Dear Emily,

I saw your post on Museum-L but I hate to contribute to the already
oppressive amount of mail there so I thought that I'd respond offline.  We do
indeed archive to Kodak PhotoCD.  Quality is excellent, and we assume that
the sales literature is correct when it comes to life expectancy, but we have
only been doing this for a year so the jury will remain out on the realities.
 One thing to watch out for is varying quality based not on the medium but on
the firm doing the processing to disk.  We go through a fairly stringent
quality control process with the finished cd's, and have heard horror stories
about processing companies that do shoddy work.  We do not capture the images
digitally, but on conventional 35 mm film (the negs act as yet another
archived backup) which is then digitized and transferred to cd by an outside
company.  We' ve negotiated a very competitive rate and can get our material
through this process for about 75 cents an image.

If there's anything else that I can do for you, let me know. Good luck!

Terry Grose Beamsley
Head of Collections Information Resources
Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village
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313/271-1620 x 575