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    How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online: Start Family History/Ancestry Shows Globally
    How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online: Start Family History/Ancestry Shows Globally
    How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online: Start Family History/Ancestry Shows Globally
    Ebook407 pages5 hours

    How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online: Start Family History/Ancestry Shows Globally

    By Anne Hart

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    About this ebook

    Here's how to start your own ancestry-television business online on a shoestring budget. Learn how to launch family history/genealogy television shows globally on your Web site, produce videos, and publish hobby materials, publications, books, multimedia, or life stories as a pay-per-view or sponsored free entertainment. Create social history documentaries.

    Customize vintage maps and family atlases. Give visibility to family history educational entertainment businesses.

    Supply genealogy tools and videos to followers of the second most popular hobby in the country with more than 113 million people interested in genealogy and related family history topics. Provide or market content and tools to those that want to know more about their ancestor's roots, migrations, and social history.

    What news did the papers print in your ancestor's lifetime? You'll learn practical, specific steps on how to adapt real life stories into romance novels, skits, plays, monologues, biographies, documentaries, or newsletters.

    Produce genealogy/family history television programs on Web sites or specialty/niche television stations. Follow steps to start genealogy journalism and personal history television, Web-based businesses. Interview individuals tactfully with these sample questions. Record life experiences using oral historian's techniques.

    Avoid pitfalls. Learn to write and/or collect and showcase personal history videos. Produce your own documentaries. Showcase other people's genealogy tools.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateMay 10, 2007
    ISBN9781532000416
    How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online: Start Family History/Ancestry Shows Globally
    Author

    Anne Hart

    Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

    Read more from Anne Hart

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      How to Launch a Genealogy Tv Business Online - Anne Hart

      Copyright © 2007 by Anne Hart

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      ASJA Press

      an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

      iUniverse

      2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ISBN: 978-0-595-44947-7

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-0041-6 (ebook)

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 Make Customized Family History and Migrations Maps

      Chapter 2 Writing, Publishing, and Selling Your Own Family History Novels as Small Booklets, Maps, Atlases, or Pamphlets

      Chapter 3 How to Format Your Family History Novel or Novella Manuscript

      Chapter 4 Self Promotion and Plugging Self-Published and Print-On-Demand Family History Novels

      Chapter 5 Pre-Selling Your Family History Novel with a Web Hub before Publication

      Chapter 6 Getting a Strong and Visible Platform for Print-on-Demand Family History Novels

      Chapter 7 Writing Family History and Romantic Memoirs as Time Capsules for Internet Video Theater or Radio

      Chapter 8 Adapting Life Stories and Current Issues in the News to Family History Novels

      Chapter 9 Should You Become a Family History Novel Book Packager?

      Chapter 10 Writing about Peoples’ Inner Payoffs and Moral Needs in Family History Fiction

      Chapter 11 Using Fictionalized True Stories in the News as Family History Novels

      Chapter 12 How Humorous Family History Niche Novels Actually Sell Solutions to Real Relationship Problems

      Chapter 13 How to Write a Genealogy Course Syllabus and Teach Online to Market Your Projects

      Chapter 14 Opening Your Own Genealogy/Personal History Online or Broadcast TV Program

      Chapter 15 How to Open a Business Producing Family History Specialty/Niche Training Videos

      Chapter 16 Create and Webcast Online or on TV a Training Video on Document Rescue

      Chapter 17 How to Produce Online Broadcasts of Video & Multimedia Extended Family Newsletters

      Chapter 18 International Family Reunions Online: Videoconferencing, Newsletters, DVDs, and Reports by Satellite, Webcasting, or Camera Phones

      Chapter 19 Personal Video News Releases & Success Stories Online

      Chapter 20 Inspirational Video and Print Publications for Genealogists

      Chapter 21 Self-Help Seminar Seminars Online on Family History Research Techniques

      Chapter 22 How to Make Online Family History Documentary Videos with Audio Visual Software

      Chapter 23 What Genealogy Documentarians Can Learn from Published Authors about Visibility Online

      Appendix A Directory of Cable and National Broadcast Media

      Appendix B Video Wholesalers and Distributors

      Bibliography 1

      Bibliography 2

      Bibliography 3

      Bibliography 4

      Bibliography 5—DNA-Driven Genealogy/Ancestry

      Bibliography 6

      Introduction

      Here’s how to start your own ancestry-television business online. Learn how to launch family history/genealogy television shows globally on your Web site, produce videos, and publish hobby materials or life stories as a pay-per-view or sponsored free entertainment. Genealogy is the second most popular hobby in the country, with more than 113 million participants and researchers. Create social, oral, or personal history documentaries highlighting life stories. Or customize vintage maps and family atlases. Develop an educational business supplying explorers and investigators in family history, ancestry, or DNA-driven genealogy as social history.

      Most people want to know more about their roots, origins, home life, work day, social status, relationships, migrations, marriages, health, attitudes, customs, folklore, clothing, foods, environment, and the social issues in the news during the time in which their ancestors lived.

      You’ll learn how to adapt real life stories into romance novels, skits, plays, monologues, or biographies. You’ll see the techniques of starting and operating a genealogy journalism and personal history business. Here’s how to interview individuals or groups and record life experiences as an oral historian.

      Avoid the pitfalls. Learn how to start a genealogy television network (station) on your Web site. Here’s how to finance, write scripts, interview, and produce a documentary. Here are the techniques and tools for you to write, publish, and market family or personal history publications such as books or newsletters on a shoestring budget. Start and operate a business supplying tools, research, training, and entertainment for those interested in genealogy, family history/ancestry, vintage maps, and current issues in the news—for the hobbyist, researcher, or entrepreneur.

      1

      Make Customized Family History and Migrations Maps

      How to Research, Collect, Customize, Create, and Reproduce Old Maps as a Family Atlas and Personal History Time Capsule

      Yes, there are online markets waiting for you to start your own Family History Channel online. Choose your niche. Broadcast those historic genealogy maps with video commentary on your Web site as an online television station. Your family history videos can improve the quality of life for others by showing how you made choices and overcame adversities to finally transcend life’s issues by showing commitment to your most important values.

      Family history is one of the fastest growing viewing markets around the world and the second most popular hobby. It’s social history. It can be an online TV documentary. It draws global traffic. Make money from your family history/genealogy hobby by customizing family atlases using historic real estate, plat, and panoramic maps. Any topic related to your roots and everyone else’s is show business.

      Look at historic railroad maps, real estate maps, and maps of schools and houses of worship. In some countries, you can trace older maps of the wealthy manor houses and a variety of large buildings. Look for signs of property changing hands from the one ethnic group’s nobility to another ethnic group’s peasants just after the turn of the 20th century.

      You might be interested in researching land grants, tax records, deeds to property, and notary recordings to see whether your ancestors owned one of these manor houses or ended up in Siberia. A Trans-Siberian genealogy site actually exists at the Trans-Siberian Railway Forum (genealogy and railway history) at: http://www.transsib.ru/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=4. For example, suppose you’re Swedish but your ancestors at one time lived in Latvia, and spoke Swedish. For Latvian genealogy, contact Latvian Research at: http://maxpages.com/poland/Latvian_Research. You might be surprised to find records kept in several languages.

      Vintage Railroad Maps and Family History Hobbies on Video

      Video is a great medium for guides to genealogy such as vintage railroad maps. Upload your vintage maps to the Web as video clips. You can collect or customize vintage railroad maps from around the world, from a particular area, or from your local area.

      An old Livonian, Finnish, and Estonian proverb about the Baltic Sea peoples states, " Genetically, they are related, and so are their railroads." So look at a vintage railroad map dated to the year that your relatives or clients lived in a particular area of the world. Videos are learning opportunities when you provide details. To find a detailed old map of the Baltic countries, a great place to start is with former editions of Encyclopedia Britannica dated to the year of your ancestor’s residence in one of the Baltic countries. Follow similar steps when tracing your ancestry from any other place. Research tools like maps are global.

      A good starting point with a Baltic map also is the Latvian GenWeb site at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~lvawgw/. At this site you’ll see a link for a variety of resources.

      John Bartholomew & Son, Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland, published an excellent 9 ¾" by 7 ¼" Baltic Railroad Map that includes only three Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Those countries had been under Soviet rule since World War II. However, they were independent at the time of the map’s publication in 1929.

      If you want to learn about the cultural components or history of each country bordering the Baltic that once belonged to the Soviet Union, try the The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. Click on various groups such as the Latvians (Livonians) at http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/livonians.shtml or for special groups within Lithuania, such as the Tatars, try the link to the Polish or Lithuanian Tatars at: http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/lithuanian_tatars.shtml.

      In tracing family history, it’s important that you find a vintage map like this one showing details of cities, small towns, railroads, steamship routes, and natural features. It’s like finding a map of the old neighborhoods, streets, and houses.

      Regardless of the city or nation your ancestors came from, the research tools are the same—vintage railroad maps, real estate maps, and maps of routes of orphan trains can point to clues even after stores have been built on top of historic homesteads. For compelling videos on roots and family trees, you might focus on matriarchal genealogy folklore. As social history, you can compare matriarchal societies to patriarchal ancestral nations. After all, family history is part of social history.

      Making a Video about Matriarchs on Genealogical Pedestals

      One popular hobby related to genealogy is customizing and/or collecting maps in several languages and of different countries. The Baltic lands have been putting their matriarchs on genealogical pedestals since ancient times, and genealogy folklore often follows women’s maiden names aggrandized through folk songs and nature.

      Finns and Latvians have female presidents. The Latvian president is Vaira Vīke-Freiberga, and the Finnish president is Tarja Halonen. Finland is the first European country to grant women the right to vote (1906). Genealogy is a part of the Māra—the material world and the feminine. In Latvia, genealogy incorporates dievturība, the folk religion of genealogy based on folk verses. You might make a Web-based video on the genealogy, family history, or social history of female presidents around the world.

      You’ll find folkloric genealogy alive in the Baltic countries. Folkoric genealogy is about tracing your ancestry and surname origins based on the concept of young people taking advice from older people who get their wisdom from nature. The focus of family history research is that genealogy enriches dievturība.

      Dievturība allows each individual to understand family folklore according to his own needs and abilities. All new information and research in the fields of genealogy, science, history, folklore and religion serve to further develop dievturība.

      A vintage map will show major cities where you can begin your search in the various halls of records in cities such as Riga, Latvia, Tallinn, Estonia, Jelgava, towns along the Dvina River, Kaunas, Rakwere, Port Kunda, Klaipeda, and other cities whose names have changed since the twenties. For example, Kaunas used to be called Kovno, Rakwere had been Vezenbert, and Klaipeda used to be called Memel.

      Depending upon the era, Latvian genealogy records could be recorded in German, Russian or Latvian. Dundaga, Latvia, had been written in German, as Dondangen, and Mitau is now called Jelgava.

      The eastern Baltic lands, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia witnessed a 1910 dialect struggle that ended with the development of standard national languages. As a result, some genealogy records are archived in the Russian language, even in Poland. Germany, Sweden, and Finland have genealogy records archived in the language of each country. Jewish genealogy records in Poland are recorded and archived in Russian.

      If you want to make a video for the Web about your roots, you can show your documentary or segment on your Web site with goals of offering regular Family History television programming to wider TV markets and other Internet sites, backed up by genealogy journalism and family history publishing. You’ll attract global viewers. And you can market your videos to advertisers and research-related sponsors.

      Customize maps for genealogists or collect and present historic railroad maps or ship routes of migrations. Trace overland migrations or show maps of historic family houses without numbers on streets without names.

      Your genealogy/family history business would emphasize researching, collecting, customizing, and reproducing old maps to create a family atlas and personal history time capsule. Your goal is to present your client’s or your own family life and history as part of a world view. This new point of view or perspective acts as an umbrella.

      See family history visually in perspective as a larger view, a big picture, and a forest instead of the individual trees, a mass migration, or a global perspective as noted by Roots Magic. You can purchase a CD that allows you to map and explore your family tree or your client’s. Contact Roots-Magic, Inc., in Springville, Utah. Their Web site is at http://www.familyatlas.com. Or write to them at Roots-Magic, Inc., PO Box 495, Springville, UT 84663. Another alternative is to design your own CDs or DVDs showing clients how to create a family atlas.

      Another way of collecting or customizing family maps is to trace migrations in various countries during specific periods of time. A family migration map or social history atlas also can show immigrations, migrations across various cities, or where old houses used to exist on streets in different countries. You can find more information about how to publish customize maps in the January/February 2007 issue of Everton’s Genealogy Helper (magazine) on page 76. The article on family atlas creation reviews Family Atlas software.

      If you want to specialize within a niche area of genealogy or family history, you can create a small home-based online business where you design for clients customized family maps in a variety of graphics formats, such as a PDF file.

      Your client’s or ancestor’s time capsule or map may be customized to show names of nearby locations. You can convert coordinates, such as listing a place and showing events and matches for that event, place, or location. The tools of this type of software are very powerful for making databases, listing events, and matching locations to events.

      Another way of customizing old family history maps is to put markers on the map that are easy on the eyes. For example, create time sliders. The Family Atlas software lets you turn on a Time Slider to filter markers based on event dates. In this way, you can easily create an animated view of migrations. The software runs under most of the Windows formats currently in use (Windows XP, 2000, ME, and NT.) Contact the company if you have Vista to see whether it also runs under Vista.

      The whole point of making and customizing maps in genealogy or family history research is to make research more visual—closer to a mind-mapping experience instead of text only. Genealogy presentation and journalism is moving toward multimedia—combinations of text, sound, imagery, and touch or scent as would appear in a time capsule.

      In two dimensions, text, sound, and imagery are possible in genealogy—from animation to memorabilia, video, and audio. To combat technology become obsolete, print is always in vogue. Your print will last longer on vellum and/or other acid-free papers.

      A lot of church records are online. For example Swedish church records and genealogy materials have gone from microfilm to online. Genline, in Sweden, at http://www.genline.com presents digital images for tracing Swedish ancestors. Instead of being on microfilm in various family history libraries, the church records that were on microfilm are now on the Genline Web site.

      If you decide to customize family history maps as part of a time capsule or alone, the type of records might include immigrations, church or other house of worship records, a knowledge of handwriting from historic times, migrations records, parish records, a browser capable of seeing images, a knowledge of how the original records were put together, and basic words used in the country’s genealogical records. Records usually are cross-referenced.

      If you’re going to use Genline, the image browser is called the Genline Family Finder. For other countries, you can open a business transferring genealogy records from microfilm to digital images and create your own databases. You can choose a country or city to begin with and focus on serving the needs of a specific community or ethnography by transferring materials on microfilm to an online database or a database on a CD or DVD or similar digital device or disc.

      An excellent genealogy Web site that has many links to family atlas-type maps is the Farhi genealogy Web site at: http://www.farhi.org/index.html. Check out the map of old Smyrna at: http://www.farhi.org/images/Manisa_Tire.jpg.

      There’s also a graphic listing (French) a few names from the 1941 Farhi surnames in Alexandria, Egypt Telephone Directory online at: http://www.farhi.org/images/Farhi_Alexandria.jpg.

      This Web site is an excellent example of showing a world perspective of customized family history/genealogy maps and text material showing how the scholarly Farhi family migrated at different times from various Middle Eastern cities such as Alexandria and Damascus to cities in Europe and the USA during historic times.

      The first known 12th century Farhi moved from France to Spain. See the Web sites at: http://www.farhi.org/wc03/wc03_202.htm, at: http://www.farhi.org/wc03/wc03_201.htm, and at: http://www.farhi.org/wc02/wc02_336.htm. A Farhi migration occurred from Arles, France to Florenza, Spain in 1215. Another migration took place in 1357 when a Farhi descendant moved to Palestine after being educated in Montpellier, France. The Farhi genealogy continues, emphasizing maps of the Farhi family after moving to various Middle Eastern countries. There are maps on the genealogy Web sites.

      A notable map is the old Damascus Farhi house map at: http://www.farhi.org/Documents/Farhi_Houses.htm. The map on the Web site shows the family houses as they existed in the 18th and 19th centuries.

      You can make a map of your own ancestor’s homes and streets in the towns in which they lived. According to the Farhi house map Web site, In 19th Century Damascus, Raphael el Muallim Farhi lived in a one of the most opulent houses of Damascus. The Farhi Web site at: http://www.farhi.org/Documents/Farhi_Houses.htm shows a map of the old walled city in Damascus and displays three Farhi houses (119, 120 & 277), the Liniado (268) and the Lisbona (4941). According to the Farhi map Web site, From this city plan, the Muallim Farhi house was indeed the largest of them all.

      Also check out the genealogy Web site depicting some of the descendants of Deacon Stephen Hart, an early 17th century New England settler with records in Massachusetts starting from 1632. The Hart Family Web site is at: http://hartfamilyhistory.com/.

      When you develop world view family history maps, you are changing the perspective from family to social history, from local to global view. What you can do is focus on customizing maps or other detailed accounts of the methods used by genealogists.

      When you write any work of genealogy journalism or customize visuals to create family maps or atlases, you are making an enquiry encompassing centuries. Anything you create should be on the type of acid-free paper or other medium such as vellum that can be read without the use of technology because technology changes rapidly. There’s no way to play a record if the record player can’t be found. At least languages can be translated for more years than technology allows recordings to be played. You might also have the materials transferred each generation to a new medium to keep up with the changes in recording and playback devices.

      With languages, you can always have your relatives with each generation do a deed in memory of the original ancestor by transferring or translating old family atlases, maps, and text or multimedia recordings to the newest form of presentation.

      If you customize maps, include place names, family names, house locations, street locations if the houses don’t have numbers. If the streets are not named, insert latitude and longitude locations and other markers of where the old houses were located. Indicate if the homes are still standing or what they became in recent times. Maps of schools, cemeteries, houses of worship, and family gathering places may be included in a family atlas.

      Another graphic project in addition to a map or atlas would be a decorative family tree. You can specialize in genealogical clip art or other family tree designs. Highly recommended to learn this are the books Paper Trees: Genealogical Clip-Art, by Tony Mathews, available from Genealogical Publishing Company, and the book titled, Creativitree, by Tony Mathews, from Clearfield Company, Inc., 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 260, Baltimore, MD 21211, or http://www.genealogical.com.

      Another business you can create includes legacy guides that offer the social history surrounding your ancestors or your client’s ancestors. You can create a book on any ancestor’s life by writing detailed descriptions of the local environment or even the entire world in which that ancestor lived. Include time lines of what happened nearby as well as internationally at the time of a particular ancestor’s life span.

      It’s taking social history and using events and historic issues in the news to expand the life of an ancestor of a family living at that period of time. You might also include the ancestor’s wishes, plans, highlights, accomplishments, or collected wisdom, proverbs, slogans, and quotations. If you want to create a legacy book, then highly recommended as a guide is the Legacy Guide by Carol Franco and Kent Lineback, published by Penguin Group, Inc. 2007. Use all these resources to help you put into perspective the various possibilities you can offer to clients when you start a genealogy and personal history communications business.

      You not only want to capture maps or make atlases, but you also can include facts in addition to memories. The goal is to share with others the meaning of life. These recommended books all offer frameworks for capturing personal history as a documentary.

      These keepsake heirlooms are more than albums or time capsules and more than gift books or diaries. The books guide you to weave personal history into turning points. Life story highlights are milestones. These events shape worlds as well as families. The whole idea of a book, a database, or a customized map of migrations and locations of ancestral homes preserves legacies for generations.

      Reviews of Great Articles and Books on Genealogy Research Techniques

      Highly Recommended....

      See Everton’s Genealogical Helper (magazine) Jan/Feb 2007 Historical Maps Can Help, Jeffrey A. Bockman, pgs.16-24. The article mentions key Web sites for persons interested in creating and customizing family maps. One of the most useful Web sites is at the Bureau of Land Management online. For your rural research, look at county atlases.

      Bockman’s article also notes that the Web site at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html contains a large collection of historic railroad maps online. The article refers searchers for transportation maps also to the Map section of the Everton’s Handybook for Genealogists.

      Look for Web sites that give histories of companies. You can open a business writing corporate case history success stories as social and/or business history that feature old maps. Find out whether homes or stables were converted into businesses. Maps and other history may be online.

      Write corporate case histories as genealogies/family histories of businesses run by generations of the same family. Another line is making video or audio documentaries as oral history, focusing on business/corporate history or personal and family history. Another branch of genealogy is architectural history that emphasizes the personal history of the people who built bridges and buildings. Brock-man’s article also mentions a Web site at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/images/sandkey.jpg called the Key to the Sanborn Maps that lists symbols and colors used on maps.

      The big picture is to use the university libraries’ collections, such as the map collection and oral history collection at the library and/or the oral history library at UC Berkeley and other universities in your area.

      Your research might include the Library of Congress collection of more than 1,500 online maps at https://www.loc.gov/collection/panoramic-maps/about-this-collection/. Look for key words. Search according to your own state. Also check out the Library of Congress online map collection at http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/pmhtml/panintro.html.

      Whether you use maps, tomb stone rubbings, or personal history interviews, family history is a branch of oral history. If you need a guidebook for oral history, highly recommended also is Oral History for the Family Historian: A Basic Guide, by Linda Barnickel, Oral History Association, Dickenson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013-2896.

      What Oral History for the Family Historian offers is a wonderful guide to planning the legal, technical, access, and longevity issues. If you’re recording oral history, make sure you have a signed release form allowing you to use the oral history in the way you have planned. Avoid any pitfalls in your oral history interviews. This book has a sample questions list, a legal release form, and resources you need for planning before you ask questions on camera or digital recorder.

      Below you’ll find my own sample questions. Use my own materials freely as a guide to help you formulate your own questions to ask individuals before you plan an oral history interview in your new business as a personal history journalist or communicator. Ethnographic maps are fascinating as a small business or hobby. As you learn to read early handwriting, you may expand by learning or improving your ability to read more languages. Another venue is to conduct neighborhood walking tours or travel abroad for genealogical or social history research.

      The term mind mapping or working the right hemisphere of the brain that handles imagery has applications to actual map making. It’s not a coincidence that family history atlases are becoming so popular. It’s time vintage maps of personal history went online and became accessible globally.

      Planning Oral History Recordings of Life Story Highlights: Questions to Ask

      STEP 1: Plan your interview in a comfortable setting for the person you are interviewing. If the home isn’t available, use a library conference room, museum, community center, skilled nursing home private conference lounge, or other meeting place where you will have privacy and quiet to record your documentary.

      Another alternative for teaching or making a documentary about oral history interviewing techniques is to send someone enthusiastic about personal and oral history to senior community centers, lifelong learning programs at universities, nursing homes, or senior apartment complexes activity rooms. You can reach out to a wide variety of older adults in many settings, including at libraries, church groups, hobby and professional or trade associations, unions, retirement resorts, public transportation centers, malls, museums, art galleries, genealogy clubs, and intergenerational social centers.

      STEP 2: Have each personal historian or volunteer bring a camcorder and a digital recorder with extra batteries and spare extension cord as well as a note pad. Bring DVDs, CDs, or other recording discs or devices which you will edit on your computer after the recording. Bring camcorders for recording video to turn into time capsules and CDs or DVDs with life stories, personal history experiences, memoirs, and events highlighting turning points or special times in people’s lives.

      STEP 3: Assign each personal historian one or two older persons to interview with the following questions.

      1. What were the most significant turning points or events in your life?

      2. How did y ou survive the Wars?

      3. What were the highlights, turning points, or significant events that you experienced during the economic downturn of 1929-1939? How did you cope or solve your problems? 4. What did you do to solve your problems during the significant stages of your life at age 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70-plus? Or pick a year that you want to talk about.

      5. What changes in your life do you want to remember and pass on to future generations?

      6. What was the highlight of your life?

      7. How is it best to live your life after 70?

      8. What years do you remember most?

      9. What was your favorite stage of life?

      10. What would you like people to remember about you and the times you lived through?

      STEP 3:

      Have the student record the older person’s answers. Select the most significant events, experiences, or turning points the person chooses to emphasize. Then write the story of that significant event in ten pages or less.

      STEP 4: Ask the older person to supply the younger student photos, art work, audio tapes, or video clips. Usually photos, pressed flowers or art work will be supplied. Have the student or teacher scan the photos onto a disk and return the original photos or art work or music to the owner.

      STEP 5:The personal historian, volunteer, student and/or teacher scans the photos and puts them onto a Web site on the Internet at one of the free communities that give away Web site to the public at no cost... some include http://www.tripod.com, http://www.fortunecity.com, http://www.angelfire.com, http://www.geocities.com, and others. Most search engines will give a list of communities at offering free Web sites to the public. Microsoft also offers free family Web sites for family photos and newsletters or information. Ask your Internet service provider

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