Howdy - Ohh - I know EXACTLY what you are dealing with! The Aurora Regional Fire Museum has a several dozen over-sized (24 by 36 inch) scrap-books filled with newspaper articles pasted in them. What are or have we done about them you ask? -- ahh - err-uhmmm... nutting (yet). Currently they are stored (flat) in boxes awaiting a "master plan." - Anyone just chime in and let me know if you've got a bright idea for a plan. :-) I thinking I should try and photocopy (onto acid-free-paper) each page or even more ideally photocopy just each article. Then we will be able to store the originals intact (and out of use) while at the same time we'd be able to "fiddle" copies -- if nothing else puting the articles in chronilogical order so they can be better indexed. We then (down the road) could also use the COPIES to scan into a computer (smaller and a bit less fragile than the original) and once in the computer use some OCR software to convert them back into "real words" . As for HOW to get the original pages onto the copying machine...hehehe well - I suppose that's why I haven't actually DONE it. This plan is a bit impractical. The pages are all oversized, (so you may want or need a large size copy machine) and they are all in poor condition, and shessh there are soo many of them. Hmmmm.... sounds to me like a good job for an "intern". Anyone wanna come out and help me? Okay - another more practical idea. I've thought about having all the pages microfilmed. I know it's not "sexy" in this high-tech society - does anyone even still use microfilm? How expensive is it to have a company come out and film a small collection. Hope I've been of help - please anyone else chim in with their two-cents worth. - David - David Lewis, Curator Aurora Regional Fire Museum www.AuroraRegionalFireMuseum.org [log in to unmask] ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).