Digital Memories Lab FAQs

• 01/15/2024
• 11:01
• maureen

FAQs that will guide you on how to start preserving your memories today!

What was the inspiration for this service?

The need for the equipment for the Digital Memories Lab was based on or inspired by our community’s focus and interest in local history and genealogy. We wanted to provide tools to our community members that would allow them to preserve their family history, which also preserves our local history. We chose equipment that would target the most common types of family and local history: photos, videos, documents, and ephemera.

How was the equipment for the Digital Memories Lab funded?

The Digital Memories Lab was funded in part by a grant from the Fred M. Everett and Ora H. Everett Charitable Trust, Bank of America, N. A., Trustee

How does this service work?

You can digitize a variety of items from your family’s history: VHS tapes, 35 mm negatives and slides, 8mm and Super 8 film, photographs and documents, and – coming soon – cassette tapes.

Bring a personal storage device with you – USB or external hard drive – or create an account for cloud storage – Google Drive, etc. Digitized materials cannot be saved to library computers and must be saved to personal storage.  Please make sure your selected storage has enough capacity for your digital files.

Research staff will help you get started with digitizing your items and will be available to troubleshoot the equipment.  The actual digitizing will be done by you.

Do I need a library card?

At this time you do not need to have a Seymour Library card.

Can I come in without an appointment?

You will need to make an appointment by calling the Library’s History Discovery Center (HDC) at 315-252-2571 ex. 414 during History Center hours of operation (Wed – Fri 10 – 4).

Can I sign up online?

At this time online registration is not available.

What if I need more than one appointment or a longer appointment for a video that lasts more than 1-½ hours? (Realtime plus compression of the files must be factored into the visit.)

At this time, the Memories Lab is limited to one appointment per person per day with a maximum time slot of two hours.  If your recording is longer, you will need to make a second appointment and break the recording into more than one digital file.

Is there a fee for this service?

No, but donations are greatly appreciated and allow us to continue to expand the services offered by the History Discovery Center.

What else can you do at the HDC?

The History Discovery Center contains a wide range of materials on local history and genealogy including city directories, yearbooks, maps, and images.  We offer access at home and onsite to Heritage Quest for historic censuses and other data as well as guidance in using newspaper databases.