By Michelle Waltos

Librarian

If you have photo albums, shoeboxes filled with slides and 35mm film and cabinets with home movies on videocassette, it’s time to think about digitizing them. Converting images to a digital format will ensure they’re available for generations to come, and it will make them easier to share with friends and family. In fact, many use digital photos to create personalized gifts such as blankets, mugs, calendars and more.

The Preservation Studio inside the Northern Onondaga Public Library (NOPL) at Brewerton contains all the equipment you need to begin such a project.

Two types of photo scanners are available in the space. The first will scan an entire album page of photos and allow you to “separate” them digitally, while the second scanner can feed and scan up to fifty loose photos per minute.

Another station inside the Preservation Studio allows VHS home movies to be scanned and simultaneously burned onto writeable DVDs in real time. Individual slides, slide carousels and various sizes of film can be digitized at a third station, and the resulting images are saved to an SD card.

The Preservation Studio is open to Onondaga County residents with a valid library card and residents of neighboring counties who have a NOPL membership. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own digital storage device, but the library does have DVDs, CDs, SD cards and flash drives available for sale at the service desk. Walk-ins are welcome, but appointments are strongly recommended. Call 676-7484 to reserve a time.

For more information about the Preservation Studio, FAQs, and links to free online photo editing software and classes, please visit nopl.org/pstudio.