----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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