This article investigates the possible, dynamic use and web publication of digitized collections of paper slips – the practical knowledge databases behind a number of often monumental national, historical dictionaries. Using collections at Ømålsordbogen (the Dictionary of Danish Insular Dialects) as an example, we demonstrate how an immediate web publication without further introduction will face users, even specialists, with substantial challenges due to the highly densified and specialized form of information on the paper slips, and the sophisticated principles behind the elaboration of the edited entries. However, web publication also has advantages and potentials: useful and otherwise inaccessible information, in the published dictionary entries as well as the underlying database, will become available to specialists as well as common and garden users – provided that carefully selected metadata are added to the paper slips and sufficient general information is put at the disposal of users.