Who should write the history of your local community? Tomas Mac Conmara makes the compelling case that you should! Writing history is not and cannot be understood only as an academic endeavour.

This iCAN publication offers a complete and accessible guide for non-professionals who want to contribute to local historical research. Practical, detailed, and inspiring, the book offers advice on how to organize the research process, how to contextualize sources, and how to uses archives, among other topics. By far the most exciting part of the book is Mac Conmara’s detailed and expert advice about writing oral histories. He walks readers through the process of conducting recorded interviews, explaining how to prepare a line of enquiry, and offering tips for best practices in ethical informed consent. Everyone can contribute to writing history and people with close connections to a particular town, village, or county are often best positioned to tell the stories of those places.