Public history (from now on, PH) is a broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings.

Although it is complex to state what PH is (a discipline? A method?) it is much easier to state what PH is not, especially in a historical moment in which PH has ended up becoming a "fashion" under whose name a lot of valuable research and initiatives go by which, however, are not PH. The PH, in fact, follows the idea of ​​making history with the public and for the public: this implies that the research and analysis of sources becomes a joint operation between scholars and the community; this process is then followed by an elaboration that must be returned to the public itself. For this reason, a film, a popular program, the presentation of a history book are not PH activities!

PH practice is deeply rooted in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. Some of the most common settings for the practice Public History: "To promote the utility of history in society through professional practice." They are of public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, new media, and all levels of government.

According to the american National Council on Public History, PH describes the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world. In this sense, it is history that is applied to real-world issues. In fact, applied history was a term used synonymously and interchangeably with PH for a number of years. Although PH gained ascendance in recent years as the preferred nomenclature especially in the academic world, applied history probably remains the more intuitive and self-defining term.

Although public historians can sometimes be teachers, PH is usually defined as history beyond the walls of the traditional classroom. It can include multiple ways that history is consumed by the general public. Holidays, vacations, and their spare time seeking out history by choice: making pilgrimages to battlefields memorials, visiting museums, watching television documentaries, volunteering with historical societies, participating in a community history project, and researching family histories.

Less familiar are the ways that history can be created for – and utilized by – specialized audiences. These forms of public history are not necessarily intended for public consumption, although they can sometimes affect the general public, as when a state park system undertakes a management plan to reinterpret an historic site or when a local non-profit organizes a community oral history project that provides the research for an historic walking tour. 

It’s also important to underline that while public history can promote popular understanding of history, the goal of many projects may not be explicitly educational at all. Thus, an institutional history written by an historical consultant for a business client might be used to help organize a corporate archive. 

Another sort of “product” or “deliverable” might be an environmental and land use history used by a court to decide an issue of water rights. A town that commissions an architectural survey is likely looking to encourage historic preservation and to enhance the quality of life, as well as perhaps to promote heritage tourism and economic development.

The PH “movement” emerged in North America in the 1970s, gaining visibility and influence through the establishment of public and applied history programs at universities. The founding of the National Council on Public History dates to this period, as does its scholarly journal, The Public Historian. Today it is difficult to view PH as a movement, when it has been incorporated into the curricular offerings of hundreds of institutions of higher education across the globe, in Canada and the United States, but also in Australia, China, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Some would argue, however, that it retains characteristics of a movement through the on-going commitments of many current practitioners to ideals of social justice, political activism, and community engagement.

All these elements are expressed in the 1989 mission statement by U.S.-based National Council on drafted by the NCPH board in 2007, stating, "Public history is a movement, methodology, and approach that promotes the collaborative study and practice of history; its practitioners embrace a mission to make their special insights accessible and useful to the public." 

However, this draft definition prompted some challenges on the H-Public listserv from people in the field, who raised questions about whether public history is solely an endeavor by professional or trained historians, or if shared historical authority should be a key element of the field. Others have pointed out that the existence of many "publics" for public history complicates the task of definition. For example, historian Peter Novick (1988) questioned whether much of what is termed public history should actually be called private history (for example, the creation of corporate histories or archives) or popular history (for example, research or exhibits conducted outside the norms of the historical discipline). 

Cathy Stanton (2006) also identified a more radical element in North American public history but asked: “how much room is there for the progressive component in the public history movement?”. Hilda Kean and Paul Ashton (2009) also discussed the differences in public history in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., arguing against “a rigid demarcation between "historians" and "their publics"'. In Italy, the Italian Association of Public History gave a great contribution to the definition of the methodology also thanks to important scholars: Serge Noiret and Thomas Cauvin. 

On the occasion of the regional conference on Public History in Piedmont, held at the “Polo del '900” on May 7th 2018, the draft of the Manifesto of Italian Public History was presented and publicly discussed. Subsequently, the draft was discussed in the members' mailing list and during the Pisa Assembly of 14 June 2018. The association defines Public History as "a field of historical sciences to which historians who carry out activities related to research and communication of history outside academic circles in the public and private sectors, with and for different audiences. It is also an area of ​​university research and teaching aimed at training public historians". 

Crossing all these experiences, we understand tha public historians work in cultural institutions, museums, archives, libraries, the media, the cultural and tourism industry, schools, cultural volunteering and social promotion and in all areas in which knowledge of the past is required to work with and for different audiences. Public historians are also university historians who have chosen PH as a research and teaching topic or who interact with audiences outside the academic community to make history (history applied outside the university is sometimes called "third mission" after teaching and research).

The students were provided with a cataloging sheet, inspired by ICCU (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane) cataloging sheet, which explains to the students how to deal with historical sources. For this reason, through numerous workshops, the students were taught how to distinguish the different types of sources (visual, material, immaterial, audio, film, interviews) and, for each of them, learn to identify their date, owner, function but above all to preserve them to the best.

But the most important thing was teaching them to underline the difference between primary and secondary sources. A primary source is a record left by a person (or group) who participated in or witnessed the events you are studying or who provided a contemporary expression of the ideas or values of the period under examination. Examples of primary sources include letters, autobiographies, diaries, government documents, minutes of meetings, newspapers, or books written about your topic at that time. Non-written sources include interviews, films, photos, recordings of music, clothing, buildings, or tools from the period. Secondary sources are accounts written by people who were not themselves involved in the events or in the original expression of the ideas under study. Written after the events/ideas they describe, they are based upon primary sources and/or other secondary works.

After a careful reading of the source with the identification of all its characteristics, the interpretation in the context of words of unknown or doubtful meaning is fundamental. The reason why the methodology is called "dark" is that often the students involved in PH projects do not yet have the basic knowledge on a particular subject. For this reason, after the basic cataloging of the source, it is essential for teachers to identify historical references and search for information and clarifications through lectures, manuals and books.

This is why after an initial reading of the source, a re-reading is necessary, in the light of the information and data obtained in the early stages of the work, which will allow for a more precise and definitive cataloguing. It is also essential for students to learn how to evaluate the reliability of a source, crossing the data collected with the notions learned in the second phase. This, in fact, allows to penetrate into a studied era, to understand its daily nuances, to discover its hidden sides,

From the Centenary of the Great War onwards, Cesram was able to enhance this methodology, translating it into other similar projects and making it a true public history protocol, unique in Italy.

Public History, beyond the great topics and themes of international history, seems to be the closest ally of the so-called glocalization precisely because of the care it has for micro-histories and its sources. However, it should not be confused with local history: a valuable work, often done by non-academics, which however does not have the requirements of "at work" history typical of PH. The study of local history is often dominated by scholars whose work is focused on the past without focusing on using their collections to make changes for the future. 

This form of superficial history allows historians to develop a model of conclusions without a deeper engagement with local history in a comparative context. Worse, this story stereotype does nothing to help us understand the dynamics of a place. These historians can be so narrow-minded that they miss the insights history provides about our future.

History is typically taught with a focus on national and international events, but ignores the places students (of all ages) engage with most, their neighborhoods. Involving students in PH helps them to learn to analyze their place in larger events. By understanding their part in history, people become directly involved in their studies of the past. By focusing on local history, students will learn to question history as it has been taught and history as it is being made around them.

Andrew Flinn in Archival Activism: Independent and Community-led Archives, Radical Public History and the Heritage Professions (2011) perfectly described the debate about sources and “community archives”. The accuracy or appropriateness of the term “community archives,” the label frequently used in the UK, is disputed. A more detailed exploration of the controversies which surround the application of the term can be found in Flinn and Stevens (2009) and Flinn (2010). 

Recognizing these concerns and difficulties, this research recommends the use of independent archives or independent community-led archives as preferred terms; however, it is also true that “community archives” as a term has acquired a great deal of recognition within the UK archival context (for instance in the advocacy work of the Community Archives and Heritage Group [CAHG]). The archive part of community archives is also a source of some debate. Some more traditional archivists question whether the term archive is appropriate to describe personal and community collections. 

They often characterize such materials as not properly archival in their creation, ephemeral, and without any lasting value (Maher, 1998), when in fact the rarity of these ephemeral traces of a hidden history may give them a significant emotional resonance and historical value. Certainly most community archives collect traditional archival documents, such as individual and organizational records, but also a wide variety of other things including artifacts, artworks, clothing, oral histories, photographs and film, leaflets, badges, newspapers, books, grey literature—all items which individually, and more importantly when viewed as a collection, are perceived as reflecting significant aspects of the community’s life. 

For instance, in Canada and New Zealand, it is generally taken to mean a local archive which may be run by volunteers but may also be considered part of the public archival provision. Elsewhere the usage is closer to the UK approach, encompassing everything from local history archives to archival and historymaking activities reflecting a shared identification such as ethnicity or faith. For the purposes of the work with “community archives” described here, the term is used in ways which are as broad, non-prescriptive, and as inclusive as possible.

When a community archive is built, the most common mistake among the people who partecipate the build-up process is to think that the job is done. Community archives, in order to survive, need first of all, to be well guarded: who will take care of protecting the sources? What methodologies and technologies will be used to preserve the materials? But above all, a community archive must be usable: both on the web and physically, it must be an open source that citizens and scholars can access. Moreover, they must be updated, both in terms of the materials contained, always hosting new ones and always generating new debate and research, and by updating the information on the sources already cataloged and studied. This is the truest meaning of PH as a story "at work": a continuous work that never ends.