In order to use either a linear or nonlinear model of viscoelasticity to calculate the stress response of a material to various deformations, it is usually necessary to have available an explicit equation for the linear relaxation modulusG(t). The most popular procedure is to use the data from a small‐amplitude oscillatory shear experiment to determine the parameters of a generalized Maxwell model. However, this is an ill‐posed problem and is not at all a straightforward curve‐fitting operation. We compare three procedures for determining a set of relaxation times and discrete moduli that can then be used as empirical fitting parameters in fluid mechanics computations. These are linear regression, with and without regularization, and nonlinear regression. Nonlinear regression is found to give a good fit of the data with a minimum number of parameters.