troviate

Troviate is a verb that denotes the act of searching through a large collection to locate valuable items, information, or resources, and to organize or present them for use. It emphasizes both uncovering hidden contents and curating them into a usable form, often across archives, databases, or physical troves. In practice, troviating combines discovery, verification, and presentation, making it distinct from simple locating or cataloging.

The word appears to be a modern neologism formed from trove, meaning a valuable collection, and the suffix -vate, which is used to create verbs that denote action. It has no official dictionary entry and its spelling and pronunciation vary by community. It is most often used in scholarly or professional discourse on information curation and data discovery.

Usage of troviate occurs in libraries, museums, and digital archives, where researchers and curators describe the process as a disciplined search for and assembly of a trove of relevant materials. It can refer to data-mining operations across datasets, or to the selective extraction of items from archives for publication or exhibit. Example: “The project seeks to troviate overlooked correspondence by cross-referencing digitized records with catalog notes.”

As a relatively new and informal term, troviate is not universally accepted and may be regarded as jargon outside its niche. Some writers view it as a useful shorthand for a combined process, while others caution that it can be opaque to general audiences. See also: trove, archive, curation.