I just got this batch of old family slides, album pages and loose photos back from the scanning service. They are all supposedly on the little thumb drive. I’ll be honest, I was anxious the entire time they were being processed. I imagined a myriad of ways they could be lost forever.

The original idea was to get the ten or so boxes of photos we have from the time before the invention of digital cameras scanned. This was the first test run. I’m still waiting on a box of photos of my children that I sent to a different service. The next step will be to send the remaining boxes. Then I can store the physical items in a more compact way and load the digital items onto a remote backup.

Now I wonder what to do next. I can organize these and share them with the cousins. But, will we do anything further with them or will they just be forgotten again and gather virtual dust instead of physical?