Denise, I spent some time reading a lot of the other replies and figured it was time for my 2 cents, from a non-museum environment. I work with a blueprint company, whose priority is digital storage and reatrieval for printing purposes. The archival quality of digital formats has been disucssed here and in other threads, but one comment may be, is this in regards to digital deterioration or simply from a future anticipation of changes in digital environments (i.e. new formats, etc.). From our point of view (i.e. less money, the better), we have installed a simple external drive to back up our server on a nightly basis. This rewrites the entire server onto the drive, avaioding the deteriorating aspects of digital formats. Notably, a decent developer (with a small museum, MS Acess or Virtual Studio would work), can write a database to retrieve all aspects of the artifact, including an image, except for the actual artifact itself. Thus, the root question is, and this has been brought up, the purpose of the digitization. If its for retreival (i.e. an elaborate card catalog), then it would simplicty would be the way to go. I also agree with the dividing up the collections, even a small museum can reveal itslef to be a monster collection of individual items. If the purpose is to produce an archival-quality photographic collection, a small budget makes things rather difficult. This should be brough to the attention of museum curators and its representative hierarchy. There is a myth that digital environments are easy to produce by simply snapping a photo with a digital camera. I've learned the hard way, that it is not. In regards to starting, I would expect that there would already be in-place a paper version of what they expect in digital. I would familarize myself with that in regards to developing a game plan, making it similar would be a comfortable starting point. However, being at work and starting to ramble, I'll end here, hopefully to incur some comments from the others, which will be helpful on both our parts. Cheers, Brad Holderman Coat of Arms --- Denise Haynes <[log in to unmask]> wrote: --------------------------------- Greetings to the list, I have volunteered to photograph the collection of the local historic house/museum (READ SMALL MUSEUM/ Practically Nonexistant Budget!). Having said that, I would like some advice from the sages on this list regarding my endeavor.... The board wants the collection photographed with a digital camera; fair enough, but, in light of the non-archival quality of digital photography, shouldn't I also photograph it with B&W film? (I need to speak to members of the board to get needed supplies) Any additional advice on proceding with what almost seems like a daunting task is welcomed! (i.e. what type of paperwork to keep..etc.) Thanks so much in advance! Denise --------------------------------- Get a bird’s eye view of your home with Windows Live Local =========================================================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). __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================= 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).