Polish Genealogical Society of California

SATURDAY – January 26, 2013

January 26 - PGS-CA Meeting at LAFHL
10741 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles 90025

1. Board Meeting: Noon to 1:00 p.m. in the private conference room

2. Class: 1:15 to 2:00 p.m. in the large classroom

3. PGSCA Meeting: 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. in the large classroom

Our speaker for both the Class and PGSCA lecture will be Mr. Don Ray, who has worked as an investigative reporter in the Los Angles area. He has Los Angeles personality profiles published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and articles on security, 'digging up the truth', and business spies in the Los Angles Times. In addition, results of his investigations have been published in the Daily Press, Victorville, in the San Francisco Daily Guardian, in the Riverside Press-Enterprise, in the Glendale News Press, as well as numerous magazines. He has recently written a book that he will present in his talk. His current interest is using his investigative skills in documenting family histories with an emphasis on interviews of family members.

Mr. Ray will emphasize techniques that he uses in obtaining information at personal interviews:

1. Documents are an excellent starting point to get people to talk about themselves/lives/people they know. We need to really understand what the documents do or don't contain. Armed with a little information, often more can be obtained with the right approach to an interview. Documents often can trigger better memories from those interviewed.

2. Tips on how to encourage people to open up and tell you about information that they never meant to tell you, but†afterwards are happy that they did.

3. Documents are like people. Sometimes people have information they'd like to tell you about, if only one would ask them.

For more information - Check www.pgsca.org or contact: Programs@pgsca.org