Keeping a record of family history

Anna Lancaster was about 18 when she sat down with her grandmother, an audiocassette tape recorder between them, and asked all the questions she could think of.

The result was a series of hour-long interviews, an oral history recorded the summer before her grandmother died.

“That was a very precious thing for me and for the whole family to have,” says Lancaster, audio/video archival assistant with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

It takes time and effort to make an oral history record happen, but she says it’s well worth it.

See Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to learn more about taking oral histories.

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