On Doing Local History

by Carol Kammen, Terry A. Barnhart (Foreword)

Since 1986 On Doing Local History has been an invaluable aid to local historians. Now Carol Kammen has completely updated and revised this classic to reflect more than fifteen years of experience working with local historians. She challenges all historians of the local to think about what they are doing and how they are doing it. She dispels the myth that amateur historians, who are frequent practitioners of local history, necessarily produce a history less rigorous or useful. For many years the author of a column in History News, Kammen's thoughtful, level-headed ideas and personable writing style will keep this book a classic for years to come.

Genres: History, Museums, Nonfiction

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Vanessa Swepson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Local history is wild

[Kristine Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been working on a local history project for several years now, this book validated many of the things I've been doing. Jotted down many ideas too.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally, an excellent resource for academic, public history, and what I'll term "free-lance historians." In writing this work, Kammen clearly feels that she has lived under her academic Historian husband's shadow and has clearly taken heat for being what she refers to as an 'amateur' historian. This work is her soap box, both to rant at professional historians for how they treat and view those historians working outside of academia, and (perhaps most interestingly) to chide her fellow 'amateur' historians how to stop persisting in activities and research methods that gives them a 'bad rap', so to speak. The tension here is clearly present, and interesting!

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kammen’s book is an introduction to the field of local history: mostly basic stuff, with an interesting discussion of the requirement for footnotes in writing. Defined local history as the study of a narrow geographical area using a wide lens of investigation. Kammen had a wonderful attitude toward her subject, welcoming all skill sets from professional to amateur into the field…viz. local history is a big tent. Noted the three major periods when interest in local history advanced: the 1840s, the 1876 Centennial years, and the WPA Depression period.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this for a project I'm doing for one of my classes and interestingly enough, I learned a lot from Kammen. She presents the how's and why's in a conversational style and a lot of the points she discusses are spot on with regards to local history societies as a whole. She also gives a lot of examples and techniques on the topic, which I also found extremely helpful.