In the summer of 2021, the head of the Department of Entomology and Plant
Pathology contacted the Research Data Management Librarian seeking advice
on what to do with the paper records, including original data, of two
professors emeriti. In cooperation with the Agriculture Librarian, the
Special Collections Librarian, and the Library Archivist, the collection
was assessed and the files physically transported to the library. The data
can be safely preserved in their original form within Special Collections.
However, the department head and librarians all agreed that digitization,
which would make the data more accessible and permit machine-readability,
is the ideal solution. The Agriculture Librarian and the Research Data
Management Librarian will select a subset of the paper records to scope out
the time, effort, and level of expertise needed to digitize the data,
translate it into machine-readable formats, and add appropriate metadata.
Important questions about the process include determining the amount and
type of training needed for different stages of the workflow, whether there
are any steps where efficiency could be improved through automated
processes, and how it can be scaled up to allow for processing the entire
collection. The department head requested that we share recommendations for
best practices and procedures with him as he works to develop a data
archiving policy for the department. Recognizing that more faculty will
retire and leave cabinets full of paper data, the librarians are eager to
experiment with methods that could make this data FAIR before the problem
becomes unmanageable and irreplaceable work is lost.