Best Way To Preserve Media?

[Juniper]

I'm not totally clueless, but I'd like some opinions. Maybe there are ideas I haven't thought about, yet.

I've got VHS-C tapes (the little ones) from the camcorder. I had one of those "oh no, what happened to those" moments this morning, unearthed them, got out the full-size adapter to make sure they'd still play in our VCR.

I'm surprised we still have a VCR, actually. But it worked. I was going to copy them to a DVD, but realized the one hooked up in the living room is only a player. We're kind of a mess with this stuff. So many options with technology - the kids usually watch DVD's in their rooms or on my laptop, or on the little DVD player, rarely in the living room. And I'm not even sure the DVD player in the family room even works, or if the VCR is hooked up . . . but I digress.

There's a guy on hubby's mail route that does these conversions, and I'm thinking about paying him to do it because I don't relish the idea of spending hours and hours playing itty-bitty tapes to put them on a DVD.

He did that recently with the miles and miles of home movies I inherited from my parents. Hubby surprised me with it one day! I now have three DVD's with all my parents' home movies on them, which is such a wonderful thing.

Now I got a new camcorder a few years ago, and it takes those little mini DVD's, which also have to be put on a bigger one. And I admit, that's such a pain, I stopped even taking videos. Bad mom. I'm going to regret that someday.

Then I get to wondering -- what do you do with all this stuff? Is it going to become like those old 8mm home movies, useless unless you have the right equipment? Will it degrade over time? When my kids are in their 40s, will they open a box of DVDs labeled 1996, 1998, etc., sigh and wonder what they once were?

Anybody have plans for that sort of thing?

Also: Photographs. Yikes.

Recent ones: I do try to print the best ones, at least once a year; I send them to Snapfish and they come back in a box. If I ever have some "spare time" I will put them in albums. In the meantime I make sure my hard drive is backed up with an online service. Whew. But I am way behind on getting them printed, not because I can't afford it, but because it's time consuming. Printing has been sporadic for my photos ever since I got my first digital camera circa 2001. I also have several disposable cameras the kids have taken on various outings awaiting a trip to the drug store.

Old ones: Among the umptyzillion things I inherited, I have Billions and Billions (only slight exaggeration) of old photos dating from, well, the beginning of affordable photography. Those photos from the 1940s and even earlier have survived surprisingly well, and I don't want to be the one to mess that up. Some are in books, many just in boxes, some in cheap falling-apart frames.

Oh, and slides! I also have thousands of slides! What the heck do you do with slides???

It's going to take me forever to manage this avalanche of media, much like the copious other junk to manage in my house (and some not even here, yet . . . still in storage elsewhere, sigh) but I'd like some advice as I begin to formulate a plan to do it properly.

Thanks for reading my long ramble.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Someone more knowledgeable will have to advise you but....
My mother had a suit box (Robert Hall, I think ) full of loose photographs, from about 48 BC, on up. She gave them to me and I threw them away. She knew I was going to do that, she just couldn't do it herself. I've got to find someone to throw my super-8s, slides, photos away.

[Juniper]

Oh NO! How could you???

Seriously. I was raised to treasure two things: Books and Photos. My mom loved books, and that is another topic in media preservation -- I have boxes of books dating from the mid 1800s. Dad was a photo bug.

Hubby also loves old photos. We love to look at them, even if we haven't got a clue who is in them. For me, it's an inspiring thing, 'cause I am a writer, love historical fiction the bestest, and old photos really get my imagination going.

Also, it kills me to pitch out an old photo - maybe it's the librarian in me, but I think about these people who are long gone and mostly forgotten. Like my great-aunt Dora who died at age 30-something, unmarried - who will remember her? Nobody but these photos I have, maybe 7 of them, that showed she existed at all.

Yeah, I am sentimental.

[glatt]

If you digitize it all, then it's easy to convert it in the future to whatever the next storage medium is.

20 years ago I was bored and had some free time. I was at home after college, and I pulled out the family's old super 8 movies, and set up the VHS camcorder and videoed all of our home movies onto VHS. About 5 years ago, my brother took those old VHS tapes and converted them to DVD. A couple years ago, he put them on youtube to share with all the relatives. I don't watch them that often, but it's nice to be able to when I want to.

My parents have a bunch of old pictures from my childhood, and some of them have been scanned, but not all. I really would like to have copies of all of them.

The pictures I've taken are harder. we have maybe 20 albums of photos from when the kids were younger and we had film cameras. Now that everything is digital, we don't bother printing them out any more. There are too many. But they are backed up out the wazoo.

I don't have a good answer. I think the media should be easily accessible, but it shouldn't and can't be all out on display. There's too much. I have 41,000 family pictures from the last decade. Probably 40,000 of them are mediocre crap.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I have 41,000 family pictures from the last decade. Probably 40,000 of them are mediocre crap.

Exactly! Just save the good ones.

[Juniper]

Yes, that's why I only pick the good ones to print out. That's the wonderful thing about digital photography, you can take tons of crappy photos essentially for free and only pay for the good ones. With film I was always rationing myself, trying not to use up the film too quick and I'm sure I missed a lot of good photo ops.

[Pie]

For a while, I was winnowing down the photo collection after every trip/event. Keeping the originals, but selecting the best of the bunch. Then creating an on-line album with identifying titles.

Come to think of it, I should work on updating it. Though we haven't done anything interesting since the last update (Feb. 2008).

[skysidhe]

Scanning the old photos you like and putting them on a disk is a good way to save them and space.

[richlevy]

I soo00 hate scanning with a flatbed.

I picked up a Pandigital portable photo scanner from the QVC outlet store relatively cheaply to scan in old photos or photos given to me as prints. What I like about it is that it scans directly to an SD card and has an AC adapter so that you don't need a computer to use it. The computer is used only to access photos assuming you don't just plug in the chip directly.

My big complaint is that once the lens gets smudged, it's a bitch to clean and I now have streaking on some of my images. Still, it can process photos fairly quickly and I don't have to open and close lids and try to line up photos with corners.

The whole thing fits in a coat pocket. Two coat pockets counting the AC adapter.