I can remember when I first experienced scanning technology, both for graphic images and text, about 12 years ago. I was so excited about the idea that I soon started thinking of how I could use this technology in my genealogical research. My first inclination was to scan all of my genealogical documents. It sounded fun, but I had no practical reason to pursue this course. As it turned out, I only scanned two or three documents before I tired of the "fun" and realized this was a drain on time and resources.

Of course, the technology of 12 years ago was nothing compared to what we have available today, but technology has never found a way to increase the amount of hours we have in a day. Yes, some applications can actually save you time in the long run, but others can encourage you to waste time. When it comes to scanning genealogical documents, I would have to put that activity in the "wasting time" category.

Now, before I get a lot of hate mail, let me explain myself and make some qualifications. Scanning genealogical documents as graphics, just for the sake of scanning them, is what I consider the time waster. The reason is, most of the people I talk to are still having trouble getting their documents organized in the first place. I am a proponent of organizing your physical documents before all else. Many of us have stacks of paper surrounding our desks, chairs, and file cabinets. These documents are very relevant to our genealogical pursuits, but once the documents are relegated to these stacks, they're as good as useless to those trying to find them again and use them in their research. Since the problem is one of organizing—and therefore also one of time management—a better use of the precious hours we can devote to our favorite pastime would be to physically organize these documents so they are of more use to us.

Adding the additional step of scanning these documents strains your resources, even though our technology is more advanced today than when I first tried this. The first wasted resource is time—the time spent scanning the document and ensuring that the image is true to the original, or better. The second wasted resource is physical storage space. While many of us have computers with several-gigabyte hard drives, the experts tell us that's not the place to store items like this. So, to do the job justice, you should get a physical storage drive, such as a ZIP drive or a CD burner. (I would say it's a good idea to have such a drive anyway, even if not necessarily for this purpose.) Once you start scanning genealogical documents as graphic images, you're going to use a lot of digital storage space to save them. It's great if you have lots of money and storage space for multitudes of CDs or ZIP disks, but if not, reconsider this purpose for scanning your documents.

There is one valid reason for scanning such documents, and that is to share them with others. If that's your reasoning, I recommend getting a CD burner and storing those images on CDs so your relatives can access them just as easily as you can. But this raises other issues, including accessibility. Even if you've scanned these documents, are they any easier to find now, and do you know what the documents contain? You will have the same problems in tracking digital documents as you do in tracking paper ones. You need to give the documents meaningful file names so you know what you have, and you need some sort of indexing system to retrieve the documents once you've scanned them.

Photos are the perfect documents to scan and share with others. I've addressed ways to scan and share photos in other columns in the past (see the GC Extra archive for these columns). Additionally, scanning photos can help preserve the images from deterioration so descendants can share the joy of seeing their ancestors. Most of the documents we bring home are photocopies, though, and don't need this type of protection.

What about scanning text in documents? Well, that may be more useful to you in the long run—if you can get your OCR software to recognize what it is you're scanning. It may also be useful because, if you can successfully scan the text of a document, you can use and manipulate that text in your research. But I'm afraid that most of the documents we deal with in genealogy can't effectively be scanned for text—yet. Maybe we'll see more drastic improvements in scanning software in another 5 to 10 years and be able to scan our genealogical documents for text.

Meanwhile, I recommend we work on organizing our physical documents before we add an additional step to this organizing process. Of course, I may have overlooked some valid reason for scanning all of your documents. If you know one, please write me, because I'd like to hear it.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is the managing editor of Genealogical Computing, editor of the Board for Certification of Genealogists' newsletter OnBoard, the creator of Clooz—the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical records, co-creator of the new family health history program GeneWeaver, and a frequent contributor to Ancestry Magazine. She can be reached via e-mail at liz@ancestordetective.com or gceditor@ancestry.com.