A New Way to Preserve Family History : Education: A computer program offered at some colleges helps students turn memoirs into books.

Think back about the turning points of a lifetime--dramatic, funny or poignant. You could write a book, right?

With a new computer program offered at some colleges, people are.

Memoirs can be stories about coming to America, life on the farm in the old days, old family recipes or the people in the faded photographs. Few if any of these books are likely to be bestsellers, but they are sure to be popular with relatives and friends.

“There’s a wealth of information and stories in the lives of all of us, but these treasures aren’t always passed on to future generations,” said Joseph St. George of Sharing Memories Inc., which offers a computer program to compile the books and a desktop publishing center to print it.

Four students recently took the course at West Chester University’s Exton campus.

“It’s really a mix of people,” said instructor Dennis Godfrey. “They’re going in four different directions, so we’re doing it workshop-style. I don’t lecture.”

One student came to the class with several chapters of his autobiography written, including research from the National Archives. A second decided to write after a close friend in his mid-40s died. A third student came in with a stack of letters her mother received from her father during World War I.

Will they all be able to write a book?

“Not within the eight-week period of the course,” Godfrey replied. With this in mind, the university offered the students a year’s access to the computer lab.

Sharing Memories Inc. began by offering its service to individuals, but it soon became apparent that a school setting had a lot to offer, St. George said.

The course, which begins with computer basics, helps people start writing by giving them ideas that have worked for others or suggestions for jogging memories. Students are urged to write about brief incidents in their lives, be they funny or serious.

Toni Smith, a coordinator at Westmoreland County (Pa.) Community College, said she tried it herself. “It’s quite easy to use. I just picked something--my grandparents’ house--and started typing. It does bring things to mind. I’m sure you can ramble on and on with it.”

Another community college looking at the program is Reading Area Community College, where Judy Taylor admitted to being skeptical at first.

“I thought, ‘Oh, here’s another program someone’s trying to sell!’ But this one’s easy to use, even for kids trying to interview their grandparents,” she said.

Bramlett and Ruth Beard of Johnson City, Tenn., are using the program to write a book as a present for family members at their 50th wedding anniversary.

“I don’t know of any less costly way to come up with 20 books or so,” said Beard, a retired business executive who teaches an autobiography course at East Tennessee State University.

Beard plans to offer the program to his students next fall; he recommends the process to anyone. “Just about every grandparent ought to get this done,” he said. “The children have no idea how we were raised.”

When they write, the students work on a chapter at a time, storing them on a computer floppy disk. When they’re finished, they ship the disk off to Glenmoore, Pa.,-based Sharing Memories, which produces a spiral-bound galley.

After the writer checks the galley for errors and submits changes, the company prints the books. The cost depends on the number of pages and the number of copies; for example, 20 copies of a 160-page book cost $378, or $26.90 a book. Hard covers and photos can be ordered at additional cost.

“We’re not talking about writing a commercial publication,” St. George said, “although I think at some point, somebody will end up writing a book that will be a gigantic bestseller.

“We tried to set it up so you don’t need to be an expert to write and you can do a great many things without being a computer expert, but what comes out is you--not some formula.”