Best way to digitize old family photos and slides?

With the growing number of wildfires in California, I've been thinking about the best ways to digitize old family photos and slides. I imagine there are some good companies that I could send boxes of photos and slides to, but since I'm at home anyway, I figure this may be a good project to tackle.

I'd appreciate recommendations for the best ways to do this. In particular:

  • What is the best way to scan photos that are laminated in photo albums?
  • What are some good tools for digitizing old slides?
  • What is the best way to efficiently load photos for digitizing?
  • What is a good way to organize and name the files?

I'm sure there are plenty of other questions I should be asking, so if any of you have done this already, I'd love to learn from you experience.