Photography Slides Preserving Negatives

Photographic slide archival meet today's digital technology. How less difficult would preserving photography would be If our great grandparents, grandparents, or even our own parents had the technology we have so readily available?

While this question has been asked by many who have taken on the challenge of saving any form of photographic memories, I, too, ponder this delicate preservation. My sister and I hold the honored responsibility of organizing and repairing a heritage of family slides. What is the best way to take advantage of the history sitting before us and combine it with the technology of today?

Never did like the concept of CDs or DVDs. Too easily damaged. I have disposable data on the few I do own. When they arrived on the scene I new anything worth saving for the next generation would have to wait for the next wave of technology. Storing information on the memory sticks impressed me more so than the disks.

Whatever choices we make with these old slides from the 1950s, 1960s, early 1970s must be easily transferred to the next wave of preservation that our children will see. I can only imagine how teeny, tiny that concept will be.

The slides in question have been in unhealthy storage over the years. Heat, cold, dampness. When we reviewed the slides via a projector shining images on the wall we discovered how age has destroyed some of them. Is it possible to correct the destruction with pc software or too time consuming for the average hobbiest?

Sure, the negatives could be corrected and preserved by developing at a professional lab. We did this with 3 or 4 slides for the 2 photo storyboards at my father's funeral a few years ago. What a nice presentation that was. But to take ALL of these slides to the lab may become quite costly.

We would like figure out a way to not only preserve what is here but also keep the storage space conveniently limited. The thought of our children's children moving boxes of volumes of scrapbooks...Hey, I know, the creativity sometimes gets the best of all of us. Unless you are the type who keeps EVERYTHING, i.e. all of the school year books dating back to elementary school...at some point we have to ask ourselves, "Do we really NEED to save all this?" It's an even bigger issue upon relocation from home-to-home.

Photography hobbiest: Do you have slides that you have corrected and preserved? If so, we would greatly appreciate your recommendations for easy transfer in future technology as well as convenient storage space.