In today’s Monday’s Link Roundup take a look at Outrageous adverts from the past that would never be allowed today. It’s jaw dropping. Being a Downton Abbey fan, I couldn’t resist The Downton Abbey Guide to Irresistible Narrative Marketing. The article is worth a read for its useful marketing insights. But for personal historians it’s also a good reminder of what we need to aim for in our storytelling.
- Playing Kitchen Detective. “There’s a new obsession at the intersection of genealogy and foodie culture—reconstructing beloved, long-lost family recipes. Fueled by nostalgia and thrift, legions of eaters are returning to the kitchen for some food detective work, searching for the half-remembered dishes they grew up sharing at the family dinner table.”
- A Brief History of Children’s Picture Books and the Art of Visual Storytelling. “In Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling, illustrator Martin Salisbury and children’s literature scholar Morag Styles trace the fascinating evolution of the picturebook as a storytelling medium and a cultural agent, and peer into the future to see where the medium might be going next, with case studies of seminal works, a survey of artistic techniques, and peeks inside the sketchbooks and creative process of prominent illustrators adding dimension to this thoughtful and visually engrossing journey.”
- Little Phone Booth Libraries. “There are 13,659 pay phones on NYC sidewalks, even though there are over 17 million cell phones,” reads a poster designed by New York architect John Locke. Seeing an opportunity for creative reuse and community building, Designboom writes, Locke is turning obsolete phone booths into mini libraries.”
- 30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers. “Forbes has joined a group of 30 clients using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories. Here’s more about the program, used in one corner of Forbes‘ website: “Narrative Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories, headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”
- Outrageous adverts from the past that would never be allowed today. “They’re incredible by today’s standards, but once upon a time these adverts were perfectly acceptable. From an ad that claims smoking is healthy to one telling mothers they should give Coca-Cola to their babies, these shocking posters give a fascinating insight into a time gone by.”
- A Brief History of The Elements of Style and What Makes It Great. “The book has become a legend in its own right, its story part of our modern creative mythology — but, like a good fairy tale, it brims with more curious, unlikely, even whimsical details than a mere plot summary might suggest. Those are exactly what Mark Garvey, a 20-year publishing veteran and self-professed extreme Elements of Style enthusiast, explores in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged advertisements, children's picture books, computer-generated stories, Designboom, Downton Abbey, Elements of Style, genealogy, history, How to, Marketing, Martin Salisbury, narrative, Narrative Science, nostalgia, phone booth libraries, recipes, storytelling, The Elements of Style, Tips
There’s some excellent practical advice in this Monday’s Link Roundup. Because I have a home office, I found How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home a useful reminder of how to cope with the competing demands of work and domestic life. C.J. Hayden’s article What if you were wrong about marketing? is a great method of challenging assumptions about the subject.
- Words in stone and on the wind. “After I wrote, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, about the malleability of text in electronic books, a reader asked me to flesh out my thoughts about the different ways that “typographical fixity” – to again borrow Elizabeth Eisenstein’s term – can manifest itself in a book.”
- How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home. “…the challenges of working from home can sometimes make life/work balance seem unattainable. You may feel like you are constantly being pulled towards both family and work commitments–a bit like being in the middle of a tug-of-war. One answer that can help you achieve better balance between your work and personal life is boundaries.”
- What happened to the former slave that wrote his old master? “You know that letter from former slave Jourdon Anderson to his old master that’s been going around? First of all, it’s good and you should read it…David Galbraith poked around a bit and found a record of Anderson still living in Ohio at the time of the 1900 census as “Jordan Anderson”…At the time, Anderson and his wife Mandy were in their 70s and had been married for 52 years. Mandy had borne 11 children, six of whom were still living…”
- In the Footsteps of Giants. “Biographer Michael Scammell has devoted much of his long career to writing about two of the 20th century’s foremost intellectuals, whose impassioned writings defined in human and moral terms the stakes in the struggle against communism. Scammell’s book about the Nobel Prize–winning dissident Russian writer Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, published in 1984, was the first major biography to shed light on this towering yet secretive figure. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, which came out last year to much acclaim, revived the reputation of the protean Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler, best known for his 1940 anti-totalitarian novel Darkness at Noon…Writer and translator Michael McDonald interviews Scammell about his life and work.”
- How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview. “You need to establish yourself as an expert, and getting interviewed by radio, podcast or TV hosts can help you do just that. So, here is how you can help speed up the process by positioning yourself as a subject matter expert.”
- What if you were wrong about marketing? “Lately, I’ve been playing the “what if you were wrong” game with my coaching clients…questioning your assumptions about marketing can lead to designing a much more solid strategy. You can try asking yourself what if you were wrong, but it can be even more powerful to have a friend, colleague, or coach ask you.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Arthur Koestler, assumptions, biography, books, Darkness at Noon, genealogy, home business, Home Office, How to, life and work balance, link roundup, literary Tumblrs, Marketing, media interviews, Michael Scammell, personal boundaries, Scammell, slave letter, text, Tips, writing biography
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.
- 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?”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged autobiography, biography, Blog, blogging, DIY, genealogy, How to, learnable skill, link roundup, productivity, research, Resources, senses, time, Tips, virtual conference, Writing
Posted in Book reviews, Business, Camcorders, Courses, How to, Interviewing, Life stories, Marketing, Memoirs, Personal historian, Publishing, Resources, Tips, Video production
Tagged best, books, Business, family tree maker, genealogy, HD Camcorders, How to, Interviewing, Life stories, life story, Marketing, memoir, Personal historian, personal history, print-on-demand, questions to ask, self-publishing, small business, Tips, videography training, Women's memoirs
In this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup, if you self-publish, don’t miss Book Design for Self-Publishers: Raw Materials. This is a terrific site for anyone involved in book design. And if you’re like me and don’t include pricing on your website, you might change your mind after reading Why We Are Afraid to Talk Pricing.
- Telling Life Stories Through Quilts. “Generations of women have been telling stories in fabric — with quilts. Lisa Morehouse paid a visit to one quilting bee in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley. Many of the group’s members emigrated to work in the local apple orchards and vineyards.”
- End of life: You shared your stories. “As part of the Globe’s in-depth series on End of Life decisions in the 21st century, we asked you to tell your stories around this difficult topic. Readers from across the country joined the conversation.”
- The Life Reports II. “A few weeks ago, I asked people over 70 to send me “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well. They make for fascinating and addictive reading, and I’ve tried to extract a few general life lessons.”
- Not Your Grandmother’s Genealogy Hobby. “Wikis, social-networking sites, search engines and online courses are changing genealogy from a loner’s hobby to a social butterfly’s field day. New tools and expansive digital archives, including many with images of original documents, are helping newbies research like pros.”
- Why We Are Afraid to Talk Pricing. “Think about the last time you went to a website for a product or service that you couldn’t buy outright online. Did it list prices? Or did the site encourage you to call for more information? How many times do you walk away from a purchase simply because you couldn’t get enough information on pricing to make an informed decision?”
- Book Design for Self-Publishers: Raw Materials. “When you sit down to design a book, there are organizational tasks you have to address right at the beginning. Getting your raw materials organized and making sure your workflow will produce an efficient publishing process are important enough to spend some quality time on. Let’s take them one at a time.”
- Family Tree Magazine Podcast Episode Notes. “Tips on how to get relatives to discuss family history, a discussion of the Historic American Cookbook Project, and news on the Genealogists for Families project at Kiva.com. Plus: Learn more about creating a family history book from Family Tree University’s Nancy Hendrickson.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged book design, End of life, family history, family stories, genealogist, genealogy, Historic American Cookbook Project, How to, Life Reports II, Life stories, link roundup, Marketing, pricing, quilts, self-publishing, social networking, Tips
This Monday’s Link Roundup has some great free stuff. Be sure to check out Free Genealogy Software and Grab Our 20-Part Online Marketing Course. If you just want to gaze at some mouth watering photos, you won’t want to miss the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries.
- Free Genealogy Software. “Several of the free genealogy programs are very powerful and none of them are “limited trial offers.” However, upgrading to the “Plus Editions” of a couple of programs will add even more features.”
- Kindle Books Now Available at over 11,000 Local Libraries. “Kindle and Kindle app customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States. When a customer borrows a Kindle library book, they’ll have all of the unique features they love about Kindle books, including Whispersync, which automatically synchronizes their margin notes, highlights and bookmarks, real page numbers, Facebook and Twitter integration, and more.”
- Grab Our 20-Part Online Marketing Course (It’s Free!) “Want to discover the smartest ways to mix social media, content marketing, and SEO for lead generation and developing new business? We’ve got you covered with Internet Marketing for Smart People. And there’s absolutely no charge.”
- Culturomics. “The library of the future will contain a unified text comprised of all books and magazines and newspapers (and blogs) completely hyperlinked and co-located. This aggregation has already begun to happen as Google, Amazon and others digitize the books of our libraries and keep them machine readable. What if you could read all the books at once and deduce the patterns among their billions of words?”
- TED. Words About Words. “Language is the stuff of thought — the more we know about it, the better we will understand ourselves. These speakers are trying to crack the mystery.”
- National Association of Memoir Writers Announces Guest Speakers. “The National Association of Memoir Writers is showcasing talented authors and teachers who are experts in Creative Nonfiction and memoir for the first ever Teleconference on Truth or Lie—On the Cusp of Memoir and Fiction, for the bi-annual National Association of Memoir Writers Day-Long Memoir Writing Teleconference, scheduled for October 21, 2011.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged free resources, future, genealogy, How to, Kindle books, libraries, link roundup, National Association of Memoir Writers, online marketing course, software, TED, Tips, words
To start off your week, why not peruse some of these lively articles in Monday’s Links Roundup? I recommend The Power of Color! for tips on how to use color to sell your products or services. And for a really creative memoir idea, take a look at The Sidewalk Memoir Project.
- From Scroll to Screen. “Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all. The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was circa 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type.”
- Five Ways to Improve Your Social Media Skills. “The sites you subscribe to and the thoughts you post define you: as a connection, a customer and even a thought leader. If you have a product or service and you are not using social media to reach out to the masses you are missing a huge opportunity.”
- The Sidewalk Memoir Project. “I’m teaching an 8 a.m. session of Writing Rhetorically this semester, which is Bridgewater State’s equivalent on Writing I. You need to be a little innovative when you’re trying to hold a class’s attention that early in the morning, so here’s what we ended up doing Thursday. The exercise — which doubled as a lesson in brevity as well as audience — ended up going much better than I thought it was.”
- National Punctuation Day. “This Saturday, September 24, is National Punctuation Day. Founded by Jeff Rubin, the holiday seems readymade for copyeditors. Rubin’s site offers a few ways to celebrate his holiday, but for word professionals, the best way is to correct punctuation in your editing every day—not just on Punctuation Day—and instruct your writers on better punctuation usage. Gently, of course. Here are a few resources for punctuation lessons:”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged book publishing, color, family stories, Gays, genealogy, grammar, How to, Lesbians, link roundup, Marketing, memoir, punctuation, social media skills, Tips, Writing
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.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
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
My favorite article in this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup is Belongings. You won’t want to miss it! For an item that’s quite wonderful in a strange sort of way take a look at The Happy Cemetery. And something we can all work on is covered in Can You Say It In One Short Sentence?
- Belongings. “There are three million immigrants in New York City. When they left home, knowing it could be forever, they packed what they could not bear to leave behind: necessities, luxuries, memories. Here is a look at what some of them brought.” [Thanks to Lettice Stuart of Portrait in Words for alerting me to this item.]
- From research to story. “A bevy of biographers gathered in May in Washington, D.C., at the second annual Compleat Biographer Conference to discuss how to chase down subjects and make their lives into great stories…Today, we have highlights from the panel on “Turning Research into Narrative.” Speakers included Anne Heller, John Aloysius Farrell, Jane Leavy and moderator Amy Schapiro.”
- The Happy Cemetery. “Originally begun by a peasant grave carver named Stan Petras in the 1930s, and carried on today by the Pop family, the cemetery has become one of the most popular tourism attractions in rural Romania, with tour buses pulling up and unloading foreigners hourly.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged biography research, free programs, genealogy, How to, keepsakes, language, link roundup, Marketing, Resources, Romanian cemetry, small business, Tips
In this Monday’s Link Roundup be sure to take a look at the charming Dear Sophie. It’s a little over a minute long and points to the increasingly creative ways we can tell our stories. With the 70th anniversary of the premiere of Citizen Kane you’ll want to read Jane Shafron’s perceptive article, Video Biographers: 5 Quick Tips from Citizen Kane.
- Top 10 Genealogy Mistakes to Avoid. “If you are new to genealogy research…there are ten key mistakes that you will want to avoid in order to make your search a successful and pleasant experience.”
- Dear Sophie. “A father uses the web to share memories with his daughter as she grows up in this video depiction.”
- 100 Digital Storytelling Tools: Part 1. “Here are the first 25 digital storytelling tools that you can use … to tell your digital story. I’m sure you are already familiar with some of them and I hope you can find new tools to use.”
- Video Biographers:5 Quick Tips from Citizen Kane. “For video biographers, personal documentary makers, and all of us interested in preserving personal and family history, Citizen Kane is still surprisingly rich in lessons and inspiration, and well worth the rental of the video DVD. So, what are some of the lessons from Citizen Kane that we can apply to our work?”
- Grief Observed: Using Movies to Move through Grief. “Movies and DVD rentals that dramatize others coming to terms with their pain may serve as a valuable tool to help you and your family members move through the grieving process…Movies can be an effective tool in addressing certain grief issues, especially when your selections are made consciously and deliberately.”
- The Case for Cursive. “The sinuous letters of the cursive alphabet, swirled on countless love letters, credit card slips and banners above elementary school chalk boards are going the way of the quill and inkwell. With computer keyboards and smartphones increasingly occupying young fingers, the gradual death of the fancier ABC’s is revealing some unforeseen challenges.”
- ‘Secret’ Love Stories Revealed. “Choreography that includes oral components, historical research and overt storytelling is increasingly fashionable in modern dance. Sean Dorsey, the first transgender artist to be named Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” and winner of two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, is using this approach in an ambitious attempt to express the love stories of transgender and queer people from the 1920s to the present.”
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email.
Posted in Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged Citizen Kane, cursive, digital storytelling tools, genealogy, genealogy mistakes, grief movies, How to, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, Sean Dorsey, Secret Love Stories, Tips, video biography
