What to do with travel slides?

After dinner, either my wife or I would say, “Let’s go to Italy,” and we would look at all of the slides we had made on a trip — a wonderful way to relive it.

Starting in the ’70s we made many trips, and the number of slides is in the thousands. They are generally boxed by trip, but sometimes we consolidated the slides by city. They have, at intervals, my handwritten file tabs telling where we were, but those are crude.

These slides are records of where we were and what we saw — landscapes, city scenes, architecture (I love doors and capitals), flowers, fountains, pavements, interiors, even a dog or two — but not of us. We were, with a very few exceptions, behind the camera, not in front of it.

Now, years later, she has gone and I am pushing 90, and I wonder what to do about the slides. I could chuck them out, but that would be an awful waste because some are rather good. I could give them away or sell them (a distant maybe), untouched. Anything else would be labor intensive; I would have to select the best, box them, and digitize and save them to disc. If I haven’t done it by now, the chances of ever getting it done are pretty slim.

Once, I took about 200 slides to a local shop to be put on disc, but it turned out less than perfect, and, at 75¢ per slide, perfection is called for. It can’t be done without very careful preparation.

I would welcome ideas on the subject.* I am probably not alone in this.

New York, NY