If you’re a memoir writer, you’ll find some gems in this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup. My favorite, Just enough about me, is a charming first-person account of an 80-year-old woman’s experience at writing her self-published memoir. And don’t miss The meaning of memoir. The author argues that memoirs are still of importance in today’s Facebook and Twitter universe.
- Writing Memoir, Quotes, and Books. “Working on my memoir, I’ve turned to many, many (many many, too many) books with tips on how to get started, organized, and inspired. I also read a lot of what other authors say about the process and will share quotes here, as well.”
- The Legend Library: A video record of our theatrical legends. “This series of exclusive video interviews is one of our most important initiatives, capturing the stories of our theatrical legends. Conducted by actor/director RH Thomson, these comprehensive interviews will preserve our [Canadian] theatrical heritage for generations to come.”
- Just enough about me. “It was a Sunday in May, 2010, and I was two-finger-pecking at the keyboard on my computer, composing another anecdote for my memoir, which I hoped to self-publish in time for my 80th birthday in May, 2011.”
- Milestone Memories. “I’ve been thinking about milestone’s a lot recently. Late May through early July is major milestone season for my family and me. I graduated from high school on May 28. and began my first job on June 5, which was also the day I first met the man I married a year later…Milestone moments deserve to be celebrated and commemorated. Many call for celebration in person with others. All are compelling story topics on their own merits.”
- The meaning of memoir. “Even in an age of tweets and Facebook posts and personal websites and talk-show bookings, there are things only a memoir — a sustained written meditation on an individual experience — can do. In his introduction to “Memoirs” (1972) by W.B. Yeats, Denis Donoghue wrote that Yeats “is not given to the intrinsic pleasure of confession, he is concerned with the meaning of a life, not with its mere content.”
- Day One Stories. “In 2011, hundreds of people across the country were asked to photograph their first day of retirement. These photos and the accompanying documentaries capture a moment of transition in a life.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged books, Canada, celebrate, Day One, Denis Donoghue, Facebook, How to, memoir, memories, milestones, oral history, quote, retirement stories, retreats, The Legend Library, theatrical legends, Tips, Twitter, W. B. Yeats, Writing
How much do we remember from our childhood? This is one of the questions examined recently by Canadian research scientists.
I’ve just finished reading Blanks for the Memories which highlights aspects of the research originally published in the journal Child Development…Read more.
Posted in Interviewing, Personal historian, Questions, Tips
Tagged Canada, childhood, How to, Interviewing, Life stories, memories, memory, Personal historian, recall, senses, sensory, Tips, unlock
Sunrise at Cherry Point, British Columbia
To all my readers a joyous and magical holiday season. May the New Year bring you much happiness, peace, and good health.
It’s been my privilege over the past year to provide weekly posts on topics of interest to professional personal historians. I’m looking forward to 2012 and a whole new series of articles.
Thank you for all your comments. It’s always a treat to hear from you.
Warmest wishes,
Dan
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Photo by Dan Curtis
It’s the beginning of another week and that means some fascinating new stories in Monday’s Link Roundup to get you started. My favorite is Dear Photograph. The picture that accompanies this article is particularly poignant. And don’t miss Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of the Self-Interview. It illuminates a little known side of the Russian – American writer.
- Whither Digital Video Preservation? “Finding appropriate digital preservation file formats for audiovisual materials is not an easy task. While much of the recorded sound preservation realm has agreed upon the viability of the Broadcast Wave file format for sound materials, the video realm is still kind of the Wild West in that there is no broad consensus regarding what kinds of file formats or codecs are appropriate for preservation.”
- Who’s on the Family Tree? Now It’s Complicated. “Genealogists have long defined familial relations along bloodlines or marriage. But as the composition of families changes, so too has the notion of who gets a branch on the family tree. Some families now organize their family tree into two separate histories: genetic and emotional. Some schools, where charting family history has traditionally been a classroom project, are now skipping the exercise altogether.”
- DailyLit. “DailyLit sends you bite-sized chunks of public domain books (including many classics) daily, on weekdays, or three times a week via email or RSS — for free. Each serving takes less than five minutes to read, and if you want, they’ll send you the next installment right away if you click a link.”
- Dear Photograph: A website with a window into the past. “In the past month, a summery, slightly sad website has made the trip from non-existence to international exposure. It’s called Dear Photograph, and its premise is simple: Take a picture of an old photo being carefully held up in front of the place it was originally taken, so it appears to be a window into the past.”
- Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of the Self-Interview. “Nabokov—to my knowledge—never conducted an interview without having received and answered the questions in advance. Even when he appeared with Lionel Trilling on a “live” taped interview on a 1958 program called “Close Up” to discuss the controversy surrounding Lolita for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Nabokov reads his responses—on television—from his index cards.”
- Immigrants to Canada Online. “Library and Archives Canada (LAC) holds the Canadian immigration records for the years 1865 to 1935. The lists are online, providing 23,482 references to immigration records held at Library and Archives Canada. Those passenger lists are the sole surviving official records of the arrival of the majority of people accepted as immigrants in Canada.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup, Uncategorized
Tagged Canada, DailyLIt, digital video preservation, e-books, family tree, genealogy, How to, immigrants, memoir, old photos, online, self-interview, social media, Tips, Vladimir Nabokov, Writing
In this Monday’s Link Roundup, don’t miss photos and art and memory and books: this is personal history. It’s a link to a wonderful video that captures the heart of why we do what we do as personal historians. For those of you attending the APH Conference, you’ll want to check out Revisiting turn-of-the-century Kamloops. It looks at the book written by Robert Budd, one of this year’s keynote speakers.
- Five Best Book Recommendation Services. “It’s disappointing to haul a book home from the library or shell out hard-earned cash at the bookstore only to settle in at home and find you don’t enjoy it one bit. Stock your reading list with these five great recommendation services.”
- The Pivotal Point: Not Giving Up Too Soon. “There comes a point when being a business owner gets really hard (and I mean really hard). You’ve come up with your big idea, you’ve done all the initial legwork to set it up, and now comes the hard part: Getting the word out about your business and, more importantly, hanging in there while you get the word out about your business. The hard part now becomes not giving up too soon.”
- photos and art and memory and books: this is personal history. “It’s the end of a busy couple of weeks where I have been focused on a lot of things–training and financials and marketing–everything except what I love the most: making books from photos and memories. I came across this fabulous project in my Facebook stream late last night and just had to share it with everyone I could think of.”
- Our Canada – Our Stories. “Canada 150 is a national, not-for-profit campaign to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017 by encouraging the recording and collecting of life stories, family histories as well as community and organization histories.”
- Anecdote’s Story Finder Is a Treasure Trove. “I got a newsletter from Anecdote, the Australian consulting firm, that announced its Story Finder. There it was — a database with a slew of topics, arrange alphabetically, each topic with at least one story just a click away. What a fabulous resource!”
- Favorite Historical Tweeps. “Twitter has tons of historical trivia to offer. These are some of the fun-to-follow history tweeps I’ve been enjoying.”
- Revisiting turn-of-the-century Kamloops. “Voices of British Columbia: Stories from Our Frontier…[is] a collection of tales from the pioneers and the first generation of people who lived and settled in B.C. The book is based on 2,700 hours of audio recordings by CBC Radio journalist Imbert Orchard, who travelled the province from 1959 to 1966 interviewing 998 pioneers…The book’s author, Robert Budd, said these are the stories of the fishermen, the road builders, the ranchers and miners…The book is accompanied by the audio recordings from the original interviews…At the time, he had no idea among those archives was one of the largest oral-history collections in the world — the Orchard collection.”
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