Slides to Digital Media

Many of us educators have boxes stored of slides that we used to show on slide projectors and screens to family, colleagues, and students. A recent colleague came to us for a recommendation on a new slide projector, preferably cheap, to replace one that had broken. We did a little looking on the Internet using Google's new site, http://www.froogle.com and another price comparator site, http://www.nextag.com and found some low end slide projectors for around $300 and a screen somewhat over $100.00. We did not find out favorite slide projector which you put slides in a small box like plastic container, then place this container in the slide projector. Several people we knew who had these slide projectors invested in several slide plastic containers so that they could easily and quickly get slides suitable for lessons on geography or biology. The low cost projectors all had an optional carosel, but to buy several of these carousels would be cost prohibitive.

This reflection and research caused us to think though that what we would be perpetuating was the past. What we really needed was a way to get these slides to a digital media and then to have the option of showing these slides on either a PC or TV. So, the question became, what is an optimal or even good way of transforming 7,000 slides spanning 50 years and several countries to new and more useful digital formats.

The first part of this question is how to get the slides into digital form. We found that the options range from sending the slides to a service bureau to hand feeding them in, one at a time to a scanner. Service bureaus on the average charge about $1.00 per slide although you can find cheaper service providers. Our slide scanner came with a light in its lid and a slide template to allow scanning of one slide at a time. These kind of scanners can scarcely be called slide scanners, but they do scan slides. They cost around $100.00 each. If you pay a little more you can get modifications of this scanner that will scan upwards of 3-4 slides at a time and come with software to break these slides apart. If you spend well over $1000 you can buy a slide scanner which can scan more accurately and rapidly. You really have to question if you need that additional accuracy and automation, however.

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