I was sorting one of my many stacks and found a stray BDM certificate where it wasn't supposed to be. So, nothing daunted, I went through some more stacks and then found even more of them.
I unhooked the scanner from DH's XP system, hooked it up to my Vista system and started scanning using a great piece of 3rd party scanning
software called VueScan from Hamrick Software. VueScan allows you to keep using your reliable, perfectly adequate scanner that is no longer supported by your operating system. Frankly, this has more and better options than the original software ever had and is easier to use to boot.
I started scanning away and saving the scans in a central place under my "Genealogy Notes" folder as "Certificates" both as JPG's and PDF's until I came from the certificates from Western Australia. These are too long for my scanner which handles up to A4 handily. I would wish that these weren't as long, of course, but the last two columns contain details of the person's marriage and children, both names and places. I've found very good data in these 2 extra columns.
What to do with these? A visit to Kinko's or Office Depot seems to be in order to use their larger scanners.
Among them are a number of strays, people who I thought were part of the family but who turned out to be of no interest. The English ones I added to BMD Certificate Exchange in case someone wants them. I still have my scans for reference.
The next step is to make sure these are added to my database, images attached, sources and citations written up, every last nugget of information saved away, and last,but not least, filing away in the proper folder.
