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Aaron's A to Z Garden of
Information
13 Steps to Preserve Your Family History (genealogy)
13
Steps to Preserve Your Family History (genealogy_
by LeAnn Ralph
From the e-book: Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for
Writing Oral Histories) (66 pages; April 2004; $7.95) available at —
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1545.html To see the table of contents
and several sets of sample questions visit —
http://www.ruralroute2.com/family_history.html
Although the phrase, "everybody has a story to tell" may sound like a cliche,
it's true.
And after working as a newspaper reporter for nine years, I know that
everyone does, indeed, have a story to tell, including your family members.
Think about it.
Do your grandmother and grandfather — mother and father — aunts and uncles —
tell stories about the "good old days?"
Do they talk about going to school? The fun they had with friends? Family
celebrations and holidays? Picnics on the Fourth of July? Snow that was so
deep it covered fences? Pets that were so smart they belonged in the
Guinness Book of World Records? Making ice cream? Their parents? Their
grandparents?
Have you wanted to write down those stories to share them with other family
members and to preserve them for generations to come but don't how to go
about it?
Guess what? You don't need "literary talent," special training or special
equipment. All you need to preserve those stories is a list of people to
interview, a willingness to listen, a set of questions to ask, a tape
recorder and a computer (or even a typewriter would work!).
Here are the steps for gathering and writing your family stories:
1. Decide which people you would like to interview and make a list.
2. Ask for permission to conduct an interview.
3. Set a formal date and time for the interview.
4. Provide a list of questions several days or weeks before the interview.
5. Focus on a single subject or event in each list of questions.
6. Use the “who, what, where, when, how, and why” strategy when formulating
your questions.
7. Ask open-ended questions and not “yes or no” or “one word answer”
questions.
8. Use a tape recorder to record the interview.
9. Chat about something else for a while if the person you are interviewing
seems nervous at the prospect of being tape-recorded.
10. Transcribe the tape and write up your notes after you have finished the
interview.
11. Edit the manuscript.
12. Spread out your interviews.
13. Print the stories from your computer or publish them in another way.
*Preserve Your Family History* includes step-by-step instructions for
conducting interviews as well as 30 sets of questions (more than 400
questions in all) on 30 different topics that you can print out to use "as
is" or that you can use to generate your own questions. To see the table of
contents and several sets of sample questions visit —
http://www.ruralroute2.com/family_history.html
*Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Oral
Histories)* (66 pages; $7.95) is available from
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1545.html
LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the book, *Christmas in Dairyland (True
Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)* (trade paperback; August 2003). For more
information, visit http://ruralroute2.com
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