Local historians well catered with new resource

Local historians well catered for with new resource
    
From family to schools, businesses to regions, people throughout the country are exploring their local history.

How to Do Local History, research * write * publish: A guide for historians and clients is a brief and lively introduction to producing historical work, written by leading historian Gavin McLean.

Local history is a broad area of enquiry that can include community, regional, business and institutional history. Each place has its own special rhythms; themes that may not feature prominently in the national history, international and national factors such as wars, immigration policies and economic swings will impinge on communities in different ways.

McLean urges researchers to look beyond 'old letters and dusty minute books'. Primary resources can include sound archives, visual sources, artifacts, buildings and archaeological sites. The land itself is important and he recommends that local historians get out and about 'to know their patch intimately'. Mountains and rivers formed physical and political barriers, just as streams and lakes provide life-giving water. Names for natural features often identify associations with people or events; streets and roads can mark an association with a person, family or former business.

The result of all this research must 'intrigue, incite and inform'. In addition to being analysts and interpreters, historians are story-tellers, and the structure and content of the material produced needs to reflect this.

While a book is still the favoured means of telling community stories, it is not the only option. The wide range of alternative forms of publication he discusses include websites, electronic book publishing, exhibitions, heritage trails and sound recordings. For those still keen on the printed book, McLean uses case studies of real books to explain terminology, scheduling, design, costing and selling.

This valuable resource will be welcomed by local historians, church and institutional historians, genealogists, thesis-writers, and the people who commission them.

Gavin McLean is Senior Historian for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. His many books include The Governors and the co-edited Frontier of Dreams. He has written several local histories and in 2006 edited Oamaru 1878: A Colonial Town and, with Kynan Gentry, Heartlands: New Zealand Historians Write About Places Where History Happened.

ENDS

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