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What Formats Are Available to Preserve Your Story?

• Audio Tape/CD: The sound of your voice actually telling your stories is a gift for future generations to cherish. Recording your stories on audio tape or CD allows your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to hear you telling your tales with your own expressions in your own voice. Personal historians record your stories on excellent quality equipment. The tapes or CDs are then preserved in an attractive, archival quality container.

• Books: Hard Cover & Soft Cover: Nothing can compare with curling up with your own book—except sharing it with your family and friends. Whether you want a transcript of a taped interview, a book that is straight narrative or one that combines your well-developed stories with photographs, documents and other illustrations, a personal historian can work with you to produce your ideal heirloom volume.

• Art Books, Scrapbooks & Hand-Made Books: Some personal historians combine their talents as artist and designer with their writing and organizing skills to deliver a lovely, one-of-a-kind product. Often, handmade books combine text with photographs, drawings, scraps of fabric, pressed flowers, jewelry, or your favorite mementos. The final product is a work of art created just for you.

• Photo Books, Photo Collages & Photo Calendars: Some people are more visual in their orientation and may want to create a personal history that is primarily images—photos or drawings—with little or no text. In that case, a personal historian with this expertise can help organize and format the material. The final product could be a beautifully bound photo book/scrapbook on archival paper, a poster-sized collage assembling events from your life or a photo calendar with pictures of your family on the dates of their birthdays, anniversaries, or other important events.

• Photo Videos: Photo Videos are a unique way to celebrate an occasion using your old photos, films and videotapes. Personal historians with this expertise use photos of you at various stages of your life as well as old home movies, slides, and other memorabilia to create an animated presentation set to music. Photo Videos are often created to celebrate weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, bar and bat mitzvahs and other important family events. They may be put on CD, DVD or videotape, and are presented in a custom case.

• Video Tape/CD/DVD: Tell it your way, alive and in person on videotape or digital video. Our professional interviewers can put you at ease and our expert technicians will record your words, expressions, gestures and appearance, capturing your spirit and personality for posterity. Video personal histories and custom DVDs come in many forms, from interviews with one person to many; from simple to complex; from short tributes to TV-style biographies. Whatever form you choose, you'll feel like the star of your own movie.

• Family Website: Families across the world have started creating their own Web sites to help them preserve and share family stories and information. Family Web sites can contain the family tree, genealogy data, photos, letters, and stories using text, video clips, sound, and images. The family Web site can be interactive, can be stored on CD or DVD, can be moved to your own Web site or can be maintained on a hosted website.

• Unique Formats: Can you imagine a special quilt whose pieces, fabrics, and decorations tell your story? How about a book made of bits of dresses your mother wore? Perhaps there are beautiful images and music that have inspired you or a painting, drawing, mural or collage that could illustrate your life. Personal historians can help you with any project you can dream up to express the stories and themes of your life.