A consortium of museums in Philadelphia is creating a combined collections
database.  We hope to eventually place this information on the Web (with
appropriate security measures, data limitations, etc), and are currently
looking at adding images of about 20% of each collection.  Each museum
already has some photography completed, but much more still needs to be done,
(probably over 10,000 at one museum alone).

Tradition calls for black & white photography -even if the computer fails,
you have the negatives -but photography, film, development & storage are very
expensive, not to mention scanning & CD conversion costs.  A digital camera
with image storage on writable CD-rom would seem to cut out some expensive
steps, but is it really that easy?   Does this method also cut out necessary
steps?

I would like to hear about any pitfalls, as well as praise, before before
committing to one method or the other.   Which is the best method to use, &
what will make the project most cost efective?

Margaret Lyman, Registrar
Atwater Kent Museum
215-922-3031
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