“Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and his environment that are both works of art and moments in history.”

Not too long ago I finished scanning all my photos I have had stored in the eves. I have had these photos sitting in storage forever and I never look at them. However now they are scanned and backed up I do not have to worry about the paper goods being ruined. Besides the safety of my pictures scanning is good in other ways. I started making slideshows set to music so the family could look at these long forgotten memories or I started emailing them to friends. The other big advantage is organization. All my photos are tagged with keywords and have space for comments so I can find anything easily. Doing all this is thought to be complicated but all you need is a scanner. You can pick up a decent one for less than $150. The scanners I like best have the feature that allows you to put multiple photos at once and then it divides them into different files, saves a lot of time. Once you have a scanner slap the photos down and hit scan. They usually are fairly automatic. Then use software like Picassa (free) or Adobe Photo Elements ($30) to clean them up. Or send them to an online storage place like Flickr. This way many more people can see your stuff and you can email it easily to people. At some of the Providence libraries we have Scanners for the public to use. Give this a try and reclaim your photos.