St. George Utah FamilySearch Center/ Story Booth

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The St George FamilySearch Library has a Family Story Booth Room available for use to record your family’s stories. The comfortable furnishings and sound proofed interior provide a quiet, secluded area ideal for recording personal histories. Our Story Booth is a professional recording studio with state of the art audio and video recording equipment to capture your stories, testimonies, and interviews for your posterity. Common uses are: return missionaries telling stories of mission/bearing testimony, new members telling about conversion/baptism, children interviewing parent’s grandparents, primary children answering basic gospel questions, your oral history, etc. Our equipment is able to save your oral history videos to flash drive media. To provide sufficient storage space guest must bring a flash drive having more than 4GB free storage space to save recordings.

Suggested options for recording histories:

•Do not wear green or white clothing. (When using Green screen) • One person can record themselves verbalizing their personal memories/personal history. • Two or more people can record sharing memories. • One person can interview one or more others while recording their responses. • Personal digital photos &amp; videos can be added while recording via green screen technology. • We can accommodate up to 5 individuals per recording session. • 4GB free space needed on your flash drive to accommodate 1 hour of recording. • More than 1 hour of recording will require an additional recording session. • 16GB flash drives available at the FamilySearch Library for $12.

Family Story Booth recordings are a good way to capture memories before they are lost. These recordings are also one of the best ways to preserve a wealth of stories, testimonies, thoughts, and feelings to be viewed by your posterity.

Before the recording session

Make a list of questions to ask using open-ended, direct questions, and object-based questions which could include photos and/or videos. Review desired material content of recording to be within the time frame of 1 hour or less per recording session.

List of questions to consider:

1. What is your earliest memory? 2. What were some of your family’s traditions? 3. What was the happiest day of your life? 4. Tell a story your mother or father told you when you were young. 5. What places have you visited? 6. What family heirlooms do you have? 7. What childhood games did you play? 8. Tell about a childhood hiding place. 9. What were Sundays like when you were growing up? 10. Describe your feelings or testimony of Jesus Christ. How did you gain that knowledge? 11. What prayers have you had answered? 12. Describe the most serious illness or accident that you have had. 13. Do you remember any of your grandparents? Any great-grandparents? What were their names? 14. What were they like? 15. What were your siblings like? 16. What trips or vacations do you remember? 17. What special events took place in your neighborhood while you were growing up? 18. What was your hometown like? 19. What were politics like there? 20. How many people were in your family? Describe each family member. 21. What kind of household chores did you do as a child? Which did you enjoy? Not enjoy? 22. What aunts, uncles, or cousins do you remember? What were they like? 23. Tell about family traditions for holidays and birthdays. 24. Did you belong to any clubs or social groups? What were they like? 25. What were your favorite childhood activities? 26. Did you serve in the military? If so, where and when? What was it like? 27. What special school memories do you have? Who were your favorite teachers? 28. What challenges did you face as a child? 29. What challenges have you faced as an adult? 30. How did you first meet your spouse? 31. How did your father spend his time? 32. How did your mother spend her time? 33. Tell about ancestors you know about – names, dates, and any stories about them. 34. What are the names of your children? 35. What are their birth dates, where were the born, and what were the circumstances of their births, and their lives? 36. Tell about some of the most notable people in your hometown. 37. Tell about some of your neighbors as a child, as a youth, and as an adult. 38. What changes have you seen in your lifetime in technology, society, politics, and so on? 39. Tell about the house in which you live? Where else have you lived? 40. Tell about the house you lived in during your childhood.

List of Photos and/or videos to consider:
Old family photos

Photos of you as a youth

Photos of places and events in your life.

Videos of people and events in your life.