There is my grandfather around 1925 coming from Philadelphia to Cinnaminson.
I bet he could be wondering "What am I getting myself into?"
How does the local Historical Society relate to me? Or as John Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." How do YOU relate to the local historical society?
This doesn't mean every person in town should write out their whole life story and gather up all the old photos etc.... and take them to the Historical Society, BUT if your family owned a farm, or worked on one, and now the area is a suburban subdivision, you should write out a short report, and give photo scans. Another person who would be a candidate would be a owner of the home when it was brand new who has old photos or stories. Its so classic to see the lots with only saplings planted in the landscape, etc... But there are no rules involved so use your judgement. Someday you will, if not now it seems, become interesting as things move into the future. I laugh because when I photograph places around town, I wait for cars to pass by on the street to get out of the way of the photo, but someday they will actually be interesting as they will be antiques then.
What happens alot is that old photos are kept by families, and the Historical Society isn't even considered. (I mean when there is a relationship to the township.) The photos are passed on and on and the descendants move to other places and also in-law relationships become involved and one day, if the photos are even well cared for, are thrown out.
If you don't care to join a Historical Society, you can occassionally attend a meeting, or even donate 5-10 dollars etc... if you want to watch them have a heart attack!
The usual thing that will happen, as been seen time and time again on the t.v. news, is that when a family's home burned down, the number one thing they are sad about (when nobody dies in the fire) is losing their old photographs.
Scanners are cheap. Get out all those old "baby pictures" and family photos and scan them. Then you want to put them on a cd rom and give a copy of that to several family members. Now you have "saved them." This also is beneficial in that the actual photos are slowly degenerating anyway.
How to scan- You want to scan at 1200 D.P.I for a 4 x 6 photo if you are "archiving it." 600 D.P.I for a larger photograph. This is obviously not needed if it is for a webpage or email, or even just printing on a piece of paper. You can always resize it smaller. I scan in color even though a photo may be black and white. I use "text enhanced" to scan newspaper write ups. If you have a few extremely precious photos save them also as Tiff files.
When you re-save jpg images they degrade at each resave. SO CROP, HAVE STRAIGHT NOT CROOKED, etc... your photo scan the first time. When a person needs to later crop and rotate and resave your photo it doesn't do the image any favors.
Archiving that effects you, besides heavy stuff like land titles, marriage records, wills, is that you can go to places likes the Burlington County Library or Burlington County College in Pemberton and view old newspapers on microfilm. You can make a print out of say a wedding announcement, obituary, club event, etc...