Example: A course syllabus cited “Soper, R., Biological Science, ch. 4,” leading the searcher to a conference proceedings volume where Soper had contributed a short chapter on plant-animal interactions—useful, but not the comprehensive textbook originally imagined. The accidental curriculum formed from many such fragments. Instead of one tidy PDF, the seeker assembled a mosaic: a core open textbook chapter, a couple of recent review articles, practice problems from a university’s course page, and a lab protocol shared by a professor. The result was more current, more practical, and—paradoxically—richer than the single-author tome once hoped for.