For any type of historical material, the hope is that it can enrich our understanding of the past. At the very least it should be able to help reconstruct the historical context. Naturally, oral history is no exception. But recently many historians have been wondering whether the accumulation of so much oral history amounts to historical truth, or just the "collective memory" of a certain group?
任何歷史材料都希望能補充史實，或是在重構歷史時，至少能貼近於重構的歷史時空，口述歷史自然也不例外，但是最近歷史學者反省的是，如此多的口述訪談，所建構的是否真的是歷史事實，還是僅是一群人的「集體記憶」？