Preserve Your Family History digitally

The phrase, 'everybody has a story to tell' may sound like a cliche, but it remains true all the same Everyone has a story to tell, including your family members.

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? 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?

I sit here at the ripe old age of 37 thinking my own stories will certainly astound my granchildren one day, as they already sound like tails of fancy to my children. "What?!... only 2 channels on TV when you were a kid and black and white tv only? You had a pen pal? Why didn't you just send them a text, or chat with them on messenger?

Wiht digital recording technology so cheap, you likely have an mp3 that can record sound, or better still, a handy cam, both are terrific for recording your family stories.

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 their permission to conduct an interview.

3. Set a date and time for the interview.

4. Provide a list of questions some time before the interview so they have time to prepare.

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. Where possible, let the interviewee run off on a tangent to the original question - likely you will get more stories this way in any case.

8. Do chat about something else for a while if the person you are interviewing seems nervous at the prospect of being tape-recorded.

9. Download your sound file, or video file as soon as possible and catalogue it. Make a backup.

10. Ensure the catalogue is known to your children, and enourage them when older to add to it with their own recordings.