I think that is the right word about the commitment of the Library of Virginia to boldly march into the past and continue to embrace microfilm for historical records.  Oh, I know the debates about longevity of media, and particularly problems of making and preserving DVDs that will last.  But come on guys.....  one beauty of digital media is that with a periodic test program, it can diagnose problems and trigger alerts to copy the deteriorating bits to a new home.

I am reminded of that classic line from "Finians Rainbow", uttered by Senator ---  I forget his name.  He draws his sword and lunges offstage with the cry "FORWARD!!!!!!   FORWARD TO THE STATUS QUO."

I call you attention to alternatives like the "Dark Archive" being developed by a consotium of institutions -- Georgia Tech, Emory U, Virginia Tech come to mind -- which not only preserve records in digital form, but spread them around in a huge distributed duplicated network.

On a personal basis, my wife and I are going full-bore to preserve family records in digital form.  Specifically Adobe PDF format plus some selected audio files.  This includes:

- My father's military records from 1918 to his retirement in 1954
- "Songs We Grew Up With" - the songs our kids sang as we drove along (Shades of those Chevy Chase VACATION movies.:-))
- a 120-page (it started as about 10) "What I remember about growing up in WWII"
- The Cabells and Their Kin in The Civil War
- 50 years of newsletters of The Cabell Foundation
- etc.

Note that a tremendous advantage of the digitizing process itself if you shoot for PDF files is not only the ability to widely share (we have 5 children and 15 grandchildren), but that the data bases are searchable for words and phrases, without having to create indexes.

If anybody out in VA-HIST land is considering going digital, get in touch with me and I'll share my experiences -- the successes and the frustrations.

Randy 

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