Ward History

I have been called to my ward as the ward historian. I do not have a predessor so cannot get assistance in that way. I am compiling nformation, and have watched a video but would appreciate any insight or instructions or forms I can use to be clear and concise.
Thank you in advance
Marcia

marciaj wrote:I have been called to my ward as the ward historian. I do not have a predessor so cannot get assistance in that way. I am compiling nformation, and have watched a video but would appreciate any insight or instructions or forms I can use to be clear and concise.

Your first resource would be the lds.org Annual History page. There you can see instructional materials (probably the video you watched is there, but other information as well). You don't need any forms at the ward level; the stake clerk or history specialist will compile all the ward histories and submit them to Church headquarters.

The wiki article Annual history also contains many helpful tips for creating your history.

As a ward historian my biggest problem is getting reports at years end from all the ward org. Leaders HP, RS, YM, YW, etc. I suggested that church produce a video that could be shown in PEC to help the members understand what is requested.

murdock20m wrote:As a ward historian my biggest problem is getting reports at years end from all the ward org. Leaders HP, RS, YM, YW, etc. I suggested that church produce a video that could be shown in PEC to help the members understand what is requested.

There is quite a bit of training found in the Annual History E-Learning course. It includes several videos. You can select whichever ones you find most helpful, but I particularly liked the videos in step 1 and step 4 of the Gather section.

I'm trying to put a history of our ward together going back a few years is there any way to look up previous histories that have been submitted?

vevent@live.com wrote:I'm trying to put a history of our ward together going back a few years is there any way to look up previous histories that have been submitted?

If you live close to Salt Lake City, you can go to the Church History Library. Annual histories are located in the Secured Stacks section of the library, so you would have to request access, but I believe that access is generally granted, following the library's standard policies. Annual histories are submitted by the stake, so you would need to look up your ward history by searching for your stake history. You can see what's available by searching at churchhistorycatalog.lds.org.