[HN Gopher] Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing...
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Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 73 points
Date : 2026-03-24 04:22 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| eschaton wrote:
| Many libraries or library systems actually have something like
| this. In the Bay Area, the large Santa Clara Library does and at
| least had regular drop-in hours.
| Larrikin wrote:
| My local library can do vhs and all the various smaller form
| tapes that came in between like mini dv. They also support
| cassette tapes and the various consumer projectors people used
| back when home movies were just becoming a thing. They even
| have a large bed scanner you can fill with photos and the
| software will turn them into individual files.
| unkeptbarista wrote:
| There is a network of Memory Labs (1) and many more that are
| not part of the network. Check your local libraries to see if
| they have one. The Kansas City area has one at the Johnson
| County library.
|
| 1) https://memorylabnetwork.github.io
| valleyer wrote:
| Super, super cool initiative.
|
| I would be interested to know what capture hardware they're
| using. As someone who took on this project for my own family's
| videos, I ended up using the Canopus ADVC-110, which captures
| composite (or S-Video) NTSC (plus stereo audio) and generates DV,
| which you can then capture over FireWire.
|
| It worked well for me since it didn't require any non-built-in
| drivers on macOS (though I hear Tahoe drops FireWire support
| entirely -- boo), and it therefore was easily interoperable with
| FFmpeg, VLC, and custom AVFoundation code I wrote.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think the ADVC-110 is made anymore, and my
| experiments with various USB Video Class devices (which would be
| similarly interoperable), mostly based on MacroSilicon chips like
| the MS210x, were utter failures in terms of quality.
| valleyer wrote:
| Looks like Santa Clara is using the VuPoint Digital Video
| Converter -- not familiar with this one, so I'll have to look
| into it.
|
| https://www.sclibrary.org/services/other-services/vhs-conver...
| lldb wrote:
| Unfortunately devices like the VuPoint - while low cost and
| accessible - deliver impressively terrible results. It's a
| composite to usb converter which will fail to handle
| delinterlacing and get the colors wrong.
|
| The best bet for people who aren't going to build a domesday
| duplicator (which decodes the VHS signal in software), is to
| stick to technology from the era. Such as later released VHS
| players which had FireWire out or could even burn a dvd.
| sophacles wrote:
| My local makerspace is building a memory lab. It's very cool. In
| addition to the obvious "let's get that old media that's becoming
| harder and harder to play and/or is degrading digitized", there's
| some really cool stuff you can do.
|
| A very useful on is workshops - older folks are often the keepers
| of the family archive and aren't comfortable using technology at
| all, so teaching them not just how to use the equipment, but also
| safe-keep the digital product (backups, etc) is important.
| Additionally teaching concepts like infinite free reproduction is
| helpful because many older folks I've talked to stress about how
| to divvy up the archive among the children/grandchildren/etc, and
| are delighted at the idea of "everyone gets all of it", and are
| also delighted at the idea of "make a family archive that
| includes a more extended group of people and their archive
| combined".
|
| Other cool things we've explored and/or are planning to explore:
|
| * making collages and memes and digital scrapbooks for the family
| as a way of telling the family history/story, doubly cool because
| you don't have to sacrifice the only copy of a picture to do so.
| People feel liberated to do some really interesting things.
|
| * having digitization be a community process by hosting regular
| memory-lab nights. Digitizing everything is a daunting task
| sometimes. There may be a lot of material. There may be a lot of
| context that one wants to capture with the material (labeling
| photos, explaining the photo, etc - I've heard some great stories
| from the old-timers as we digitize their photos). Not all
| memories are good ones... sometimes someone will get to a photo
| and it brings up bad memories. One woman was very glad we were
| there when we got to a section of her photos of her child who had
| died and we were able to give her a hug and let her cry and talk
| about it, and help her work through a difficult thing while
| preserving the memories.
|
| * I've often heard tech people say "sometimes its hard to do
| skilled volunteer work with my tech skills...", particularly in a
| way that is also social and community-building. Helping in these
| sorts of community digitization processes is a nice way to use
| your skills and also bond with community members.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| This is AWESOME and I see from the comments that "Memory Lab" is
| a more or less standard thing. Ties in really neatly with the
| recent personal encyclopedia post
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47522173
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| looks like DC's PL has had one since 2024
| https://www.dclibrary.org/using-the-library/digital-preserva...
| mbil wrote:
| At the end of last year I took the old VCR and VHS home movies
| from the 90s out of my mom's basement and digitized them using
| this cheap converter[0]. I also had to get some rubbing alcohol
| and foam swabs to clean the VCR heads, which only took a few
| minutes[1] (some of the older tapes would play normally for a
| moment before the quality degraded into poor tracking and
| static). My family enjoyed watching them.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB6BW6X4
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ClXrffkN3M
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I would love to figure out a not-for-profit business model to
| help people preserve their personal physical and digital records
| (think Grandma's iPhone w/ 90GB of photos and videos of the
| family on it as well as the old family albums, video tapes,
| films, etc).
|
| I suppose there's a component of citizen journalism and
| historical preservation in my thinking, too. This work isn't just
| for families, but also serves to document the history of a
| community, too.
|
| I would jump at the chance to do work in this space full-time.
| What little I have done, helping friends and with my own family,
| was fun and rewarding. I've never been able to figure out how to
| finance it.
|
| The lab described in the article and others like it handle the
| digitization part, but there's still the the "forever problem" of
| kicking data down the road onto new storage technologies /
| services, too. The digitizing is the easier problem. Once the
| material is digitized I feel like it's in a lot more peril for
| catastrophic loss.
|
| I think something like "digital cemeteries / memory gardens",
| financed by endowments that allow them to continue to operate in
| perpetuity, should be "a thing". I haven't thought deeply about
| how to make it work, but the "shallow" thinking I've done says
| it's financially unsustainable.
|
| I lean toward not-for-profit because I'd like to provide the
| services for as close to free to the clients as possible. I think
| preserving family memories and records should be accessible to
| everyone-- not just those with significant financial means.
|
| While I think what libraries do with these labs is laudable, I
| worry that the self-service aspect raises the bar too high for
| some people. I think having a service component, at a reasonable
| price, to do the digitizing and to work to preserve the material
| in perpetuity would be a great thing.
| all2 wrote:
| You gotta make money somehow. Maybe have an optional
| durable+accessible storage and portal (just a SaaS and optional
| harddrive that you ship out or update on occasion... a miniPC
| that pulls from the SaaS using rsync automatically?).
|
| You might be able to make this work if you sell enough of the
| SaaS subscriptions (12 bucks a month or 200 a year for
| perrenial backups -- ship us the device/etc. and we'll get the
| media into your account. You'd need 1000 customers with a 20%
| systems cost to do this full time, which seems reasonable).
| aaronax wrote:
| There is a reason the Wordpress 100-year plan costs $38,000.
| goatlove wrote:
| I love the idea! So many people have old home movies, slides, and
| VHS tapes just sitting around collecting dust.Feel bad to throw
| it away but doest know what to do with them. The self-service
| approach is smart too--you actually learn how to preserve your
| own memories instead of just handing them off. Libraries are
| really making the practical and meaningful things. I love Boston
| Public Library a lot. Had to check if they have one.
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