On 26 Jan 2014, at 11:24, Jane McGary wrote: > ...I think it's useful to keep a paper record as well as a database. Judith Martin, writing as Miss Manners, made that very remark vis a vis electronic address books. Hard drives can and do fail, and backups can turn sour too, but paper is almost forever. When I was working, someone latched onto the meme "paperless office" so we were filing diskettes instead of paper documents. Today, you have to make special arrangements to have a diskette drive in a computer, so those diskettes are effectively unreadable. There's the further problem of file formats changing or going obsolete, a vice to which MS software seems particularly prone. Just try reading an old Lotus 1-2-3 Release 5 file today! So, dear bulbophiles, do print out your irreplaceable data and file it where you can find it after your house burns down. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Z. 7-8, cool Mediterranean climate