Los Angeles's Memory Lab helps turn a box of old recordings into a preservation project
Central Library's do-it-yourself service supports personal digitization, with orientation and a reservation required before using the equipment.
Image: AI-generated illustrative photograph of generic digitization equipment and old media; not the Los Angeles Public Library Memory Lab or a guaranteed equipment arrangement.
A box of tapes or slides can contain material worth keeping even when the equipment to play it has disappeared from the house. Los Angeles Public Library's Memory Lab provides a place to begin working on that problem as a personal archiving project.
The free do-it-yourself lab is inside the Octavia Lab on Lower Level 2 of Central Library, 630 West Fifth Street. The library requires a card, online orientation and the Octavia Lab user agreement before a reservation. Contact the lab at 213-228-7150 about the equipment appropriate to your material and the appointment process.
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The library's workflows cover photographs, negatives, slides and several audio and video formats. Some transfers have specific limitations, including picture-only conversion for 8mm and Super 8 film. Read the instructions for the actual format you have; a familiar-looking cassette or reel is not enough to identify the right equipment.
Choose a small first project and work out where its digital files will be saved before arriving. Record names, dates and uncertainties alongside the images or sound, and decide who may receive copies. Preserving a recording is also an opportunity to preserve its context, so that a future listener knows what they are hearing.
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