Keep original letters after scanning

Question

I have a series of letters to my father from neighborhood buddies, girlfriend and parents written during World War II. I am presently scanning them into my archives. Is there any value in keeping the original letters.?

Comments

Yes!

I often say to my girls "print out your favourite photos". I hope the day never comes thay may wish they had. If anything ever happened which took out computers/www then our children's children are going to have a whole generation of no photographs. I print every single record or photograph, keep hard copies of everything, filed away. That's one reason I would like to see wikitree create a printer friendly option for profiles too. I would love to be able to print out in a beautiful manner (as one can on wikipedia) all my work here for posterity ... but alas ... that request although made by many over the years including myself it seems will never happen.

So for sure ~ keep those precious letters :) They are irreplaceable.

Answer 1

As we at WikiTree are all genealogists, we should save any and all hard-copy source items that we find if is at all possible and within our means.

If we feel we cannot save such items ourselves, we should try to find them a home with a relative, a genealogical society, or a similar preservation group.

And we should, of course, always make backup disks for our our digital records.

Answer 2

Yes, you should keep the original letters.

Answer 3

If you don't see any need to keep them for yourself perhaps they could be donated to an archive suitable?

In another 50 years, (or a 100) they could be a historic window for someone else, just like any 150 year old letter today would be a historic window from mid 1800.