BLOBs and alternatives

Hello,
I am building a database for company employee info/records system. I
just wanted to solicit some opinions on storage of images and documents.

I'm using PG 7.3.4 on a Slackware 9 Linux system.I anticipate that the
database will be at the bottom of a 3 tier design accessed through a web
browser. The majority of data is structured data that fits nicely into
standard data types. I do have a few things that should either be stored
as BLOBs or separately in a file system. The entries in the database
could reference attributes such as:

absolute path
relative path
mime type or file type
name
IP address

These are things such as scanned images, training certificates,
licenses, diplomas,text docs, etc. What I was looking for is support for
either way or if you have some other ideas. I've read opinions
supporting both methods, I don't have experience in storage and
retrieval of objects described above.

Many thanks.
--
Kent L. Nasveschuk <kent(at)wareham(dot)k12(dot)ma(dot)us>