New tales from the vault as our life stories join the digital age

Family memories are often abandoned in the backs of cupboards or hidden away in dark, dusty attics.

Occasionally, a box of photographs and old letters will briefly see daylight, but unless someone is prepared to sit down and carefully document their lives and times, as the years go by the names of the people pictured are forgotten and the writing fades on once treasured correspondence.

However, a new website is hoping to encourage ordinary people to preserve their life stories for future generations on an online archive. StoryVault is the brainchild of Stuart Prebble and the 21st-century approach to social history follows on from numerous successful schemes to bring the past into the digital age.

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One of the first contributors is May Wagner, from Leeds.The former teacher, who will be 93-years-old on Saturday, was persuaded to talk about the various chapters of her life by her grandsons and the resulting six-minute film, May Wagner...Her Life So Far is typical of the kind of ordinary voices StoryVault is hoping to capture.

From her birth at Leeds Maternity Hospital, May describes her childhood, her early memories of grandparents who moved to the UK from the Ukraine and Lithuania in the 1890s, before looking back on

her schooldays, her marriage in 1949 and the growth of her own family.

"Mum has always been there for everyone in the family, over the years she has cared for various sick relatives in our home and nursed my brother when he was very ill," says Mary's daughter Naomi Caplin, who interviewed her mother for the short film. "She has always been a rock and this was our way of recording her own story for posterity. This year she celebrates her birthday the day before Mother's Day and it just seemed a timely thing to do.

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"It was quite an emotional process, particularly when she talked of her own mother who didn't have the easiest of lives. My grandmother came to this country from Russia as a six-month-old baby. She was one of nine children and was widowed at an early age.

"Everyone has a story to tell, but sadly many will be lost because we just don't think to ask them in time."

The StoryVault site officially launches at the end of this month, but 250 contributions have already been logged, including the likes of historian Dan Snow talking to his grandfather and a posting from comedian and military history enthusiast Al Murray.

Elsewhere, Tony Powell, the former boss of Phonogram Records remembers the day Sir Bob Geldof walked into his office and announced, "We are going to make a charity record", photographer Derek Cattani looks back to his time working with the 1966 England World Cup squad and Roger Fuller, a constable for 30 years with the Metropolitan Police, revisits the dark days of April 1981 when Brixton found itself in the grip of riots.

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"There is no limits to the kind of stories which can be placed in the online vault," says Stuart. "It could be a husband and wife remembering their wedding day or someone recording their personal experiences of an extraordinary event like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Battle of Britain.

"They may have been at a concert by The Beatles or lived through the Asian tsunami. Most people have a story that would be of interest to future generations.

"Too many of us have regretted leaving it too late to ask important questions of the people we love. Part of the appeal, I hope, of this site is that it gets different generations within one family talking to each other and once these memories are recorded and uploaded, they are there forever.

"Once we relied on archive photographs, film and TV footage to inform us of days gone past and events that shaped our future, but now it makes sense for us to make use of digital technology.

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"Stories of personal experience bring the past to life and every historian likes nothing more than to be able to access first-hand testimony from eye witnesses."

n For more information about online memoirs, visit www.storyvault.com