How it Works

Our process is easy, organized, and streamlined. Using the process outlined below, we work on a one-on-one basis with every client to develop a process and product suited to their needs. See how it works and see if our services are right for you.

We handle everything in-house, providing customers with privacy and the utmost attention to keeping customer documents safe and secure. Upon completion of the project, all materials that we receive from customers will be returned in their original form. All of our projects are based on four principles: digitization, research, writing, and delivery. Talk to an expert, send us your materials to be scanned, and start you personalized family history project today.

Consult

The first step when starting a new family history project is a free, one-hour consultation, where one of our experts sits down with you for an hour-long conversation to get to know you, discuss your project’s goals and parameters, your time and financial commitment, and what the final product will look like. We use the consultation to develop a roadmap for your project, including a timeline, budget, list of tasks, and schedule. After you review and approve the proposal, the project begins.

Start

After the first few oral history interviews, we lay the groundwork for your family history and start collecting stories. Throughout the first interviews, we further develop an outline and direction, working with you to ensure that the project is as close to your idea as possible. Behind the scenes, our experts will start to organize your family history and begin forming a narrative as well as catalog and digitize your photos/documents (materials).

Discuss and Write

As the project progresses, you will be given access to a custom-made, password-protected online archive with drafts of writing, recordings of interviews, and digitizations. More content is added and we work with you to edit writing and photos. Depending on the length and intensity of your project, the final product is usually ready two weeks after the interviews end.

Deliver

The final step is to deliver a finished product to the client. We have several package options available, all centered on the family archive. No matter which you choose, each package comes with a hard drive with your digitized materials and copies of all interviews for future enjoyment.

Update

Even after your project is complete, our commitment to you does not end. We treat each archive as a living, evolving entity that grows with you and your family; we accommodate any changes, updates, or edits to your archive or content. This comes in handy if you find a few more photos you want scanned and added, want to add or omit details from the writing, or even if you make your own recording at home and want it to be part of your archive. It is designed to be used as an easily accessible catch-all for family memories, an organized repository that anyone who has the password can access.

Our projects follow an oral history model. Unlike other family or personal history services, which often follow a memoir or biography model, we prefer using oral histories to write family histories.

Oral histories are typically used to gather multiple stories from a particular community (such as a group of farmers in a particular county), to document an event from multiple angles (such as a war or battle), or to collect personal or family narratives. At their core, oral histories set out with the aim of recording stories and information as close to how they were originally told as possible.

When written, oral histories also tend to be more casual and not written from a first-person point of view – while some may see it as unrefined, oral histories capture a more genuine and intimate, and therefore organic and true, portrait of the past. They flow like conversations and retain the voice and emotion of the speaker, not distilled by heavy editing.

Memoirs, on the other hand, are personal or family histories that are written and edited by a ghostwriter or editor, which distills the original story and makes it into a longer narrative. While useful in writing books, memoirs do not convey the same emotion and authenticity as an oral history does.

GET IN TOUCH

Get Started Today

Every project at AFH starts with a free, no-commitment, one hour consultation to meet, discuss, plan, and see if our services are right for you. We specialize in making your family memories and stories come to life through digitization and writing, crafting a unique and engaging narrative to bring the past into the present. Our main focus is writing, where we take the oral histories and disparate strands of the past and bring them together, creating an organized and readable family history.