Ask HN: How to scan and archive slides and photos?

I have a few thousand slides and photos that I would like to scan and archive myself. Currently I'm considering a scanner in the Epson Perfection V550 Photo range and writing a small program to store and tag the image blobs.

I wonder what others use and what works well, both for hardware and software? Any recommendations, dos and don'ts, etc. that you can share? Thanks :)