Dear AMMRLers,
I know this is not directly NMR related, but perhaps some of the
colleagues out there have had similar deliberations.
The department I inherited 4 y. ago has been accumulating NMR and
Infrared (IR) data for over 45 years. My department has long stopped
measuring IR spectroscopy ... and since I arrived, I can count on half a
hand the number of people who have consulted our IR archive. Since we
are running out of space and are no longer in the IR business, we are
considering getting rid of our entire IR data. I have estimated that it
contains nearly 90000 spectra of organic compounds and metal complexes
made in-house. All of these are printed on large plotter paper (ca. 80 x
30cm) (although a large number of those were also transferred to
microfiches). It is astoundingly well organized, so that one can
relatively quickly find a spectrum based on functional groups. But of
course, everything is hand-written, and I don't even want to think of
the work that would be involved in digitizing it all.
We also have an entire Sadtler Infrared volume collection (about 150
volumes) that we should get rid of.
So my question are:
Does such an archive have any value to anyone in this digital age? What
would it cost to have something like this digitized professionally? What
would you do with it?
cheers
Chris
--
Dr. Christophe Farès
Head of the NMR Department/Leiter der NMR Abteilung
Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz 1
45470 Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany/Deutschland
Tel: +49-208-306-2130
E-mail: fares {at} kofo.mpg.de
Web: http://www.kofo.mpg.de/en/research/service-departements/nuclear-magnetic-resonance-spectroscopy
Received on Tue Nov 05 2013 - 22:46:14 MST