Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context, often concentrating on a relatively small local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small but a study of past events in a given geographical area which is based on a wide variety of documentary evidence and placed in a comparative context that is both regional and national. Historic plaques are one form of documentation of significant occurrences in the past and oral histories are another. Local history is often documented by local historical societies or groups that form to preserve a local historic building or other historic site. Many works of local history are compiled by amateur historians working independently or archivists employed by various organizations. An important aspect of local history is the publication and cataloguing of documents preserved in local or national records which relate to particular areas. In a number of countries a broader concept of local lore is known, which is a comprehensive study of everything pertaining to a certain locality. Both fields document places and people but differ in breadth: history prioritizes human events, while lore covers environmental and ethnographic elements.
Sources and methods Local history research uses many kinds of sources, such as government records, land and tax files, newspapers, maps, photos, buildings, oral histories, family papers, and community traditions. Historians compare nearby communities and track change over time in local institutions, economies, and social relations, often using both numbers, like census data, and stories to study patterns in work, migration, and politics. Local history, like public history, does not focus on one topic, because a historian can write local labor history, local women’s history, local business history, or local religious history. Instead, the field centers on professional and ethical questions about who local history serves, where people can find it, and how historians work with a community whose members are both neighbors and subjects. These questions include what local history can do and how historians can build relationships that reveal overlooked sources and help their work matter in the community.
Uses Local history supports school curricula, lifelong learning, and community-based projects that use historical materials to explore identity and place. Exhibitions, walking tours, public talks, and digital resources make research accessible to residents and visitors. Local history also informs planning and preservation decisions, heritage tourism, and discussions of commemoration and public memory. It can provide a setting for dialogue in communities that face contested histories by highlighting shared experiences and multiple viewpoints.
Local contexts
Local history tends to be less documented than other types, with fewer books and artifacts than that of a country or continent. Many local histories are recorded as oral tales or stories and so are more vulnerable than more well known issues. Artifacts of local history are often collected in local history museums, which may be housed in a historic house or other building. Individual historic sites are inherently local, although they may have national or world history importance as well. Many however have little overall historical impact but add depth to the local area.
Australia
In Australia, local history is focussed on specific cities and suburbs or country towns and regions. In cities, local history might concentrate on a CBD and its bordering suburbs, on a specific suburb or municipality, or on an agglomeration of suburbs and municipalities (because local government boundaries have changed over time). Outside the larger cities, local history often examines regional towns and surrounding areas. Records are typically stored at state libraries, public libraries, historical societies and public record offices. For example, the State Library of Victoria holds extensive local history records for Melbourne and other places in Victoria. Many other Melbourne libraries have local history collections, along with the Public Record Office Victoria and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. In New South Wales, the Royal Australian Historical Society has studied local history as part of its remit since its founding in 1901. It holds local history records along with the State Library of NSW and other state and local libraries and archives. Historians have examined the ways local history has been written in Australia since the nineteenth century. Early on, the emphasis was on pioneer and settler history. The creative ways that local history contributed to making community has also been argued. Subsequently, local history, urban history, public history and heritage were closely connected in Australia.
United Kingdom
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