Category: Recording a Life Story
How to Plan a Heritage Trip to Your Ancestral Homeland
There is a particular feeling that comes from standing in the village your great-grandparents left, walking the street where they lived, or finding their names in a parish…
How to Make a Genealogy Research Plan for the New Year
A genealogy research plan is a short written document that states one specific question about an ancestor, summarises what you already know, lists the records likely to answer…
Family History Questions to Ask at Thanksgiving Dinner
The best family history questions to ask at Thanksgiving are short, specific and easy to answer with food in front of you: who taught you to cook this…
How to Get Your Children Involved in Preserving Family History
Family history preservation is usually treated as an adult project — something grandparents and parents undertake, with children as passive recipients of the results. But children are capable…
Why Everyday Moments Make the Best Family History
Family history tends to focus on the remarkable: the emigration, the war, the marriage, the death that changed everything. These events deserve recording. But they are not, in…
How to Document Your Parent’s Career Story and Professional Legacy
When we talk about preserving a parent’s legacy, we tend to focus on the personal: the childhood memories, the values, the relationships, the stories from before we were…
Reduce Echo in a Family History Recording
You sit down with a parent in the living room, the recorder humming as the conversation drifts toward a childhood story. The voice sounds clear at first, then…
Reduce Background Noise in Oral History Recordings
You sit at a kitchen table with a portable recorder, the hum of the refrigerator and distant traffic drifting into the microphone. The interviewee begins to speak, but…
Record Clear Audio When Two People Are Speaking
You sit at a kitchen table with a small digital recorder, a pair of lapel microphones, and two grandparents ready to share stories. The recorder sits on the…
Record a Life Story on iPhone
You have just set up a quiet corner in the living room, an iPhone on a small stand, and a notebook of questions for a parent’s life story.…
Record a Life Story on Android
You have just found a box of old letters and a handful of Polaroids, and you want to capture the stories behind them before the voices fade. The…
Position a Phone for a Family History Video
You have set up a small table in the living room, a smartphone on a tripod, and a family member ready to tell a story. The phone records…