I have already said this, but since mine seemed mostly to be one small voice crying in the wilderness, I am going to reiterate it in simpler terms: Digital records (whether created by scanners or digital cameras) are not assured of long term survival for two reasons: (1) The digital storage media are unknowns as to long term storage, in spite of manufacturers claims in that regard, and (2) they depend on a sophisticated machine to read them so that even if the medium survives the particular machine may no longer be available. My example was trying to read a 45 rpm vinyl record in a CD player. You cannot do it. Also, no matter what how many of you say about how great scanned or digitally photographed copies come out compared to the original, it is highly unlikely in most cases that the copy made that way would be as good as a photographic copy. PHOTOGRAPHIC COPIES ARE SIMPLE TECHNOLOGY OF KNOWN DURABILITY AND READABILITY (NOT DEPENDING ON A SPECIFIC MACHINE TO READ THEM). Under controlled temperature and humidity, properly fixed photographic negatives have already survived up to 150 years. How many CD ROMs have done that... and do you really think there will be CD ROM readers 150 years from now? One of the reasons that photographic prints cost so much is that they are made on acid free paper. Photographic prints are developed in solutions containing water and are even somewhat resistant to ill effects from wetting. Have you ever wet an ink-jet printed copy of a photo? Nobody has mentioned it yet, but the best alternative of all, if available, is to make more prints from the original negatives. You should never neglect that if it is an available option. So basically I'm agreeing with Sherry, but carrying it further... But if you don't believe me, ask your friendly local neighborhood trained archivist. Richard White Tallahassee "Sherry L. Nisly" wrote: > So, the longest saving choice is actually taking new photos of > the photos, the second choice is to scan them in (actually best > is to do both if you can) and with scans, save them in the original > format plus a universal format, such as .tif (then convert them to > .jpg if you want to electonically send them. > Sherry L. (Bouse) Nisly