One of my New Year's resolutions was to start preserving my family's memories and record their histories. The cheapest way I could think of to do this was digitally, and to use an email listserv as a medium. I set up a listserv for family members but set it up on the free yahoo groups so if other people wanted to do this for their own families, they could - they could sign up and receive the emails I'd send out, and use those for their own dialogues.
I thought I'd share it here in case anyone is interested.
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Also, here is the email I sent out to my family & friends, that explains things in a little more detail: ...
One of my favorite things about the holidays is spending time with family and hearing old family stories. I always wish I had a way of recording these things, but either I don't have paper or a voice recorder, or am enjoying the dialogue too much to interupt it. Maybe it's like Schrodinger's cat as illustrated with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - simply by observing, you change what you're observing so you can't ever observe something in its natural state. (See the American Institute of Physic's Center for History of Physics web exhibit on this:
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Anyway I got to thinking how I could record family histories in a way that time-starved folks could handle. What about using email as the medium, and only doing one a week? Then you could save your recollections, cut & paste them into files, or send them to a designated 'collector' in the family that will assemble scrapbooks for everyone in the family to share. So that is how "iHist" was born. I set up an email list and, once a week, will send out a thought-provoking question, asking you about your childhood pets, or where you lived. Then you do with it what you wish. (If you're in my family, you can forward me the answers and I'll collect them as the info grows.) I won't ever actually see your answers unless you email them to me. (Any 'reply' emails to the group will automatically delete you from the list.) This is my own New Year's resolution, to record my family's memories, and I wanted to make this resource available to anyone else who would be interested.
If you are interested in being a part of this, let me know. You can either sign up at
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or you can email me and I'll add you to the list. Feel free to pass on to anyone else you think would be interested. Holly