I wonder how many museums in small towns and cities and thousands of individuals now wish they had, at the very least, a digital copy of their family memories and museum collections. I am sure tens of thousand of items have been lost forever. Does your local museum have backup copies of at least some of their imprtant documents and items.? At least a XEROX copy? How many have an inventory? Of items. Of documents.

Good point. Far too many small museums, and historical societies don't have an accurate inventory. Churches are terrible offenders in this regard. While you would think that libraries would have the catalog discipline down pat, I suspect that many local libraries with archives, etc. do not have even a list of their materials that aren't part of their normal "library collection". And individuals, sadly, are almost universally even worse off. With modern scanners, digital copies are not all that difficult or time-consuming to make, except of the most delicate artifacts. Given the capacity of DVDs, a single disk can hold huge amounts of digitized images and occupy virtually no space in a safe deposit box, for instance. If how to go about the inventory or digitization process is a stumbling block to getting it done, I recommend the American Association for State and Local History as a superb source for methodology. They were founded around the turn of the 19th century by the American Historical Association, which is the preeminent scholarly organization in the field of American History, and they do a great job. Their website is at www.aaslh.org. It still takes self-discipline to do the cataloging and copying, but it helps if you know if you are headed in the right direction. Sincerely, Geoff Brown www.betweenthelakes.com