ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a simulated tour of archives. The tour moves through three family-established archives from China to California, one of the oldest historical societies in the United States with oral history projects of Italian, Jewish, Black, and other populations, LDS Church archives extending from Salt Lake City headquarters to Africa, National Park Service Archives with an emphasis on oral histories across a multigeneration of park service employees, a conversation with the British Library oral history archive curator about archiving family history in community archives, an explanation from the CEO of a California Community TV station where family histories are encouraged as part of its programming and subsequent archiving, a silent World War veterans’ archive, and an overview of archiving basics with an archivist's own work along her family history journey.
The last section introduces the Narrative Data Management System (NDMS) using readily available spreadsheet software to bank and interview notes and quotes for easy retrieval while producing the family history and for preservation archiving purposes. The chapter ends with a strategy to estimate the costs of producing a family history. NDMS and cost-estimating templates exist inside the chapter.
