Thomas Dalton wrote:
You've just answered your own question.
Getting lucky is hardly a good method of verifying something... If it can't be verified promptly then we have a problem.
That's silly. Is verification not going to be prompt enough if I have to wait for the library's copy of a book to be returned, or horror of horrors, have to wait for interlibrary loan? Anyway, in these days of TV fan websites, one is hard-pressed to find a show that doesn't have a set of devotees that have complete collections of episodes that they'd be willing to pass along, strictly unofficially for scholarly purposes, of course. :-)
If the wouldbe verifier can't figure out how to follow the trail of bread crumbs that is a document's references, that person is not really competent to be doing the checking part.
Stan