To me, all of this seems to be not so much an issue of distance of the fieldworker, but rather an issue of academic qualification. The more "scholarly" the fieldworker, the more respected he or she will be in academic circles. If the respected fieldworker happened to do a porject on his or her hometown, I don't think that anyone would think any less of the project. However, if an "unknown" or "unqualified" local person decided to collect the same information into a similar (yet possibly less "itellectual" or "academic") project, it wouldn't be as respectd. I don't know why we have this prejudice towards less "scholarly" academic things. But if would get away from that mindset, we would realize that local people are experts in their own right, and that they have much to contribute to the preservation of thier own local history, whether or not they are "academically qualified".
On another note: Jack and I went to our interview yesterday (October 31). It went surprisingly well. The family that we interviewed is just another example of how AMAZINGLY INTERESTING homeschoolers are. I wanted to post some pictures that we took, but they're on Jack's camera.... Ah well, all in good time.
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