IN these days of high technology, many historians are worried that important documents might fall foul of the shredders after being saved on computer discs.

Historical societies in Evesham and Campden are urging anyone with ancient documents to make sure they are safely stored, or handed over for posterity.

The Campden District Historical and Archaeological Society members are inviting interested householders to sign up for its day school on Researching House History Using Old Documents next month, in a bid to encourage awareness.

Members believe ancient deeds may be lost by solicitors cleaning out their archives, after the local history buffs came up against problems when researching particular properties .

Chairman of the Vale of Evesham Historical Society, Gerald Heath said: "We are always keen to receive any old documents of any description. We have many stored in the Almonry Museum where they are preserved under the correct conditions."

David Snowden, the society's record keeper and IT consultant said: "Very old documents, especially those on parchment or velum have an intrinsic value in their own right, so are kept and preserved.

"State papers, treaties, major commercial agreements, court rolls and so on are in a little danger. They will probably be scanned and the originals destroyed or packed into a warehouse somewhere. From the point of view of the information they contain, which is what historians are really interested in, that is not a great problem. Scanning a collection and putting it on disc and online is a boon to most of us because we can access it from any convenient internet device."

He added: "Day-to-day documents are increasingly being shredded, even at home, to protect against identity fraud and because storing and handling paper is far more costly than scanning the document and handling its image electronically."

He said storage was now less of a problem to historians than in the future. "These days, the nature of documents' has changed and historians of the future will have to deal with emails, web pages, iPod downloads and a variety of other virtual' documents. All the state papers of the 14th Century are probably no more than what a large-sized business has to deal with in a year", Mr Snowden said.

According to solicitors, they would never shred old deeds, but they advise people to get them scanned and put on a pdf file in these modern times.

Robert Wellington, of Needham and James, said: "There is a problem when old documents go missing, despite the fact that there is little need for them since land registration came into being in the mid 1980's. Sometimes mistakes are made in registration, or papers get lost from one mortgagee to another, so old deeds can be very useful. I would advise anyone to keep their old deeds safely, or get their solicitors or banks to store them."

John Brooks, from Cox & Hodgetts in Evesham, said: "We would never destroy old deeds. Those more than 200 years old we have already sent to the County Records Office, and we have a huge fireproof storage area for clients' deeds and documents which we store for a small fee."

Manager of the Worcestershire's county records office Debbie Birch said her department still stores paper documents, and the new building which the records office is to be relocated to in the centre of the city in 2011, is required to have 15 to 25 years' storage capacity, in line with national policy.

She said: "We will still have paper for quite a long time. There is no guarantee at the moment that something stored on CD is going to last as long as parchment."

She said that archivists all over the world were working on the electronic storage of historic records, but added that there was still some way to go before paper was abandoned.

For information on the day school researching house history on Saturday, March 10, call 01386 848840.

Anyone interested in visiting the county records office or depositing material should ring the archivists on 01905 766351.

Gerald Heath, chairman of Evesham Historical Society can be contacted on 01386 443022.