I apologize if this is not allowed, I read through the rules and wasn’t sure. I’m lucky that I have a couple generations of pack rats. My mom has put all of the letters, papers, and journals in page protectors in binders. It such a treasure trove. I’m a history teacher and am drooling over. We can all see what a treasure we have. We don’t have a way to digitize it. We would love to preserve it and make these resources available for people to use! We would also love to know about our own history. What should we do? Are there groups we could approach? Someone we could hire? Thanks!!
I am not a historian but I do have a MA in Archives Management so I am qualified to answer this particular question.
Best possible outcome: you donate everything to an Archives/Library or Museum while keeping surrogates (paper copies made on any copy machine by a professional) for yourselves and family. If you want to try to sell some of it rather than donating it that is up to you, it might be possible depending on the collection and the places you approach.
If you do not want to part with the originals there are a few large scale/low cost things you can do to make sure your collection lasts: 1. Do not keep the binder in the attic or the basement. I know, this seems like the ideal storage place but in terms of photographs and documents you are asking for water damage from flooding and pest damage from bugs and mice. Keep it on a book shelf on the main floor out of the sunlight. 2. If you are going to encourage people to look at/use the materials consider making copies and letting them use the copies. The oils from our fingers can break down photographs and newspaper particularly quickly.
If money is not an issue consider taking the materials out of the binder and plastic sleeves and putting them in an acid-free, lignin-free, buffered box in the same kind of folders. You can find them online. The specifications are important because paper is slightly acidic and if if you put old acidic materials in folders that are also acidic over time they will yellow.
Try to remove all staples and paper clips so they don’t leave dents in the materials and eventually rust.