It’s Monday and another Link Roundup. This week I was struck by the wisdom in Post Secret. For those who’ve faced the challenge of interviewing some reserved older clients, this article is for you.  More food for thought in The Counter-Intuitive Benefits of Small Time Blocks. The author suggests there is a  way to get larger creative projects done by making the best use of small chunks of time.

• Family Tree University’s Spring 2012 Virtual Conference. “At this weekend workshop, you’ll learn strategies and resources to boost your research—and because it’s web-based, you can participate from anywhere! Dates: 9 a.m. Friday, March 9, to 11:59 p.m. Sunday, March 11, 2012″

• 10 Bloggers Share Their 2012 Blogging Formula. “I reached out to ten bloggers and asked for their perspectives on how they will approach blogging in the coming year.”

• Writing With All Your Senses — A Learnable Skill. “…writing dazzling descriptions is a learnable skill. It takes practice and dedication and seeps into remote corners of life, but the results are worth the effort. In my experience, a three-pronged approach has worked well to hone description skills to a keen edge. One prong involves reading, another involves awareness of surroundings, and the third is deliberation.”

• Post Secret. “After my mother died, my sister kept discovering fascinating things she had left behind, one being a do-it-yourself autobiography that must have been given to her.”

• Five Tips on How to Write Biographies. “What does it take to be a successful writer of biographies? How do you choose a subject? Does it matter if the subject is dead or alive? Must you be objective? Should you even try?” [Thanks to Pat McNees of Writers and Editors for alerting me to this item.]

• Five Steps to Doing Genealogy Research Like A Pro. “I’ve been doing genealogy research professionally for almost a decade now. When clients are paying you by the hour, you learn lots of really great shortcuts to keep you moving along and focused. The big tip I shared on Thursday’s episode of The Barefoot Genealogist? (Drumroll, please.)”

• The Counter-Intuitive Benefits of Small Time Blocks. “It’s a common assertion that doing hard, creative work requires long stretches of concentrated attention. And if you have the luxury of big, open blocks of time, it is a great way to get things done. But what if you don’t? What if you get interrupted left and right by clients and co-workers? Is there a way to push creative projects forward in this non-optimal environment?”

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More gems in this Monday’s Link Roundup. As someone who lived and worked in Ghana for two years, I was drawn to this article, In Africa, the Art of Listening.  I highly recommend it. Another story that touches close to home is Mourning in a Digital Age. How do we find new mourning rituals in a world that is increasingly secular? And for those of you looking for online time tracking, take a serious look at Paymo. I did and was impressed.

• The 10 Most Expensive Books in the World. “To help you brush up on your knowledge of the very old and very valuable, we’ve compiled a list of the ten most expensive books ever sold — no white gloves necessary. Click through for an overview, and then head upstairs to check your attics for any forgotten dusty tomes — you could be a millionaire and not even know it.”

• Supreme Court rules Congress can re-copyright public domain works. “Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”

• How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment. “Before pixels there were silver halide crystals, and before memory cards, film. Little yellow boxes cluttered the lives of photographers everywhere, and the Eastman Kodak Company was virtually synonymous with photography…To indulge this nostalgia–and perhaps learn something new about an old technology–we offer a fascinating 1958 documentary from Kodak entitled How Film is Made.”

• Paymo.  “I thought you might like to know about a software package that has really changed the way we keep track of our time and bill our clients. I have no affiliation whatsoever with this company, but it has made such a difference in our organizational habits that I think it would be great for other personal historians…Before Paymo, … trying to keep track of how we spent our time was a nightmare…Now we have a Paymo widget on our desktop computer (Mac and PC), in which we can click on the project we are working on, hit the Start button, and go…The report functionality is amazing – you can look at your data from almost any conceivable angle and get a clear picture of how you are spending your time and how much money you are making.” [Thanks to Alison Armstrong Taylor of pictures and stories for suggesting this item.]

• The story of the self. “Our ability to remember forms the basis of who we are and is a psychological trick that fascinates cognitive scientists. But how reliable are our memories?”

• In Africa, the Art of Listening. “What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours. Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening. So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue.” [Thanks to April Bell of Tree of Life Legacies  for alerting me to this item.]

• Mourning in a Digital Age. “Grieving has been largely guided by religious communities, … Today, with religiosity in decline, families dispersed and the pace of life feeling quickened, these elaborate, carefully staged mourning rituals are less and less common. Old customs no longer apply, yet new ones have yet to materialize.”

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This is my third annual listing of the best personal history blogs of the year.

I’ve been tougher in my selection this year. Blogs that were either “missing in action” or were visually unappealing or had weak content didn’t make the cut.

My criteria for selection is based on the qualities I wrote about in What Everybody Ought to Know About a Successful Blog. Briefly these are:

• Frequent posts.
• Consistency.
• Personal.
• Short and scannable articles.
• Uncluttered.
• Use of graphics, photographs, and video.
  
• Catchy headlines.
• Generous and useful content.

This year there are two newcomers to the list: Beth LaMie’s One Story at a Time and  Sarah White’s True Stories Well Told.

Special mention also goes to three blogs that show what good personal history blogging can be. If you’re not on this year’s list, check these out for inspiration.  The owners know their audience, write great content, post  frequently and consistently, and create a visually appealing format.  Kudos to The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, Women’s Memoirs, and True Stories Well Told.

Without further ado, here are the top eight personal history blogs for 2011, ranked in alphabetical order.  Congratulations to everyone.  Drum role, please!

• The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. Owner Sharon Lippincott describes herself as  “…passionate about all forms of life writing, especially memoir and journaling.”

• Legacy Multimedia blog. Owner Stefani Twyford says that on her blog “you will read about my passion for personal history, filmmaking techniques, genealogy, and related topics. I will veer off onto other topics from time to time but always come back to the things that make my work and my life a joy.”

• Memoir Mentor. Owner Dawn Thurston says, “My blog is an attempt to participate in the larger community of people interested in life story writing of all kinds and perhaps help a few people persevere in writing their stories.”

• The Memoir Writer’s Blog. Owner Denis Ledoux describes his blog as “helping people write family and personal stories…”

• One Story at a Time.  Owner Beth LaMie says, “I hope you find my stories of interest, especially if you want to write some of your own family stories.”

• True Stories Well Told.  Owner Sarah White says, “Here’s where I share the thoughts I might bring up for class discussion. Here’s where I post the writings of my fearless, peerless, workshop participants. Here’s where I share stories from my own life, as well as my pet peeves, pointers, and personal observations. I hope to create the atmosphere you find in my classrooms.”

• Video Biography Central. Owner Jane Lehmann-Shafron describes her blog as a place for “Advice, essays, samples and inspiration for people interested in preserving their personal and family history through video biography, memorial video, life story and genealogy video.”

• Women’s Memoirs. Owners Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet have put together a wealth of information that includes writing prompts, book reviews, and more. Women’s Memoirs is not strictly speaking a personal history site but there’s a lot of useful material  here for anyone involved in personal histories.

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Photo by Jackie

If you’re searching for a way of creating a free professional promotional video for your business, look no further. Check out My Business Story in today’s Monday’s Link Roundup. And reenacted photos in Back to the Future will forever change how you look at childhood pictures of yourself.

• Moby Offers Up Free Music to Filmmakers. “If you’re an indie filmmaker, non-profit filmmaker or film student, you can head to MobyGratis.com, register for the site, and then start browsing through a fairly extensive catalogue of recordings — 120+ recordings in total.”

• The Late Word. “When we speak of literature, we should not imagine that we are speaking of some stable and enduring Platonic entity. The history of literature has always been about its highly mutable institutions, whether bookstores, publishers, schools of criticism, or, for the last half century, the mass media.”

• StoryCorps Gives Voice to Critically Ill. “[StoryCorps]has created the StoryCorps Legacy initiative. Partnering with hospitals, hospices and cancer centers, it helps people with life threatening medical conditions record their stories.”

• My Business Story. “Google and American Express know every small business has a BIG story. So we’ve created MY Business Story to help you make a professional-quality video. It’s free and easy. Just tell your story and we’ll take care of the rest.”

• A Plethora of Writing Prompts for Creative Writing and Journaling. “Having a list of prompts that you can pull from every day in order to help you practice your craft, even if it’s just for ten minutes a day, can be very helpful. In addition, sometimes creative writing prompts can help spark an idea when you’re stuck on a short story or some other fiction piece that you’re writing.”

• Back to the Future. “I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.”

• miniBiography and the 99%. “David Lynch’s Interview Project,[is] an online series of short video documentaries centering on the lives of “normal” people across America. In Interview Project’s 121 mini-biographies, the filmmakers (including Lynch’s son Austin) ask complete strangers piercing, existential questions. It is a source of ever-renewed wonder that each stranger has an answer, and that the answers are so often so rich and brimming with hard-luck stories and lived experience.”

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This Monday’s Link Roundup has two terrific lists, 100 Resources for Writers and 50 Best Memoir Blogs. And if you want to read about the value of life stories for terminally ill patients, be sure to check out For The Dying, A Chance To Rewrite Life. 

• Objects and Memory. “The documentary film Objects and Memory depicts experiences in the aftermath of 9/11 and other major historic events to reveal how, in times of stress, we join together in community and see otherwise ordinary things as symbols of identity, memory and aspiration. In its exploration of people preserving the past and speaking to the future, Objects and Memory invites us to think about the fundamental nature of human interaction.”  [Thanks to cj madigan of Shoebox Stories for alerting me to this item.]

• Blast From the Past. “Wondering what hot topics your grandparents discussed with the neighbors, or what tunes your mom whistled as a teen? Want to flesh out your family’s story with facts about everyday life? Enjoy reminiscing about days gone by? Our book Remember That? A Year-by-Year Chronicle of Fun Facts, Headlines and Your Memories, by Allison Dolan and the editors of Family Tree Magazine, is an accounting of the whos, whats, whens and wheres of the 20th century.”

• 100 Resources for Writers. “I don’t necessarily use or outright endorse all of these resources myself. Thing is, in compiling this list I started thinking, “Who am I to judge what is helpful for other writers?” My goal is to provide you with a starting point for online exploration, not tell you what to do. So if you hate some of this stuff? Fine, not my fault! If you love it? I take full credit!”

• For The Dying, A Chance To Rewrite Life. “For several decades, psychiatrists who work with the dying have been trying to come up with new psychotherapies that can help people cope with the reality of their death. One of these therapies asks the dying to tell the story of their life.”

• The Women’s Museum. “A Smithsonian affiliate, The Women’s Museum™: An Institute for the Future makes visible the unique, textured, and diverse stories of American women. Using the latest technology and interactive media, the Museum’s exhibits and programs expand our understanding of women’s participation in shaping our nation’s history and create a lively environment for dialogue and discovery. Thousands of stories recount public and private triumphs and the struggles of those who would be denied their freedoms in all its forms: political, social, and spiritual.”

• Our life stories, ourselves, and Amy Saidman, artistic director of SpeakeasyDC. “Neuroscience is now presenting compelling evidence that we are as humans literally biologically hardwired to remember stories as such be prepared for a burgeoning field of storytellers in everything from medicine, science, history, life stories, artistic and more.”

• 50 Best Memoir Blogs. “Our list of the 50 best personal memoir blogs is full of poignant childhood tales, scandalous anecdotes, and valuable resources for any aspiring writer. They may even inspire you to write your own!” [Thanks to APH member Catherine McCrum for alerting me to this item.]

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In a previous article I covered six ways you can “Get Control of Your Pre-Presentation Jitters”. In this post I’ve assembled six great sites that provide a range of practical ways you can improve your personal history presentation skills.  … Read More

Music can evoke strong feelings and memories. It’s one of the ways we personal historians can help  clients unlock stories from their past. Not long ago some of my colleagues in the Association of Personal Historians began compiling a list of their  favorite songs that brought back memories. I’ve included some of them here and added some of my own. To listen to these selections, just click on the title. Here are four songs that resonate with me: … Read More

Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, these ten reference books are a must for your library. My thanks to the  following  Association of Personal Historians colleagues who suggested many of these books: Pat McNees, Mim Eisenberg, Stephen Evans, and Philip Sherwood  … Read More