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HI Shirley,
        the opinions of your staff seem extremely short sighted. I am a
G.I.S. researcher in the department of Geography at Queen's University
Belfast. We have found repeatedly that old data that might not be thought
of as useful fas found a new lease of life simply because it is spatially
referenced. A case in point :
A student here was working on creating a digital terrain model of the
mourne mountains area. We found by looking through our records that she
was able to check the accuracy of her model against a spatially
referenced survey that had been performed by a student a numbe rof years
back for a 2nd year project before computers were in widespread use!!!
The student then had no idea that her data would be valuable in the
future. Buts that the whole  point of value added data in G.I.S. ,
you keep building your spatial resources because 5 years down the line you
know that someone may find uses for it that you never dreamed of
 
    Good luck with the database
 
    Shane Murnion