Workshop to focus on family history

By Denise Dick

Staff report

youngstown

Steel Valley Voices: An Ethnic Community Archive will sponsor a free one-hour workshop on preserving family history and stories as part of Polish Youngstown’s annual Polish Day at 2 p.m. Sunday at St. Anne Ukrainian Catholic Church hall, 4310 Kirk Road, Austintown.

The workshop will offer tips and guidelines on how to collect information, write engaging family stories, and preserve and share materials such as photographs, letters and passports.

Steel Valley Voices, a collaboration of Youngstown State University’s Center for Working-Class Studies, the University Archives of Maag Library, the Center for Applied History and the History Department at YSU, preserves and celebrates the ethnic and racial diversity of the Mahoning Valley.

Along with sponsoring workshops to teach area residents about strategies to research and share their own histories, Steel Valley Voices hosts an online collection featuring letters, photographs, recipes, audio and video recordings.

The digital collection can be found at http://steelvalleyvoices.com.

Project coordinator Sherry Linkon, professor of English and American Studies at YSU, says Steel Valley Voices is an opportunity to capture local history before it disappears.

“So many families have boxes of old photographs and letters stashed away,” she said, “and sometimes the younger generation just isn’t interested. If we don’t preserve our history now, we may lose the chance. If we forget the past, we lose an important part of our identity as families and as a community.”

For more information on the workshop, contact Sherry Linkon at 330-941-2977 or sllinkon@ysu.edu.