Product Review

Are you sitting on a pile of old family photographs and wondering what is the best way to preserve them? What about boxes of family vacation slides, photo negatives or home movies? As more and more Baby Boomers take on the task of organizing family history materials, we’re uncertain about the best way to preserve these memories. And an over-abundance of technology doesn’t help! This short guide, Digitization Options for Family Photos: Including Slides, Film Negatives, and Home Movies, offers various ways to map out a plan and process for family media preservation.

There are various approaches you can take to scanning and digitizing these materials: send them out to a service or scan them yourself. Many of us don't feel comfortable sending our precious photos out so we take the “do it yourself” route. However, the DIY approach requires making the right choices when it comes to purchasing equipment and actually scanning items so that the resulting digital files are useful for genealogy research.

The process becomes more complicated once you discover that you need to digitize items such as film negatives, slides, oversized photos, home movie film and more. Do you purchase one scanner to handle all of these items? Or must you spend money for specialized scanners that you’ll only use a few times?

Digitization Options for Family Photos: Including Slides, Film Negatives, and Home Movies offers tips regarding digitizing items, with some sound advice on developing a comprehensive scanning program for items in your family archives. I hope you’ll find this guide useful!