Voices from the Past

The Mountain Lakes Historic Preservation Committee has begun a project to gather and preserve recollections of old-timers from Mountain Lakes, both current and former residents. The project uses two approaches, Oral Histories, and E-mail Recollections.

Oral Histories

In Oral Histories, the Committee records recollections on audio tape of people with whom they can physically meet face to face. For this the Committee has a long questionnaire and a roster of volunteers to meet with the person and do the interview. They then transcribe the audio tape into written text. The Committee has completed a number of interviews already of which a few have been transcribed. There are many left to do.

E-mail Recollections

The other approach, called E-mail Recollections, is to contact people by e-mail who live too far away to do a face-to-face interview and ask them to fill out a shorter questionnaire. In February, 2003, the questionaire was distributed to nearly 200 people who had previously expressed interest in the historic material on the Mountain Lakes Web site. Within the first month, over 20 responded, a 10% response rate. Most but not all the responses were from the 1950-1960 time frame. The Committee plans to continue to distribute the questionaire as more previous residents are uncovered.

	Article by a Mountain Lakes reporter describing the project
	Talk describing the project given to the League of Women Voters, Feb. 2002
	Methods: Long Questionnaire (for face-to-face interviews) Short Questionnaire (for e-mail use)
	Read the Oral Histories & E-mail Recollections that have been done so far
	I'd like to help

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