Recording your stories

Meg Brady has created the "Your Story: Record and Remember" recording studio at the Museum of Utah Art & History on Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City. For $10 an hour, anyone can go in and record memories from their lives or can interview family members. The recordings are captured on a professional CD and, with the permission of the individual, are copied and archived in the University of Utah Marriott Library's Special Collection.

This past summer a new location was added at the Huntsman Cancer Center, which is geared specifically for cancer patients.

Whether you take advantage of one of these recording centers or decide to record some oral history on your own, Brady has some suggestions to make the recording more meaningful:

• Think about what you will record ahead of time. Have a list of questions you want to ask and discuss them with your subject ahead of time.

• Ask questions that make it easy to talk. For ideas and suggestions, go to www.yourstory.utah.edu and click on "memory triggers."

• Listen. Don't interrupt.

• Don't interview husbands and wives or parents and children or sisters and brothers together. They will interrupt and correct each other. If you interview them separately, you will get their own versions of stories.

• Typical questions you can ask include:

— Is there a meaning behind your family name or surname?

— What were your parents like?

— Who were your favorite relatives and why?

— Can your describe your family home for me?

— What did you make that you were proud of?

— Tell me about your earliest memories of school.

— As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Why?

— Of all your personality traits, which one do you hope your family will remember about you?

— What was the hardest thing you ever had to do?

— What is your most treasured possession and why?

— Tell a story from your life that you've never told before.

— What do you wish you could have asked your parents?