There are many areas in the public history field one can choose to specialize in. Since public history is interdisciplinary it is common to educate oneself in more than just one public history arena. An oral historian provides a way or collecting information about a subject, individual or institution, through tape-recorded transcribed interviews.
Oral history opens new doors and provides new information and perspectives.
It does this partly because oral historians get to more personalized information than just straight research. They can be unrevealing, impersonal, and computer-generated. They can be inadequate, because so many significant interactions are never recorded on paper. Oral history provides a way to get the research and information that a public historian can share with the public. One example of an oral history position is working for the Senate Historical Office.