software advice needed

[Bob83]

Hi!

i am about to embark on a largish project and i'm after everyone's thoughts on some software to help me out.

My father (and other members of the extended family) have fairly large collections of slides stored away. we have decided to finally try and digitally archive them. We are going to buy our own slide scanner (cheaper than getting them done professionally, we checked)
i'll probably be doing most of the scanning and archiving, being the most computer literate.

What i'm after is some software to somehow 'tag' the photos with basic info such as approx date taken, who's in it, where it was taken etc.

i need software that will either batch add, and edit exif data, or perhaps create a database file to store the information.

it really needs to be an open format, or at least have free readers, as if i want to hand out copies of the archive disks to family members, i don't want to have to install software on everyone's pc. i guess this argument makes an exif editor sound good as it can be opened by almost anything.
I don't really care if i have to buy a program to set it all up, i just want the result to be free to view.

Thanks