How Personal Historians Can Help

Here are a few of the many ways a Personal Historian can help you. We can:

• Teach you how to interview your relatives and record their stories;
• Teach you how to write your own memoirs or life story;
• Interview people, families, or groups and edit their stories into books—often featuring photos, documents, recipes, awards and other memorabilia;
• Record your stories on audiotape, videotape, DVD, CD-ROM, in a scrapbook, or on a special Web site;
• Write an "ethical will"—a concrete record of a person's values, lessons learned, advice, and hopes for the lives of the people who come after him or her;
• Organize, edit and print the family histories that you have already written;
• Capture the stories and experiences of particular groups, such as war veterans, elders of a community, survivors of disease or abuse, hospice residents, or members of a particular ethnic or religious group;
• Provide workbooks, materials and guidance to help organizations conduct oral history projects;
• Create a memorial tribute to the life of a loved one;
• Create a unique work of art to express a person's life in the form of a handmade book, a montage, an illustrated poster, or even a designer quilt.

The Association of Personal Historians Inc. (APH) is a nonprofit international network of talented and trained professionals. We are Personal and Family Historians who have developed the skills, abilities and experience to elicit, record, and preserve for posterity the life stories and memoirs of individuals, families, organizations, businesses and entire communities.

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