See http://www.cyndislist.com/preservation.htm for resources on preserving records. And here's an interesting question to all you genealogists: if you were to die instantaneously and unexpectedly today, what exactly would happen to those records you have so painstakingly collected ? Would somebody know exactly what to do with them or would they land in a skip ? Are they on a computer protected with a good password which you have taken to the grave ? And so forth. Paddy -----Original Message----- From: irl-clare-projects-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:irl-clare-projects-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Harris Sent: 21 May 2007 08:08 To: Y-ireland Cc: Clare Projects; The_Genealogical_Friends_Group@yahoogroups.co.uk Subject: Re: [IRL-CLARE-PROJECTS] [Y-IRL] Preserving our treasured research G'day Chris, All that you have presented is all too true. And the same goes for publishing your genealogical finds. Putting them on the 'Net in a Web Site will only last as long as someone is prepared to pay for and maintain the site. That of course assumes that the location of the Web Site does not crash and lose all your good work, in the meantime. Put it on CD, or even DVD, these days, and it is only good as long as there are machines that can read those disks. And that is changing almost as often as we change our underwear. But they are still reading books that are over 1000 years old. So put everything that you want to keep for any length of time, onto the good old paper - acid free, of course. When I was working, I was given the job of advising another Government Department (I was a public servant) on what they should do with a set of tapes with seismic information on them, that is was estimated would cost them $64 million dollars to do the work to replace the information, if it was lost. They were losing machines that could read some of the tapes, in Australia, and had to send them off to England to retrieve the information. My solution was to transfer the information to tapes that were of a more recent vintage from more modern computers, at a cost of about $400,000. They rejected that option and I have no idea what they finished up doing with those tapes. As that was about 20 years ago, I have little doubt that the information has been lost, by now. But it is a good example of making sure that your valuable information is stored on the most durable medium possible. Keep well and happy, as I am. Happy Hunting ;-) Rfer & Hue Chris Goopy wrote: >Hi all, > >I don't know if others subscribe to Dead Fred's Relatively Speaking >newsletter, but there are often some very interesting tips. > >Without comment, I post a couple below... accept them or not as you will. > >Chris > > >http://www.deadfred.com/newsletter_05.php?volume=7&issue=5#6 > >3. The shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. >They say a photograph is worth a thousand words, but look in your own >family photo collection and you'll find plenty of photographs with > > <snip> ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRL-CLARE-PROJECTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message