By historical standards, my project time period is pretty recent. Some academics might think that writing about people that aren't dead yet is risky because these people still have a perspective and memory of what happened and because we might not have a complete understanding how the processes historical actors set in place have effected society. I, however, as a public historian believe that studying such a recent time period is an invaluable opportunity because I have access to the individuals I am writing about!
I will have to keep in mind how big a role I want interviews (in the form of oral histories) public history I want to play in my work. There are a lot of examples of how oral histories can contribute to written historical works. Monica Perales' Smeltertown goes beyond using her oral histories merely as accounts to examine how events, places and people are remembered and the role memory plays in inventing and reinventing their identity. Other historical works utilize oral histories as layer of perspective otherwise lost to the historical record. There are always a bias to the historical record, which does not exclude written sources. Given this fact, it is important for historians to approach their subject from as many perspectives as possible to have a multi-dimensional and holistic approach when forming an argument about what happened.
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