I've worked quite a bit on the presentation of personal memories in exhibitions. The format I have followed is: I tape record the interviews and then transcribe them. I edit them, arrange the interview by topic as it is often disjointed, and then review the edited draft with the interviewee and make clarifications and adjustments with them. The reason for this editing is that during the interview people rarely finish all of their sentences, etc.--they will also think of an important fact after the subject has changed and bring it up later in the inrterview, or repeat themselves, etc. I find that interviewees are always grateful to have the opportunity of reviewing their written interview brfore it is presented in the exhibition and have never had someone object to the editing and "cleaning up" part. In most caes, the majority of the edited interview is then published in an exhibit publication that people can take with them. Portions of the interview are included on exhibit panels and labels in the exhibit itself. As part of the presentation, I borrow photographs and even objects from the interviewee for inclusion in the exhibition. For example, someone may refer to playing baseball when they were young--and they happen to also have a photograph of them with a baseball bat at age ten, etc. I make a copy of this origional and use the copy in the exhibition. I may even go out and buy an old baseball bat like the one described, etc. What ever it takes to supply stimulating visuals. I keep the length of the panel text to a minimum. Few if any will stand for long periods of time reading pages of text. I use large fonts for some of the quotes (using them as headers), and then reduce the font size (aprox: 14 to 16 pt) for lengthy portions--all in all, limiting any text portion to a couple of paragraphs at most. I have also had great success in making a loop tape from short portions of several interviews and having this playing at a low volume in areas of the exhibition--although the individul speaker is not always identified on the tape, I find that people will stand for up to ten minutes listening to these excerpted (how do you spell that?) portions of interviews. I hope this has been helpful. I'm sure others have also had experiences that are worth referring to. Contact me if I can help at all. You will find this project very rewarding and fun!!! John Handley [log in to unmask]