Digitizing old photos

I had this same dilemma (how to transfer photos & videos) about 2 years ago, and never moved forward, primarily overwhelmed by the cost or the time. If you’re also interested in video transfers, there was a lot of great advice on a past CC thread: Copying OLD VHS tapes

Our library has a high quality scanner (prints or slides), but you can only reserve about 45 minutes each month due to popularity. Closed during Covid as well. I could only scan about 24 slides per session. They also have a video scanner but it takes the same time to transfer as the original – so only 45 minutes of a 2 hr. video.

I finally gave a local company 2 of my video tapes. About $50 for the transfer to a thumb drive. It had some great short memories of the children at various points of their younger selves through high school (I had edited long ago when in video format), and of their grandparents. I gave the digital version to the children as gifts. They’ve never watched.

As mentioned on the above thread, I came to the conclusion (for now), that I’m not sure changing formats to digital will ever encourage viewing any more than the old photo albums. I may try to select a very very few photos to scan for archive reasons only – but then it will take hours to decide which!