“…While big data have garnered deserved attention, data generated from individual projects in small volumes at local scales (also called the "long tail of science") (Heidorn, 2008;Hampton et al, 2013;Wallis et al, 2013) and "dark data" including both unstructured and unused digital data collected during routine business and research (Hampton et al, 2013;Wallis et al, 2013;Ferguson et al, 2014) as well as analog, unarchived, non-machine readable historical data (also known as legacy, or heritage data) (Bürgi and Gimmi, 2007;Salmond et al, 2012) have not. Such datasets are the foundations on which big data is often built (Ferguson et al, 2014) and represent a large portion of the data landscape that is currently underutilized but has recognized potential (Michener and Jones, 2012;Bi et al, 2013;Eitzel et al, 2016;Kelly et al, 2016). This paper responds to the need for new theory and methods to move what we call historical dark dataunarchived, non-digital legacy data-from file drawers to the cloud in order to realize its full potential and become an integral part of the digital data landscape.…”