Lessons learned from large scale paper scanning. Reverse chronological order? For many of my papers, I started by collecting and storing them in reverse chronological order because, well, if you are just building up an informal pile of papers, that is the easiest to put together of course. However, this turned out to be a nuisance for the digitizing process, simply because it meant that when I take the papers out of the packages, I start at the top and page down to the bottom, just like you would read a book, right? Alas, that results in previously stapled packets of paper being in-order, but the whole collection is kind of in a weird reverse chronological order. Next time, I should flip the papers over face down when collecting, so that the whole packet of papers is in forward chronological order, and packets of paper are scanned in-order.
Also this is a good lesson for the sake of organizing film negatives. Forward chronological order, oldest on top, newest on bottom, to keep things as smooth as possible when digitizing.