Thank you, thank you, each of you for your thoughts and advice. Earlier this evening I sat down with Lee and Terry's two wonderful books and after consulting them, had pretty much decided that one database was the way to go. As I wrote originally and their books (and your comments) confirmed, it's easy enough to generate reports on the descendants of Ancestor X or Y, and having several data sets in one project seems prone to unforeseen complications (some of which Lee very aptly described). I have 16,000+ people in a database devoted to my mother's maiden name/paternal ancestry, so guess I could just tack everything onto that--most of the binders and notebooks concern her maternal ancestry anyway. (My father's parents came over from Europe and his "database" would consist of, maybe, 20 people, at best--zilcho past his grandparents). My only other large database is a regional one for that area of Maryland/Pennsylvania (over 43,000 people), which includes, of course, kith and kin of mine (and why I ever started it is a mystery to me---lol--but it keeps rolling along), so ... guess the next step is deciding on which existing project to append the information from the binders and notebooks (not to mention stacks of photocopies stuff and odds and ends from the internet). Once again, I thank each of you for your advice and thoughts. Your replies have helped me greatly. Sam