The Memory Lab | Los Angeles Public Library

Providing tools and resources to preserve your unique history.

Increasingly, the materials that make up people's lives are becoming more digital, but not everyone has the equipment or knowledge to properly take care of them. Many analog formats, such as VHS, degrade over time and need to be digitized before the recordings are lost. The Los Angeles Public Library provides the following services to help individuals on their personal archiving and digital preservation journey.

DIY Memory Lab

The DIY Memory Lab is a space for free do-it-yourself digitization of photos, video, sound recordings, and other formats, located in the Octavia Lab on LL2 of the Los Angeles Central Library. Get a LAPL library card, attend an an online orientation, and sign the Octavia Lab User Agreement in order to book a reservation to digitize your own materials.

Mobile Memory Lab

The Los Angeles Public Library's Mobile Memory Lab is a pop-up program designed to collect stories, images, and other evidence of life in the City of Angels.

Workshops

Check out the list of upcoming Memory Lab workshops.

Online Resources

Learn how to take care of your physical and digital possessions and get resources to help you with your personal archiving projects.

Questions? Contact:

Digitization & Special Collections
Los Angeles Public Library
630 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Phone: 213-228-7150
Email: memorylab@lapl.org

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The Los Angeles Public Library serves the largest most diverse population of any library in the United States.

Through its Central Library and 72 branches, the Los Angeles Public Library provides free and easy access to information, ideas, books and technology that enrich, educate and empower every individual in our city's diverse communities.

With more people than ever before using the library—a record 17 million last year alone—your support helps the Library provide people with the resources they need to succeed and thrive.

How to support the Library

You can support the Los Angeles Public Library in several ways:

Join a “Friends” group. There is a “Friends of the Library” group for most branch libraries and departments of the Central Library. Friends groups raise money for improvements to their library through memberships, used book sales and other activities. For more information click here or talk to your local librarian.

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