Best Way To Preserve Media?

[Juniper]

I'm not totally clueless, but I'd like some opinions. Maybe there are ideas I haven't thought about, yet.

I've got VHS-C tapes (the little ones) from the camcorder. I had one of those "oh no, what happened to those" moments this morning, unearthed them, got out the full-size adapter to make sure they'd still play in our VCR.

I'm surprised we still have a VCR, actually. But it worked. I was going to copy them to a DVD, but realized the one hooked up in the living room is only a player. We're kind of a mess with this stuff. So many options with technology - the kids usually watch DVD's in their rooms or on my laptop, or on the little DVD player, rarely in the living room. And I'm not even sure the DVD player in the family room even works, or if the VCR is hooked up . . . but I digress.

There's a guy on hubby's mail route that does these conversions, and I'm thinking about paying him to do it because I don't relish the idea of spending hours and hours playing itty-bitty tapes to put them on a DVD.

He did that recently with the miles and miles of home movies I inherited from my parents. Hubby surprised me with it one day! I now have three DVD's with all my parents' home movies on them, which is such a wonderful thing.

Now I got a new camcorder a few years ago, and it takes those little mini DVD's, which also have to be put on a bigger one. And I admit, that's such a pain, I stopped even taking videos. Bad mom. I'm going to regret that someday.

Then I get to wondering -- what do you do with all this stuff? Is it going to become like those old 8mm home movies, useless unless you have the right equipment? Will it degrade over time? When my kids are in their 40s, will they open a box of DVDs labeled 1996, 1998, etc., sigh and wonder what they once were?

Anybody have plans for that sort of thing?

Also: Photographs. Yikes.

Recent ones: I do try to print the best ones, at least once a year; I send them to Snapfish and they come back in a box. If I ever have some "spare time" I will put them in albums. In the meantime I make sure my hard drive is backed up with an online service. Whew. But I am way behind on getting them printed, not because I can't afford it, but because it's time consuming. Printing has been sporadic for my photos ever since I got my first digital camera circa 2001. I also have several disposable cameras the kids have taken on various outings awaiting a trip to the drug store.

Old ones: Among the umptyzillion things I inherited, I have Billions and Billions (only slight exaggeration) of old photos dating from, well, the beginning of affordable photography. Those photos from the 1940s and even earlier have survived surprisingly well, and I don't want to be the one to mess that up. Some are in books, many just in boxes, some in cheap falling-apart frames.

Oh, and slides! I also have thousands of slides! What the heck do you do with slides???

It's going to take me forever to manage this avalanche of media, much like the copious other junk to manage in my house (and some not even here, yet . . . still in storage elsewhere, sigh) but I'd like some advice as I begin to formulate a plan to do it properly.

Thanks for reading my long ramble.