How to Create a Family Archive

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The photograph of your grandmother that’s at least a century old, yellowing at the edges. An embroidered handkerchief that’s crossed the globe. The family Mahjong rules. We might want to pass certain items down to subsequent generations, but may not know how to keep them in usable condition. And with so much of our lives happening digitally, how can we ensure the tender voicemails, photos and emails kept safe on our phones won’t be lost in the online void? We’ll hear librarians’ and archivists’ best tips for digitizing, storing and preserving letters, photographs and ephemera. And we’ll talk about how to conduct oral histories to pass down the stories — and voices — of those who’ve come before. Guests: Nisa Khan, audience news desk reporter, KQED Shanna Farrell, oral historian, UC Berkeley's Oral History Center Jackie Forsyte, audio-visual archivist, Teach Archive Preserve Exhibit (T.A.P.E.) Los Angeles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQBD Podcasts comes from Landmark College, offering a fully online graduate-level
0:06.1	certificate in learning differences in neurodiversity program. Visit landmark.edu-slash certificate to learn more.
0:14.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Jose Museum of Art. Photographer Paw Ho-Hare explores
0:20.3	homeland and family among her
0:22.5	Hmong American community. See the imaginative landscape. Learn more at S-J-M-U-S-A-R-T-R-T-R-T-R-R-T-R-R- from KQED in San Francisco. I'm Leslie McClurg in today for Mina Kim. Coming up on forum, How to Make a Family
0:56.4	Archive. In today's world, you can snap a photo instantly, but when it comes to the few remaining
1:01.7	photographs of family members who've passed, how to keep those safe? And what about those tender voicemails,
1:07.9	the videos, the texts? How can we make sure that they won't be lost in the online void?
1:12.4	We'll get the best tips from experts for digitizing, storing, and preserving,
1:16.3	and we'll talk about how to conduct oral histories of family members today.
1:20.3	That's next after this news. This is Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today from Mina Kim, and I'm super grateful right before my dad passed away, maybe about a decade ago. I sat down with him and we talked about
1:45.4	his life and I learned a ton of stuff I didn't know. I used one of those white flip cameras with a
1:50.3	USB connector. And the other day, I found that camera in a box in my attic, but unfortunately it didn't
1:57.4	play. When I tried to connect it to my computer, I am hopeful I will be
2:01.3	able to figure that out because my daughter never met her grandfather, and that's the only
2:05.3	recording of his voice that I have. So let's talk about how to correctly archive our family
2:11.9	treasures. We are joined by Nisa Khan. She's a reporter on the audience news desk here at KQED.
2:19.5	Shana Farrell is an oral historian at UC Berkeley's Oral History Center.
2:24.8	Jackie Forsyte is an audiovisual archivist at Teach Archive Preserve Exhibit in Los Angeles.
2:30.8	Welcome to all of you.
2:32.7	Jackie, I'd love to start with you.
2:35.6	You became an archivist because you wanted to access and preserve your family's materials. Tell us about those videotapes,
	...

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