First Fridays in the Archives With Elaine Thomas

New Series to Help People Sharpen Your Family’s Story Focus

For 10 years, Elaine Thomas has been informing and entertaining us with her “Stories I’ve Been Told” profiles of local citizens in The Fayette County Record. Yet, there are so many special stories that are still unrecorded and that’s where you come in.

In an effort to get more of those stories down on paper, the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives is teaming up with Elaine Thomas to announce the first in a series of presentations designed to help save and share your family’s history. The first session, set for Friday, May 5, from 10:30 a.m. to 12 noon, will focus on interview tips and techniques that may be helpful for recording the stories of older relatives, friends and neighbors.

How can you put them at ease? What questions should you ask? How should you record what they say? Elaine will share what she has learned through trial and error during her many years of conducting interviews with people from all walks of life.

“This workshop may also interest churches and civic organizations that want to preserve some of their history by interviewing older members,” Elaine says. “We’ll also take a look at whether conversations recorded years ago on cassette or micro-cassette tapes can be saved. If you have one of those tapes, please bring it along.”

In future 90-minute programs Elaine will be focusing on other aspects of telling your family’s story such as creating a roadmap for the creative journey based on your goals and objectives, fun brainstorming exercises to help you manage information overload and meaningful ways to share and preserve the stories you’ve collected.

There is no charge for any of the sessions. Each will be held in the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives, located above the Fayette Public Library at 855 South Jefferson Street in La Grange. Please phone 979-968-3765 and ask for the Archives staff or email archives@cityoflg. com to reserve a seat for the first session.