Dead Sea Scrolls will be Digitally Available

The Washington Post reports that the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google are digitizing the entire collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the most fascinating and talked about archeological discoveries of the 20th century, scholars and the public will have online access to the electronic versions of the artifacts which will enable study without the risk of accelerated deterioration by exposure to light and variable air conditions. The report indicated that approximately 30,000 fragments from 900 scrolls will be digitized. 

Digitizing Founding Father's Papers

Americans will have easy access to the nation's Founding Fathers' papers thanks to the collaborative efforts the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grantmaking arm of the National Archives, and The University of Virginia (UVA) Press. NHPRC will provide a grant of $2 million to digitize volumes of documents and post them on a special web site. For more information, visit the National Coalition for History. 

The Case for Off-Site Digital Storage

More than 35 families may have lost their treasured photographs and other important documents in the aftermath of the San Bruno, CA natural gas pipeline explosion and fire last week.

How could you even imagine an entire neighborhood suddenly going up in flames? The residents of Detroit, MI don't need much imagination more than 85 homes, most of them unoccupied, burned during a wind-driven fire earlier last week. Tens of thousand lost electricity as the firefighters struggled to get the fire under control.

These two events remind us that in today's world things happen suddenly. It's easy to procrastinate and put off the tasks to prepare for an emergency. Getting around to it tomorrow or next week or next month is okay for certain things. You can lose the use of your home or office for a few weeks or months and you can survive. Your insurance company can pay your hotel bill and provide funds for new clothes and furniture, but how does your insurance company make you whole when your child's baby pictures or your wedding photos are consumed by a raging fire?

Our Heritage Vault offers some gentle advice about starting to digitize and store the important things in your life outside of your home. Take the first step by identifying the things that are most important to you. Our Important Things Index can help. Prioritize those things that matter to you and start scanning them or engage a reputable firm to do it for you.

Most important, back up and store your electronic files outside of your home. Use a portable hard drive or thumb drive to store your photos and keep it a safe deposit box or store the digitized material online in the Internet cloud.

Keep Data Safe During Disaster

The Miami Herald, Keep Data Safe, offered some planning ideas to mitigate losses from a disaster. For more about what you may want to protect, visit The Important Things Index  at EvacuPacket.com. where you can also learn about some innovative ways in which to protect the things that matter to you and your family.  

Automobile Maintenance Records

I had my car serviced for the first time yesterday. Last December, a storm and accompanying flood wreaked havoc on my previous car. My insurance company declared the auto a total wreck and told me to go out a buy another vehicle since my then 3-year old car would never be the same.

As I was driving to and from the car dealership, I must have passed 6 former dealships. Seeing those empty storefronts with vast parking lots surrounding them reminded me that I should keep my own set of maintenance records for our cars and not depend on a dealer to keep them for me. By scanning and keeping a digitized copy of my maintenance and repair receipts, I'll have the evidence to prove that the car was properly maintained and eligible for any repairs covered under the vehicle's warranty. I plan to keep those records in Our Heritage Vault.

Prepare to Share

We've been working on a new brochure to describe our products and services. It all comes down to "Prepare to Share."

When a family decides to prepare to share, it reviews its possessions and selects the things that are important to it. It chooses to digitize favorite photographs or collect digitized ones in one place. It determines that having the family's health histories and prescription drugs gathered in single location is a good thing to share with physicians and emergency care providers.

Our Heritage Vault's Important Things Index is a free checklist of the items a family may want to share. The biggest issue preventing a family from sharing its heritage may be time. It takes time to review a checklist items and pick those it wants to share. It also takes time to prepare the material and put it a place that is safe but accessible to the people that will enjoy or find the information helpful.

Our Heritage Vault offers solutions. If you want to trade dollars for time, we can digitally replicate photos, important documents, letters, and other sentimental items for you. We send your original materials back to you with your digitally archived material saved on a CD as well as a free virtual safe deposit box for you to try at Our Heritage Vault. Visit our Facebook page to learn the details about our sensational summer sale. For just $99.00 we'll create digital replicas of up to 75 individual photographs and 75 documents or letters.

First Day of 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season

Today marks the first day of hurricane season and long-range forecasters are predicting a very active season of tropical storms.

We awoke to a thunder storm and local street flooding. Some water seeped under our garage door, a reminder of December 17, 2009 when 6 inches of water collected in our garage. Like most folks, we store stuff in our garage. Not just automobiles, garden tools and sports equipment, we store old files, research papers, high school and college year books, photographs and newspaper clippings in our garage. Naturally, we had those heavy papers on the bottom shelves, stabilizing our storage units, and yes, they got soaked and had to be tossed out. We scanned and digitized several particularly sentimental items that we were able to dry out before they got moldy but many things were lost.

Everything on the floor and on the lowest shelves of the storage units in our garage are stored in covered, plastic bins now. We'll be fine . . . as long as 12 inches of water doesn't collect in our garage. At that point, there won't be time for preserving old memories. We'll be more concerned about being safe, moving our washer and dryer to a higher place inside the house, and trying to stop any water from seeping into our home.

It's time to find and create electronic files of those other old photos.