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Family Oral History Using Digital Tools
Family stories: Record them, transfer to your computer, and make digital archive discs. Discussing how-tos, tools, techniques.

  • 1940 Census and an interview with Mama
    My Mama pointed to a name on the page of the 1940 census. "This is the boy who -- at age 9 -- told me the facts of life." She pointed to another name. “This was the best teacher I ever had. Ever. And I had some good teachers." Her fingers traced a triangle shape on the map where two streets intersected. "This is where we played baseball. There were only two bases. See? First base, Second base, Home." These are some of the stories that came out when I interviewed Mama about her memories of growing up. I used the 1940 Census as an oral history question generator and memory sparker. This article is my description of what I did to use the 1940 Census as the inspiration for an oral history interview. I describe it all -- from finding the census pages, to working with printing out image data, to what I used for my audio setup, to interview techniques, to a listing of all the topics discussed, to some iPad file transfer tricks and lessons learned.

  • My Christmas: A Shrine to Obsolete Technology
    The centerpiece of my Christmas was inspired by a two-month old news story: Sony Walkman Cassette Player Dies In Japan, Lives On in U.S. Launched in 1979, the 31-year-old portable media player will no longer be sold in Japan. (It will continue to be available in the U.S., but not indefinitely) How did that news story turn into a work of art celebrating obsolete magnetic media technology?

  • More Kodak Moments of Closure: Kodak Gallery, Ektachrome
    The Death of Kodak announcements, they keep rolling in. No sooner do I post about America's Storyteller, Kodak, shedding parts of their photo businesses, and they announce a couple more endings. Kodak Gallery to be sold to Shutterfly, and Ektrachrome will go the way of Kodachrome: Away. Dead. Finis.

  • Kodak: From “Remember The Day In Pictures” to “Remember using a Kodak camera?”
    For nearly 125 years Kodak's reason for existence has been to provide the tools for people to create memories. "Remember the day in pictures." "Keep 'Family History' in snapshots." "Remember the visit with snapshots." "For over 100 years people have trusted their memories to Kodak film." Kodak, the company that started in 1880 and popularized the film camera and invented the digital camera, recently announced that they're no longer going to manufacture digital cameras and photo frames. How does one think of a dying behemoth? And not just any corporate behemoth, but a company that has been integral to capturing and storing our memories? Their 1970s ad said, "We're America's storyteller celebrating life with you --picturing the stories of everything you do." Now Kodak is transforming into a memory.

  • Interviewing Family: Joan Miller of Luxegen
    Genealogy Conference Junkie gets buttonholed for "have you interviewed your family" discussion. Result: Breakthrough. Joan Miller, from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, blogs at Luxegen. She says she's a "genealogy conference junkie" -- which is how she came to be in Southern California for the June 2011 Genealogy Jamboree. I asked Joan about her experience conducting family interviews, this is the result. Well, no, the results are better than this, because our discussion helped get Joan through a brick wall human will wall.

  • Interviewing Family At Thanksgiving: What Happened Last Year & This Year’s Plans (Updated)
    What can you do to interview family and collect histories and memories of elders and relatives when you get together with family at Thanksgiving or for the National Day of Listening? I wrote about this last year, with a collection of ideas I culled from the internets. I adapted one of those for our family gathering last year. I’ll describe what we did, what I learned, how this year will be different, and brainstorm some variations on a theme.

  • How does genealogical research differ from interviewing family?
    Back in June, at Jamboree in Burbank, I spoke to four people about their experience recording interviews with family members. Next week I will start publishing a series of posts where you get to hear (or, read) from them directly. Jamboree, by the way, is the Southern California Genealogy Society Jamboree -- the annual June conference in the greater Los Angeles area. It's well-attended by genealogy bloggers.

  • Interviewing Family: Kim von Aspern-Parker of Le Maison Duchamps, Part 1
    The first interview in this "Jamboree Genealogy Bloggers talk about Interviewing Family" series is with Kim von Aspern-Parker, who blogs at Le Maison Duchamp. I started by asking her to tell me of her experience interviewing family members. She began by describing her experience interviewing her dad.

  • Interviewing Family: Kim von Aspern-Parker of Le Maison Duchamps, Part 2
    In this second half of my interview with Kim von Aspern-Parker (Kim von Aspern-Parker, Part 1) about interviewing family, Kim talks about her approaches to get permission from people for her interviews, describes her hardest interview (and why it's hard), and she gives her final morsels of advice (plus, I put all her advice in one handy list). Kim is one of the four people I interviewed about interviewing family at the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree this past June. (Series introduction)

  • National Jukebox at the Library of Congress
    The soundtrack of our grandparents' and great-grandparents' generation is now on the web in a large (and growing) collection called The National Jukebox, located at www.loc.gov/jukebox. The first phase of the historic audio recordings range from turn of the 20th century to 1929, and range from music (Jazz, opera, vaudville, ) and spoken word of all kinds.

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