FamilySearch has announced a new, free service to digitally scan, save, and share your photos and documents. The scanning machines are available in 2,800 family history centers in North America (and coming soon to international centers). Just take your pile of photos and documents to a FamilySearch family history center.
The family history centers use customized Lexmark multifunction machines that quickly scan photos, certificates, and other documents. The most exciting part is that the software lets you scan your documents and photos directly into a free FamilySearch.org account where the documents and photos can later be tagged, explained, shared with others, or attached to ancestors in your free FamilySearch Family Tree. You can also save the digital copies to a thumb drive and take them home with you.
Learn more in the article “What to Do with Those Old Family Photos, Letters, and Documents.”
Is it possible to do the same thing from home? Just scan them in then upload them to familysearch?
I have purchased a very small scanner, that scans and digitizes the photos as fast as you can feed them into the scanner. It has the option of scanning directly to your computer, or saving the scans to a SD card, like what is in a camera. Easy, quick and very cost effective especially if you have boxes and boxes of photos and documents like me, that you need to scan. I paid about $99 for it. If I could upload a photo, I could show you what they look like. So handy, and the scans are good quality! The scanner that I bought has the ability to scan any size photo or document up to 8.5″ x 11″. I like to do my scanning at home so it is very convenient and is another option for hauling your boxes of photos anywhere to do your scanning.
Alexandra,
Yes, you can scan them at home and upload them to FamilySearch. This system at FamilySearch Centers lets you do it quickly if you have lots to scan.
Larry
Is there a way to find out which family history centers have the scanners?
Mychael-Ann,
Most of the centers have them. You could call your local center to make sure.
Larry