, ten light-years out

    The short of it — Ten light-years away, a calm red dwarf turns out to carry a temperate, rocky world — the nearest fresh 'Goldilocks' planet in years.

The catalogue · 11 Field Notes
$10Reader · monthly

Become a Reader of the Vault

Each new Field Note in the archive, as it is filed, and every sealed Field Note in the catalogue unsealed. That is the subscription. You sign in with a username and password you create yourself. Alice Hartley, Director of the Vault, keeps the register. It makes more work for her. She does it anyway.

Become a Reader
$100Reader · annual

A year, paid once

The same subscription, settled once for twelve months. Two of the months come free.

Write to the Bursar
$2.99One Field Note

A single Field Note

One sealed Field Note, unsealed for you alone. It comes with an account — a username and password — that opens this Field Note and no other. No subscription.

Choose a Field Note
$10Gift · per month

A subscription, given

Given in fixed lengths, at $10 a month. The recipient sets up their own username and password, and the Field Notes are theirs for the duration. You receive a receipt.

1 month3 months6 months12 months

The Ginkgo Institute is not a non-profit. A gift readership is not a tax write-off.

Arrange a gift
Fine print
  • Readers must be 18 or older. An adult may hold a readership on behalf of a younger reader.
  • Major currencies are accepted.
  • The Field Notes, and this site, can be read in many languages.
  • Already a Reader? Sign in. Staff notes are kept on the notice board.