Start & Run a Personal History Business. Jennifer Campbell

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      2.1b Institutions and ongoing projects

      Stories are being gathered all over the world. This list is just a sample of the hundreds of institutions and projects devoted to preserving the personal histories and reminiscences of everyday people and specific groups:

      • The Memory Project: This project collects firsthand counts and digitized artifacts and memorabilia of WWII veterans. It is an initiative of the Historica-Dominion Institute, a Canadian charitable organization that promotes the history, heritage, and stories of Canada.

      • Pier 21: Canada’s Immigration Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has an informative, interesting website, and the museum itself is a fascinating place to visit. Between 1928 and 1971, more than 1.5 million immigrants, war brides, displaced people, evacuee children, and Canadian military personnel passed through its doors. Pier 21 has a wonderful collection of more than 2,000 stories, 600 oral histories, books, films, photos, and documents about the immigration experience and WWII. It also offers one-on-one research help.

      • Ellis Island: This museum in New York has extensive resources including a Family Immigration History Center. Much like Canada’s Pier 21, it provides visitors with assistance in investigating “immigration history, family documentation and genealogical exploration.”

      • Vermont Folklife Center: This facility has thousands of recordings, films, photographs, and manuscripts, and on its site you can access excellent Field Guides (Digital Audio Field Recording Equipment, Field Recording in the Digital Age, Digital Editing, and Resources on Preservation).

      • StoryCorps: This organization is part of the American Folk Life Center. It is one of the largest oral history projects, with more than 50,000 everyday people’s recorded stories, many of which are recorded through the project’s mobile and semi-permanent Story Booths. As described on its website, StoryCorps is “ … a nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” Stories are archived in the Library of Congress. Check out the site for lots of resources including a do-it-yourself guide.

      • American Folk Life Center: The American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress strives to preserve folklife — “the songs we sing, the stories we tell, the crafts we make.” It is home to StoryCorps (above) and the Veterans History Project, which “collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans.”

      • Family History Centers: Branches of the massive Family History Library in Salt Lake City, run by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Family History Centers offer free assistance to locate ancestors, and their website, www.familysearch.org, has online resources and classes. It will be mainly of interest to genealogists, but it’s an organization you should be familiar with.

      2.1c Join a memoir-writing group or take a workshop

      Check local institutions such as the library, university, or college to see if they offer memoir-writing classes. You might also find local groups that get together to offer support and feedback. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of memoir-writing retreats, online courses, and distance education opportunities that will coach you in the art and craft of memoir writing. “But wait,” you say, “I don’t want to write my own memoir!” To which I say, “How can you help other people tell their life stories or write their memoirs if you haven’t experienced it yourself?” It will be enormously valuable to your work helping others, plus you’ll have your life story documented for all time.

      Also, if you plan to teach or lead memoir-writing classes or workshops, you’ll definitely want to take one yourself to see how the instructor taught the material, what worked and what didn’t, what you’d do differently, and what you can emulate in your own courses. (More on leading workshops in Chapter 15.)

      2.1d Magazines and newspapers

      Read newspapers, or at least scan headlines for items about personal history, memoirs, memory, storytelling, life-review programs for the elderly, etc. Go to the library and look at magazines for writers, genealogists, and family historians. Scour newspapers and the Internet for upcoming events.

      2.1e Read the genre

      Read memoirs and biographies. Your clients are more likely to be “ordinary” people than celebrities, but any well-written memoir will give you a sense of what makes interesting reading. Memoirs can often have all the elements of a good novel or any type of good writing: tension, resolution, believable characters, a vivid setting, dramatic arcs, and an interesting narrative voice. As you read, make your own list of things that you think make a good memoir, and make note of what resonates with you so that you can make recommendations to your clients.

      Read a few business histories, even if you don’t plan on offering them initially.

      Read how-to guides — both books and websites — about telling your life story, writing other peoples’ stories, capturing family histories, scanning photos and, if you plan to do your own design, some good books on layout and graphic design. Even if you don’t plan to do your own design, you need to be able to understand the language, and what goes into good design. Go to the library and browse for books with attractive, appealing layouts.

      Read books and magazines and do Internet research about working with the elderly, life review and reminiscence, and memory. “Active aging” is gaining more and more attention as our society gets older, and you’ll find a lot of material that will help you understand how memory works. Some groups to explore include The International Institute for Reminiscence and Life Review, American Association of Retired People (AARP), the Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP), the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus website.

      3. Business Research and Preparation

      3.1 Know thy market

      If you already know what products and services you’ll be offering, do some preliminary research into your target market. In a typical personal history project, you’ll be capturing and preserving the life story of an older person (the narrator), but your initial contact might be in his or her 40s or 50s. You’ll have to familiarize yourself with both these market segments. Read about self-publishing and learn how it is done (for more on this topic, see Self-Publishing 101, also published by Self-Counsel Press). There is much more information about marketing in Chapter 9.

      Whatever your niche — wedding books, corporate histories, etc. — start to think about how you can sell your services.

      3.2 Brush up on or learn computer skills

      You will probably spend more time with your computer than you ever thought imaginable. It will be your hub for writing and editing in Word, doing accounting or number-crunching in Excel, emailing current and potential clients, researching, checking facts, scouting out potential leads, and much more.

      3.3 Create a mini mission statement (by writing down your goals)

      Take a few moments to write down why you want to do this work. What are your motivations? Why do you think you’ll succeed? What are your short-term and long-term СКАЧАТЬ