I've made the switch to digital. Many beautiful color slides, most labeled with scientific name or other descriptor. Mostly USDA 4-6 stuff, also some general horticulture and botanical garden slides.

I would have a hard time tossing the scanned slides also - but understand your space limitations. I have an Epson flatbed V200 scanner that I scan slides with. LOVE IT! Love it even more with my new computer that runs so much faster (didn't have any trouble with it working on the new Windows 7 OS either) My Epson is no longer available, but the V500 is pretty much the same unit. I looked up both the Epson and the Cano Scan on Amazon. Looks like both will scan 4 slides at once. I have done large batches (hundreds - not thousands though). It take a while, but if you leave a stack, and just swap them out while you are on the computer, you can get a lot done! I like reading the reviews on Amazon - gives great reviews from people that have actually used the unit. Both the Epson and the Canon have lots of reviews. Price is very similar. I like the Epson flat bed personally. You can scan documents or photos. I find it super handy just to copy a paper when needed. It is NOT an all in one. Just a flat bed scanner. But if I need a copy of a paper, I can just hit "copy" and it will scan and send it to my printer. I scan at 600dpi - which is plenty. Unless you are going to print somthing wall size, you don't need to use the super high settings. It will just make a huge file and take a long time to scan. Make sure you have a couple back up sources for you scans if you are going to dispose of the slides. DVD's can go bad - hard drive fail... I would use at least 2 different backup methods. Here is a scan from a slide from the late 40's or early '50's. Slide had dust and a few scratches.....

Hi ... using my wife's call sign. I am in the process of digitizing my slides and will eventually digitize a boat load of my father-in-law's (60+ years worth). I did some research and found that, as mentioned, scanners will do the job, but they're very slow. So, if you're digitizing a few rolls of slides, they'll work fine. But, it's probably takes too much time if we're talking about hundreds or thousands of slides. I have a DSLR, a Nikon D80, and some old slide copying equipment ... a Nikon PB-5 bellows and a Nikon PS-5 slide copier. I attached to this set up a Nikon 28-85mm zoom lens, set at 85mm. With this set up, I can take a digital image of a 35mm slide without cropping (see the picture in the link). You need to use a lens longer than 50mm to avoid the APS-C sensor cropping. My 85mm may not be ideal (a Nikon 105mm Micro/Macro is probably better), but it's what I have available. So, how's this work? Images are OK, not as sharp as the original slide but acceptable. Speed is outstanding. If you don't need to alter the exposure, it's a matter of popping in one slide, hit the trigger, pop in the next. I can digitize a 36-exposure roll in about 15 minutes. I also understand you can use a macro lens (attached directly to the camera body ... no bellows) along with a extension rings in front of the lens, attached to a slide copy holder. Here's a link: http://www.scantips.com/es-1.html Here is a link that might be useful: Digitizing 35 mm slides - Nikon D80

I would not throw away the slides! Those are the originals that can never be duplicated if something happens to your everyday copies. Expect the everyday copies to experience wear, tear, and finger prints. The media you may use to store the digitzed images is not all that permanent. Hard drives fail; Thumb USB drives may eventually give up the ghost. Research the storage life of a USB drive before depending on it for long term storage. My informtion is old, harking back to the early development days of those drives. Back then, the storage life was rated at 10 years. Those thumb drives have improved greatly since then, but the underlying technology is still the same. The memory in a USB drive requires a "keep alive" battery. typically, this battery is a small lithium cell that can keep the memory fresh for about 10 yrs and then it is done. Each junction in a solid state storage device is good for about 10,000 re-writes before failure. Clever tricks are employed to extend the life of these devices. An internal controller writes the data in a way to use all of the memory. It does not keep rewriting over the same locations, but moves the start partition when possible after an early file is deleted. It cycles the data over the entire media. In this way, all junctions get about the same usage rather than rewriting the begining parts over and over again. This statragy increases the life of the device. When a thumb drive is used for long term stoage of photo images, individaul junctions are not rewritten very often so this would not be a concern. However, the internal battery life is a concern. Burning the data to a CD is a good move, again only if the very best is used, and if there is a planned program of re-copying every 4 to 5 years. You'll have to research to find which media is best at long term storage: CD_R, CDRW , or DVD. It is sensible to make digital files so that you can reprint images as desired and pass along copies. But, it does not make semse to destroy the original images. My advice: 1. Cull the slides and save only the "keepers". 2. Digitize the keepers and toss the junk. 3. Pack the keepers in good boxes and store in a cool, dry location. 4. While you are culling, make a record/index of the slides with titles and dates. Print a copy and put with the slides. This will be very handy if, in the future, you wish to find a paricular slide. Put a digital copy of this index on each storage device.