"Ol' Bab" <olbabNO-SPAM@rochester.rr.com> wrote: > I didn't mention that Mother died in the sixties, and frankly nobody > thought much about that big box until my eldest son suddenly found a > need for roots. He's been scanning hundreds of old and very old > photos, and posting the results on a website (forum) he set up for > this. The intent is to post the family data on the same site, > unless there's some incompatibility with the forum software (phpBB). > > Since he is the software expert, he will want a major say in program > selection Scanning and digitizing your documents is fine, but one needs to put this into perspective. You need to preserve your mother's original (paper-based) documentation, too. You said that your mother passed away in the 60s. Yet, almost 4 decades later, your son was able to open the box, read the documentation, assess its obvious worth and immediately begin using it. What if your mother had preserved that documentation on, say, an 8" floppy disk, in an image format that is no longer used? Chances are that you would have discarded those unreadable floppies long ago--and, with it, all that valuable information. Here is the text of an article that I saved. It was written with a focus on document archiving for businesses, but much of it is equally applicable to the genealogy community as well. It may give you an entirely new perspective on digitizing. _______________________________ Digitization Reconsidered [ Groaning slightly, the moderator trimmed off a great article that Jeremy had attached. Please, everyone, when you include articles written by others, credit the source AND tell me you've contacted the source and have permission to redistribute their writing. Thanks all, Mod. ] "Jeremy" <jeremy@no-spam-thanks.com>