William Cubbon was often quoted as saying that any research was useless unless it was put into print (I paraphrase somewhat) - I guess today's print is accessible Internet with possibly long term on CD Roms (tho apparently they decay after 10 years - paper still seems the ideal cheap long term storage solution !) - most family history I suspect is easily reconstructable from reasonably accessible sources - the more valuable material are the transcribed primary sources already in RO's (eg I'm very willing to provide a home for these ) as this allows easy access for others or primary material (eg settlers' letters) not in Record Offices, most RO's would be very willing to preserve copies of these if the family doesn't want to donate the originals) - detailed family histories could easily be committed to print and a copy lodged with IoMFHSoc for future researchers - I've seen many of these but the standards vary enormously - I suspect many of these really should remain within the family.

However the IoMFHS can provide a salutary example of wasted effort - many of the original computerised transcriptions are apparently lost because they were saved in formats not readily readable thus edits have to be to an original printout ! This problem is regularly aired in academic forums on digitalisation of material (eg saving items in Microsoft proprietory doc format is useless as many older versions are no longer readable by later software)