During the past three years, the staff members of the Smithsonian Institution's Family Folklore Project have interviewed hundreds of persons about their family folklore. To prepare for these interviews we drew upon our academic backgrounds in folklore and American studies, and upon our personal backgrounds as members of families, in addition, we reviewed the major instruction guides in genealogy, oral history, family history, and folklore fieldwork. Although these publications were all helpful in some way, no single book was completely adequate since family folklore combines aspects of all the above disciplines. Over time we have developed guidelines and questions that have proven successful for us we hope that the following suggestions will be helpful to anyone who wishes to collect the folklore of his or her own family. What would be the topic of the paragraph that would follow this one?