bababa: Flaming Gas Bag: My parents are in their mid-80s and we've had this conversation. What do you do with their photo albums? Probably trash most of it. After all, why would I want the snapshots from their trip to Norway in 1986?

Somebody in the family might want them, though. I wish I had holiday pics from my grandparents and aunts, but my cousins threw them out.

This. The cause for this is descendants that don't like or want anything to do with a certain branch of the family. That or the owners inherited the items but don't want to share with anyone else then they die without anyone ever knowing what they had. I had a great aunt and uncle die shortly between each other. Their children put all kinds of previous things like my great grandparents wedding certificate and photos in an estate sale. My family was lucky to find out about the sale in the newspaper and buy back what should never had been sold.

Another cousin through being the oldest child of the oldest child of his parents family inherited my GG grandmother's journals. When my uncle found out about them when they were discovered 40 years ago he painstakingly xerox ed every page and spent years typing it out. Those journals have never been seen since.

Bottom line is you might not care about family items but I guarantee you have family members who would treasure them. Due to how the nature of families are, the further down the tree you go the more these things get split up. I realize that not ever family member can own the pipe my GG grandfather was given as a gift from his neighbors as he left Germany for America in 1850 but you can at least share photos of it. That's what makes digitizing great as everyone can have a copy of something that normally one one person can physically own.