With the holidays approaching, it’s a great time to consider gathering family stories. Although it can seem daunting to start an interview project, a few simple steps will get you on your way. With the new advances in artificial intelligence, we can streamline and personalize the interview process. AI can then help us organize and write the stories. Consider asking a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude for ideas during each step of the process. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the valuable suggestions. Here is a sample prompt to get you started.

I am a family historian and would like to capture family stories. Can you provide five steps for doing this?

I asked several AI models this question, and each provided similar ideas. The following five steps are a conglomerate of those ideas put into a format that makes sense to me.

Step 1: Make a Plan

When considering who to interview first, think of those family members who are elderly. If their health or memory is declining, it’s especially important to prioritize them. Remember that their short-term memory may not be great, but their memory of important past events might be clear as a bell.

We often think of our direct line, such as parents and grandparents. But if you have an aunt, uncle, great-aunt, great-uncle, or elderly cousin, interviewing them will add another piece to the family story. We each have different memories of the same event depending on our age and perspective.

Fortunately, my mother captured a recording of my grandfather, Charles Leslie Shults, discussing his early life in Oklahoma, Texas, and California. Listening to the recording, I noticed that, at first, he was quite stilted, but as he relaxed and started telling fun stories about his children, his characteristic southern drawl and humor came through.

Following my mother’s example, I interviewed my dad in his later years and captured his unique voice and storytelling. Both my grandfather and father passed away several years ago, but I have their stories and, thanks to technology, their voices. I have used the transcriptions of those recordings as a base for much of my family history work – from research to storytelling. For example, My Adventures of Cowboy Bob series draws heavily upon memories of both my father and grandfather and interestingly, each had a slightly different twist on the same event.

Interviewing siblings can be a good way to get several perspectives of a family and their interactions. Different perspectives can add flavor and important details.

How will you capture the stories? On a voice recorder in person? Over the phone? Over Zoom? Taking notes? Asking the family members to write their own stories? These are all valid methods, and it will depend on you and the person you’re interviewing. Some people have no problem answering questions verbally, and others may feel more comfortable with a list of questions they can fill out independently.

When it comes to recording the stories, we have many options available, often just using our smartphones. Here are two articles with ideas.

FamilySearch Apps

Voice Recording Apps from Evalogue.Life

You’ll want to evaluate your capture method based on ease of use, price, and quality of sound or video. Doing your homework before will ensure you feel comfortable with your choices.

Step 2: Prepare for the Interview

Before the interview, compile a list of personalized questions. Do some research before getting to know your subject. Learn about their parents, siblings, and the localities where they lived. This will give you a foundation for understanding the stories. Many lists are online to help you get started, but with the new AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, why not give the AI some facts about your family member and have it generate questions?

For example, I copied and pasted FamilySearch’s brief life history on my grandfather’s About page into ChatGPT and asked it for a list of interview questions. It generated the list below.

 

You can do the same thing with the AI  model of your choice. Once satisfied with the list, copy it into a document and print it for the interview! Now you have a list of questions personalized for your family member.

Step 3: Conduct the Interview

Schedule a time and place for the interview where you and your family will feel comfortable – quiet and free from distractions. Explain your interest in gathering their stories and how you plan to preserve and share them. If possible, bring photographs to trigger memories. Start with easy questions about childhood memories and follow up with questions about each answer to develop the story.

If using video or voice recording equipment, be sure to introduce each segment with the date and location of the interview, the full name of the family member, and your name. Also, record this information on paper so you can take additional notes about emotions or facial expressions.

Depending on the situation, it may be useful to schedule several manageable times to interview a family member rather than one very long session. Also, consider bringing together two or three people to trigger their memories and get different perspectives.

Step 4: Document and Organize the Stories

After each session, review your notes and transcribe recordings as soon as possible while details are fresh. You’ll want a written copy as well as the recording. Oral histories seldom follow an organized structure, as one memory often triggers the next. When transcribing, try titling each snippet with a theme, person, or timeframe; then, you can reorder them and bring all the childhood memories together, etc.

You can use transcribing software tools employing AI to automatically transcribe your audio or video files. These come in paid and free versions. One tip is to try the free version first to see how user-friendly it is. If your project is large, it may be worthwhile to pay for a subscription. Here is an article with some suggestions: 10 Best Free Transcription Software for Fast Transcription.

Manual transcription is more time-consuming, but word processors like Google Docs and Microsoft Word also have transcription capabilities. Here are some helpful articles on how to use those programs.

How to Transcribe Audio to Text in Google Docs for Free

Transcribe your Recordings in Microsoft Word

I used the voice recording software on my phone to transcribe my grandmother’s diary into Microsoft Word. It worked very well and sped up the process considerably. I uploaded the transcription to my grandmother’s page on FamilySearch, so my family can enjoy it! In my blog post, The Gift of Florence (Creer) Kelsey’s Diary, I share more of my process.

Once the transcription is complete, an excellent use of AI would be to upload the entire transcript to a large language model and ask it to reorganize the interview by sections. AI could create a chronology. Memory seldom follows a straight path, and your transcription may jump around in time. Another option would be to organize by theme. AI could recognize humorous stories or pull out all the stories about a specific individual. AI can even suggest a possible flow for writing the story!

Step 5: Preserve and Share the Stories

Finally, you’ll want to compile the stories into a format that will preserve them and make them easy to share with other family members. Consider using a variety of formats: videos, picture books, audio recordings, social media, and more.

FamilySearch Memories is an excellent place to share the recordings. Several years ago, I interviewed my dad using my laptop and then had my son separate segments to upload to his Memories page on FamilySearch. Each segment is three to five minutes long and preserves his unique voice and storytelling.

 

Although I am partial to FamilySearch because it is free, user-friendly, and has staying power, there are other options. You can create a digital archive that is shared with family members on Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or YouTube.

We have a family video archive on YouTube that holds all the videos my parents took from the 1950s to 2000. These are priceless videos, with the earliest ones shot by my mother’s Kodak Brownie. I loved family movie nights growing up when we’d get out the projector and screen and watch our antics from past years. Now, it’s easy to show my grandchildren the silent movies of their great-grandparents via our family archive on YouTube.

There are also many commercial solutions for preserving audio recordings, videos, photographs, and stories, such as MyFamilyArchive, Family Digital Archives, and Legacy Digital. Part of preservation could be using AI-powered tools such as Adobe Enhance to improve audio clarity, making older or low-quality recordings easier to understand.

Research the possibilities and consider the staying power of any website. In the years since I’ve been writing about sharing stories, I’ve seen many companies come and go. The last think you want is to invest money and time into compiling a family archive and have the company fold. Explore your options and consider having multiple backups for your precious memories.

In Closing

We now have a dizzying array of tools available to us for conducting interviews and sharing the stories of our family members. Digital tools powered by AI can make the process easy and less time-consuming, leaving us more time to do the interviews! Be sure to seek out those family members who know the stories while you still can.

Best of luck in all your family history endeavors!