Years from now, when Andersen Matsusaka asks her parents about the first years of her life — perhaps questions about the Chinese orphanage she lived in as a newborn or the guests who showed up at her third birthday party — they will be able to do more than tell her about it.

They can pop in a DVD to show her.

Christian Collins and Bruce Matsu-saka, a married couple who adopted 3-year-old Andersen two years ago, used a computer program to transform dozens of photographs into DVD slideshows capturing their daughter's precious beginnings.

"The DVDs feature memories that will last a lifetime," said Matsusaka, 42.

The North Shore couple are among thousands of island residents documenting their family history, using DVD slideshows, Web sites, audio or video tapes, and scrapbooks, among other methods, to preserve memories of family members or significant moments in their lives.

"The memories that you make with your families deserve to be recorded," said Lori Onaka, 33, an avid scrapbooker. "You live your memories, you make your memories, you want to be able to look back on them, so recording them in any way is valuable because someone will come along and want to read it or see it or experience it again."

Such family histories make wonderful gifts for the holidays or any special occasion, said Onaka, an elementary school teacher in Kona.

"Anytime you make anything that's personalized — and this is personalized on a very deep level — it's just the best gift," she said.

The means to archive family photos and personal anecdotes for future generations have evolved from simple pocket-sleeved albums to elaborate scrapbooks and high-tech virtual scrapbooks on DVDs.

Collins, 36, owns Red Thread Productions, a company that specializes in making DVD slideshows and virtual scrapbooks. Collins organizes photos into a slideshow format, including background music, captions and graphic embellishments.

"I like them for a number of reasons," said Collins, who is also a family nurse practitioner and nursing instructor at the University of Hawai'i. "They keep better over the years than traditional scrapbooks, multiple people can watch them at one time, and every few months I can mail an updated DVD of my daughter to my folks on the Mainland."

While many of Collins' clients request the DVDs for wedding celebrations or birthday parties, others want them "just to capture the growth and development, and special events, in their child's life," she said.

The DVD format is "the best way to keep photos organized," Matsusaka said, " and I really like the captions that give clues or reminders to what the picture is of."

Chana Dimmitt of Waialua is working with Collins to make a DVD slide-show, using about 50 old black-and-white family photos, that she'll give as Christmas presents.

Collins charges about $3.50 per digital photo and $4.50 per hard copy; in honor of her adopted Chinese daughter, 5 percent of all proceeds go to Chinese orphanages. While do-it-yourself slideshow computer programs are available, Dimmitt prefers to leave it up to a professional.

"I just don't have time to do it — getting the pictures together and organizing the pictures," said Dimmitt, 45, a behavioral health specialist. "Giving them to her and saying 'please do this' ... is excellent."

Still, others opt to preserve their photos in traditional scrapbooks.

"By putting them together in a scrapbook and to also include some kind of written information — stories behind the photos — it really becomes a concrete, recorded document for future generations to look back at," said LiSa Kaneshiro, a designer/buyer and scrapbook instructor at Flora-Dec Sales, a local craft store.

In addition to making scrapbooks for herself, Kaneshiro has made scrapbooks for family and friends as presents for special occasions.

For one girlfriend who had a baby, Kaneshiro gifted a scrapbook complete with ready-made, themed pages. Kaneshiro left blank spaces for her girlfriend to include favorite baby photos and to jot down notes.

As an even simpler and inexpensive gift, Kaneshiro created single, framed scrapbook pages for her parents on Mother's Day and Father's Day, using photos of her newborn nephew — her parents' first grandchild.

Onaka also made scrapbooks as gifts for loved ones: an album of high-school memories for her stepdaughter as a graduation present, and a mini-scrapbook of a family trip to Lake Tahoe for her father-in-law's 70th birthday.

"It was just a neat way for him to remember it always," Onaka said.

Scrapbook albums can range from less than $10 for a mini album to up to $60 or more for leather ones; prices go up for kits, tools, embellishments and other material. But the cost is worth it, Kaneshiro said:

"If you're going to pass it on, it's an investment."

A GIFT FOR ALL AGES

As part of a school project two years ago, Christen Hirai made a video of her maternal grandmother's life using pictures — most of which were black-and-white photos — and information from interviews with her.

"She explained in great detail what her life was like as a young girl living in Japan during World War II," said Christen, now a junior at La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls. "She talked about their evacuation to the country(side), bomb sirens they lived with regularly and the food they ate."

After completing the project, Hirai gave the video to her grandmother as a Christmas present.

"My whole family — aunties, uncles and my cousin — were at the house when she opened it and we all watched it together," Christen said. ... "They were all surprised at what they learned and they were so happy I made the video. My aunty told me she never knew (a lot) of the stories that were told in the video and probably would never have asked the questions necessary to get that information."

As an eighth-grader, Christen also made a video of her paternal grandfather using an on-camera interview of him.

"It gave me a window on what my grandfather's life as a young boy was like as he and his family struggled to live without their father, who was taken away to a Japanese internment camp," Christen said.

Christen didn't give the video as a present to her grandfather, "but it was a much nicer gift for my father, since he learned so much about his dad that he never knew," she said.

Christen encourages others, especially teens, to consider such family history projects — not just as possible gifts for loved ones, but lasting heirlooms, she said.

"If I had never done these projects, many of the stories would never have been told," Christen said. "I am grateful I had the chance to learn about their lives while they are still alive and healthy, and I think they were happy that I was interested to learn more about them," she said.

Reach Zenaida Serrano at zserrano@honoluluadvertiser.com.