Dominique As we have discovered, imaging is a real can of worms with a number of difficult tradeoffs/decisions to be made regarding resolution, processing speed, storage, retrieval etc. While I have no specific comments on the brands of equipment you are looking at, I strongly advise checking the processing times on any scanner you propose using as there are very significant differences which can make huge differences to productivity over a period (I assume you have already made your decisions on resolution capture quality). Re CD-ROM machines- again the write speed for a CD-ROM varies enormously from a couple of hours down to 10 minutes or so and there are various other considerations like the need for a dedicated pc with a large hard disk and lots of memory etc. In view of the cost of consumables and capacity of the media, we are not currently using CD-ROM but have decided to use DAT drives instead. The drives are much cheaper (as are the tapes) and the capacity is triple that of a CD-ROM. There's no easy answer though depending on retrieval and archival life of media etc, etc, etc........! Good luck! On Sat, 10 Feb 1996, Dominique Rogers wrote: > I work as a volunteer in a museum which is planning to store > images of the collection on CD ROM................... Tim ********************************************************************** * Tim Bosher * Museum of Victoria * * [log in to unmask] * Information Systems Branch * * Phone: +61 3 651 6751 * Fax: +61 3 651 6180 * * * * There is no time like the present to postpone * * what you should be doing. * * * **********************************************************************