To answer Steven's questions, as an archivist, I highly recommend that you have any photographs you wish to preserve copied by a photographic lab, preferably a local photographer who can give you one-on-one service. Once you do this, you should have (1) a negative (and I would get two if it was me), and a new (2) positive of any picture. At that point, you can return the originals to the owners. That provides you with a negative so future photographs can be made as needed. The copy photograph that you have can then be scanned and posted on a webpage, etc. You can also as a last resort, take a regular camera to the home of the folks who won't lend and take photographs of the pictures they have. You really need to have a camera stand or something to hold the camera very steady. I'm not opposed to digital cameras and the like, however in this process you do not have a negative. Also other members of the family can only enjoy these photographs provided they have a computer, software, etc. As an archivist, I worry about capturing information digitally because there is no assurance that you will be able to vew an electronic file in ten, twenty, or fifty years. I suppor the use of scanning and computer as sharing information, but not necessarity as preserving it. In our collections here we have negatives of photographs as old as 100 years, and we can still reproduce photographs as necessary. I also have computer files as recent as ten years ago which are unreadable because (1) we either don't have the equipment (8" computer disks, for example), or (2) we don't have the software programs to read them. Dean Dean DeBolt, University Librarian Special Collections and West Florida Archives University of West Florida Library 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514-5750 Tele: 850-474-2213. Fax: 850-474-3338. E-mail: ddebolt@uwf.edu ---------------------------------------------------- Reach me by ICQ. My ICQ# is 14599771 or, * Page me online through my Personal Communication Center: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/14599771 (go there and try it ----------------------------------------------------