The Discovery and Restoration of Buck’s Original Data

Abstract

Following the recovery of Buck’s original paper spreadsheets containing the data records for Land Utilization in China, there was a tremendous effort by a team of scholars and students from China and Japan to preserve the original records and digitize all data for further analysis. This chapter describes in detail the efforts undertaken in this work. The chapter details the story of the data, how it was discovered, the steps taken in preservation, and the painstaking task of converting paper spreadsheets to digital electronic spreadsheets.