A weakness common to novice interviewers is their inability to take charge of an interview. Interviews frequently look like a runaway train with the interviewer gamely hanging on to the proverbial little red caboose.
Taking charge doesn’t mean forcing or dictating the direction of the interview. It’s more like riding a horse. Anyone familiar with riding knows that it requires confidence and a gentle hold on the reins. The same approach applies to interviewing.
Here are four ways to keep control of your interview: … Read more.
Posted in How to, Interviewing, Life stories, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged get control, How to, interview, Interview Advice, Interviewing, Life stories, life story, managing, Personal historian, personal history, Question, Questions, Tips
In this Monday’s Link Roundup, do yourself a favor and read My 6,128 Favorite Books. It gives a whole new meaning to “avid reader”. And for those of us who are trying to improve our marketing abilities check out How to Generate Attention and Interest. Forget the “elevator speech”.
- Leo Baeck Institute Launches DigiBaeck German-Jewish History Archive. “Leo Baeck Institute (LBI), the premiere research library and archive devoted exclusively to documenting the history of German-speaking Jewry, has completed the digitization of its entire archive, which now provides free online access to primary source materials encompassing five centuries of Jewish life in Central Europe.”
- Dropbox makes the easiest way to send photos. “Dropbox (site) adds a higher level of automation to digital-image sharing. All you have to do is snap the picture; if you’re connected to the Internet, Dropbox immediately uploads the image to its servers, then downloads it to a folder on your computer and to other Dropbox-capable devices. Once the photos are on your computer, sharing them with friends and family can be just as automatic.”
- How to Generate Attention and Interest. “Someone asks you what you do and you respond with your best “elevator speech” but nobody seems to be interested. You write emails and marketing materials that seem to say the right thing, but very few people respond. You’re confused because you’ve targeted your market, talked about all your benefits and value and still you don’t get the response you want.”
- 100 Ideas That Changed Photography. “[a]…concise and intelligent chronicle of the most seminal developments in the history of today’s most prevalent visual art. From technical innovations like the cyanotype (#12), the advent of color (#23), the Polaroid (#84), and moving pictures (#20) to paradigms like photojournalism (#66) and fabrication (#93) to new ways of looking at the world like aerial photography (#54), micro/macro (#55), and stopping time (#49), each of the ideas is accompanied by a short essay contextualizing its history and significance.”
- My 6,128 Favorite Books. “I started borrowing books from a roving Quaker City bookmobile when I was 7 years old. Things quickly got out of hand. Before I knew it I was borrowing every book about the Romans, every book about the Apaches, every book about the spindly third-string quarterback who comes off the bench in the fourth quarter to bail out his team. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but what started out as a harmless juvenile pastime soon turned into a lifelong personality disorder.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged change, Dropbox, history, How to, Internet, Jewish History, Jewish quarter (diaspora), Leo Baeck Institute, library, link roundup, map collection, photography, Photos, reading, Tips, Writing
If you’re like me, you’ve inherited old photo albums with the pictures held down on so called magnetic pages. The trouble with these albums is that the adhesive used and the plastic liners damage the photos over time. Removing the photos is a priority. I went looking for help and boiled my research down to these seven essential steps…Read more.
Posted in Ancestors, How to, Photos, Preservation, Resources, Restoration, Tips
Tagged Facebook, flickr, How to, old photos, Photograph, Photograph album, Photographic Activity Test, photography, Picasa, preserving, save, storing, Tips
Here are some favorite videos drawn from my weekly Monday’s Link Roundup over the past year. If you didn’t watch them the first time, now’s your chance to see what you missed. Enjoy!
- Life in 4,748 Self-Portraits.[Video] “It started simply enough in 1999. Jeff Harris, a photographer based in Toronto, took his first self-portrait, something he has since repeated every day. His visual diary now amounts to 4,748 photos and they tell a very personal story.”
- The Secret Bookstore. [Video] “Watch this beautiful video about Brazenhead Books, a secret bookstore that’s been tucked away in Michael Seidenberg’s apartment on the Upper East Side ever since the rent for his original retail space in Brooklyn was quadrupled.”
- How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment. [Video] “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.”
- In ‘Pilgrimage,’ Leibovitz Explores Portraits Without People. [PBS video]“Known for portraits of celebrities and musicians, Annie Leibovitz has given herself a new assignment: capture striking landscapes and visit the homes of iconic figures to document significant items from their past. Jeffrey Brown and Leibovitz discuss her “Pilgrimage” book and exhibition at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum.”
- This Is My Home: Inside Anthony’s Parlor of Curiosities. [Video]“…a friend and I were strolling down a street in the East Village when we stumbled upon a whimsical place — a kind of curiosities parlor that stretched, narrow and full of unusual objects and private memories, from the street site of the building to the backyard. Inside it was Anthony Pisano … We, it turns out, we not the only ones mesmerized by Anthony’s curiosities and unusual lens on the world. This Is My Home by filmmakers Kelsey Holtaway and Mark Cersosimo is a beautiful short film, in the vein of This Must Be The Place, that captures Anthony’s singular character through the contents of his home and his heart.”
- Print in Motion Winner: Medusa in Fragments. [Video]“With so much stunning work being produced in the world of motion graphics these days, we wanted to invite the field’s artists to show off a bit. And so Print in Motion was born. We approached the competition with no real parameters other than to feature the most interesting and innovative work we could find, and to build a forum for designers eager to see—and be inspired by—what their peers are doing.We received many worthy entries, but eventually we whittled them down to 10 standouts, starting with this great piece titled Medusa in Fragments.”
- The Birth and Decline of a Book: Two Videos for Bibliophiles. [Video] “Why Do Old Books Smell? Produced by Abe’s Books, and drawing on research from chemists at University College, London, this video looks at the science behind the aroma of used books…When you’re done watching the video, you might want to spend time with a second clip that deals with another part of the lifecycle of the book — the birth of a book. Shot by Glen Milner at Smith-Settle Printers in Leeds, England, this short film lets you watch firsthand a book — Suzanne St Albans’ Mango and Mimosa – being made with old school printing methods. Enjoy.”
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Tagged Annie Leibovitz, bibliophiles, books, bookstore, Brazenhead Books, Curiosities, documenting, Eastman Kodak, Filmmaking, Home, How to, Jeff Harris, Jeffrey Brown, Leeds, Life stories, London, pilgrimage, portraits, print in motion, self-portraits, Short film, This Is My Home, Toronto, Upper East Side, video, Why do old books smell?
In today’s marketplace you’ve got to do more than offer excellent service and product. That’s a given. To separate your small business from all the others offering a similar service you’ve got to be unique and memorable. How do you do that?…Read more.
Posted in Business, How to, Marketing, Personal historian, Promotion & Publicity, Tips
Tagged Business, business profile, carbon offsets, entrepreneur, Environment, excellence, How to, Marketing, Money back guarantee, Personal historian, prices, small business, standing out, Tips
In this Monday’s Link Roundup there are so many wonderful articles to dip in to. I highly recommend ‘Born This Way’. It’s an important sharing of life stories from the childhood memories of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. And for those who still treasure getting or sending a handwritten letter, be sure to read Why handwriting matters.
- Storied: Capture and Share Family Stories. “The goal of Storied is to make the process of capturing and sharing meaningful family stories easy and accessible for people of all ages. With the app installed on your iPad*, you can easily scan in printed photos directly from the iPad, or import them from popular networks like Facebook, and then record interviews with yourself or your family about the events in the photo.”
- Long Live Paper. “As both a teacher who uses paper textbooks and a student of urban history, I can’t help but wonder what parallels exist between my own field and this sudden, wholesale abandonment of the technology of paper.”
- Why handwriting matters. “Does handwriting have a value that email and texting can’t replace? In this extract from his new book, The Missing Ink, Philip Hensher laments the slow death of the written word, and explains how putting pen to paper can still occupy a special place in our lives.”
- ‘Born This Way’: The Radical Possibilities in Sharing Our Stories and Photos of When We First Knew We Were Queer.”This summer was the first time I’d publicly written about my childhood and how difficult it was to grow up gay in a small, industrial city in southern Wisconsin. I didn’t really think too much about it. I was, after reading some particularly vicious comments about queer people, simply sharing what I’d been through in hopes of feeling less hopeless and helpless…Tomorrow an amazing new book will reach stores and add over 100 voices to this conversation. Born This Way (Quirk Books) was edited by DJ Paul V. and inspired by his website of the same name, a photo/essay project for gay adults of all genders to submit their childhood pictures and stories and share their memories of growing up LGBTQ.”
- Skype for Interviews. “From The Conversations Network, Doug Kaye and Paul Figgiani explain the tips and techniques for recording high-quality interviews using Skype.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt’s Controversial Love Letters to Lorena Hickok. “In the summer of 1928, Roosevelt met journalist Lorena Hickok, whom she’d come to refer to as Hick. The thirty-year relationship that ensued has remained the subject of much speculation, from the evening of FDR’s inauguration, when the First Lady was seen wearing a sapphire ring Hickok had given her, to the opening up of her private correspondence archives in 1998. Though many of the most explicit letters had been burned, the 300 published in Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters Of Eleanor Roosevelt And Lorena Hickok (public library).”
- How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business. “Can Twitter actually help my business or is it a complete waste of my valuable time? This was the very question I asked myself only a few months back. Perhaps you’ve pondered the same?…This article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their businesses and reveals ideas you can employ to achieve Twitter success.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged Born This Way, childhood memories, Conversations Network, Eleanor Roosevelt, handwriting, How to, Interviewing, Interviews, LGBTQ, Life stories, link roundup, Lorena Hickok, paper, Philip Hensher, Queer, Roosevelt, Skype, small business, textbooks, The Missing Link, Tips, Twitter, video
Life continually challenges us with the unexpected. And only a fool would attempt to prepare for the unforeseen. It does help though to go into uncharted territory with our eyes open to potential risks. Interviewing terminally ill people for their life stories is satisfying, worthwhile, and often moving work. Though it does come with precautions… Read more.
Posted in End of life, How to, Interviewing, Life stories, Tips
Tagged End of life, handling crisis, Home, How to, Interviewing, Life stories, People, precautions, risks, Terminal illness, terminally ill, Tips
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian compatriots! In this Monday’s Link Roundup, be sure to check out Top 10 ways to Ditch Your Clutter and Digitally Organize Your Life. It provides some pretty interesting ways to reduce the mound of stuff squirreled away in our boxes and filing cabinets. And on a similar theme, you might want to avail yourself of the services of PeggyBank.com. You can read about them in Bringing Your Old-Media Memories Into the Digital Age.
- Banished Words. “As it has every year since 1976, Lake Superior State University has released its latest “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness.” The annual list, the impish brainchild of LSSU’s Public Relations Office, contains the twelve most nominated words among the thousands sent mostly by folks from the United States and Canada. The 2012 list of unfriended words includes the following: amazing (the most nominated), baby bump (a close second), shared sacrifice, occupy, blowback, man cave, the new normal, pet parent, win the future, trickeration, ginormous, and thank you in advance.”
- The 10 Greatest Biographical Poems (Part 1). “My work documenting lives on video always has me on the lookout for enduring biography in other formats, like great biographical poems. I can’t claim to have boiled the ocean, but here are the first five of my personal faves.”
- The Neurochemistry of Empathy, Storytelling, and the Dramatic Arc, Animated. “Paul Zak [is] director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies and author of The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity. In this short film on empathy, neurochemistry, and the dramatic arc, directed and edited by my friend Kirby Ferguson and animated by Henrique Barone, Zak takes us inside his lab, where he studies how people respond to stories.”
- Bringing Your Old-Media Memories Into the Digital Age. “Lots of people have memories locked away on old, deteriorating media: home movies, audio and video tapes, printed photos, negatives and slides…Now, a small company in Omaha, Neb., called PeggyBank.com, is offering a service where you send in all your old media (it will even provide the boxes) and the company will convert all of these items, for a fee, into digital formats and upload them to a free online “vault,” usable from any computer with Web access.”
- Is It Worth Converting an Old Book Into an eBook? “Although ebooks are exploding in popularity, the tools we have to create them favor straight text books like novels, memoirs and literary nonfiction. With complex books that include all three kinds of content, we’re still a long way away from being able to easily and inexpensively re-launch the books of the past.”
- Fall fashion – women in veils 1880s-1930s. “Looking through the new fall fashion magazines this weekend, I noticed hats, but few veils. Women have been wearing veils since at least the 13th century B.C. in Assyria. Classical Greek & Hellenistic statues sometimes depict Greek women with both their head & face covered by a veil. Statues of Persian elite women from Persepolis show examples of some women wearing veils & some without. Here are a few from the 19th & early 20th century, which I find fascinating.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged 19th & 20th century women's veils, banished words, biographical poems, clutter, Compact Disc, digital organization, DVD, E-book, e-books, empathy, fashion, How to, Information Age, Lake Superior State University, link roundup, neurochemistry, old media, Paul J. Zak, PeggyBank.com, preserving, Resources, storytelling, Tips, veils
A good personal history interview is like a symphony – complex, engaging, and harmonious. Over the past three years I’ve written extensively about the art of the interview and assembled these articles here in one convenient list. Enjoy!…Read more.
Posted in How to, Interviewing, Life stories, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged How to, interview, Interviewing skills, Life stories, Personal historian, Question, Tips
My favorite article in today’s Monday’s Link Roundup is Reading Cookbooks as Life Stories. One of my prized possessions is Mom’s 1945 Purity Cookbook. Thumbing through the grease-stained pages and reading her handwritten notes is like stepping back into Mom’s kitchen. Also, be sure to take a look at Boring Is Productive. I can now feel justly proud of my “boring” morning routines! 
- An Illustrated Homage to Grandparents and the Art of Looking Twice. “As a lover of vintage and vintage-inspired children’s books, I was instantly enamored with The Frank Show (public library) by British illustrator and designer David Mackintosh — a charming homage to grandparents and the art of seeing beneath the grumpy exterior.”
- The simple power of one a day. “There are at least 200 working days a year. If you commit to doing a simple marketing item just once each day, at the end of the year you’ve built a mountain. Here are some things you might try (don’t do them all, just one of these once a day would change things for you):”
- The Top 10 Social Networks for Creative People. “I begin by looking at WHY networking is critical to your success as a creative professional. Then it’s onto the networks themselves, with quotations from the founders of some networks and success stories from users, explaining the networks’ individual cultures, how to use them, and how they can help your creativity and your career.”
- Reading Cookbooks as Life Stories. “…cookbooks tell us something much more personal about their readers,..The problem is, we often only come about this information by inference – particularly when we know nothing about the original owner. Still, many cookbooks do offer at least a few tantalizing clues who owned them and how they were used.”
- Data Lives Forever in Quartz Glass. “Hitachi has discovered a way to store digital information on slivers of quartz glass. This data can seemingly exist forever, enduring extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading… at least until the sun begins to die and expend to consume the earth, that is.”
- Using WorldCat to Find Genealogy Books. “WorldCat is the world’s largest network of library content and services. It is an online library catalog that lets you look up items in libraries around the world. The items available include books, electronic documents, journals, microform, and audio and video recordings. Best of all, WorldCat is available to everyone free of charge.”
- Boring Is Productive. “Making too many decisions about mundane details is a waste of a limited resource: your mental energy. In the late 1990s, Roy Baumeister (a professor at Florida State University) and colleagues performed several experiments showing that certain types of conscious mental actions appeared to draw from the same “energy source” — gradually diminishing our ability to make smart decisions throughout the day.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged boring, Cookbook, cookbooks, creatives, data, Florida State University, Frank Show, Fused quartz, genealogy, grandparents, Hitachi, homage, How to, Life stories, life story, link roundup, Marketing, productivity, Quartz Glass, reading, Roy Baumeister, simple, social networks, Tips, top, WorldCat
