fragmentarium follows an established swiss codex digitisation system known as e-codices and aims to promote cooperative research and discussion between researchers and scholars from multiple institutions. as more fragments are uploaded it will be possible to reunite fragments which have become separated and compare analyses of similar manuscript pieces. some fragments have been analysed using the cornell high energy synchrotron source (chess) to identify pigments, creating a unique "fingerprint" to enable it to be matched to corresponding fragments elsewhere in the world and potentially track their journey with “the potential to learn more about trade routes, historic mining sites, and the regional use of pigments and ingredients”. other fragments have been identified as "recycled" into covers or bindings for later documents, a practice which was prevalent in the 15th to 17th century. the system is also useful in documenting and digitally preserving partial manuscripts which have been damaged by neglect or fire as in the cotton library fire of 1731, or by deliberate destruction as occurred in the reformation in scandinavia. in more recent times, in the 1950s and 1960s medieval manuscripts were frequently deliberately divided in order to attract a higher return on resale values and have subsequently become lost to researchers: fragmentarium hopes to reunite them. flüeler has estimated that around 90% of extant fragments are currently "lost" in archives.