What is the difference between oral tradition and memory, particularly when dealing with Aboriginal histories? The question was raised by the facilitator at one of the AHA panels I attended, and the panelist's response was a long way from satisfactory. What is it about oral tradition that makes it a reliable historical source, when memory is so prone to error?

I was thinking of making a separate thread for this, but since the title said "professional history" I thought it would be appropriate--pardon me if I'm mistaken. But I'm wondering...perhaps this is a very general/meta question, but for those of you in the history biz, how do you keep up with the historiography? Like, stay on top of it/stay up to date with new developments in the field?

I finished my oral exams a year ago, and I still remember what my majors advisor told me to do when he looked at a first draft of my list: "This looks good, but try to get some more recent stuff in there." So what I did was look through comparatively recent (about 2014 or so) issues of the good academic history journals relevant to my orals, like The Journal of American History, the Journal of African American History, the William and Mary Quarterly, etc., and selected some positively-reviewed books or particularly striking articles and added them to my list. I also went to some of the university publishing house webpages and added some of their recent releases that seemed relevant to my work.

My professor was pretty happy with that, but I'm wondering, for those of you who have gotten your Ph.Ds and are now working, is this more or less how you keep up with your fields? Reading the journals, looking at the university presses, etc.? Or is there something else I should be doing if I want to keep up with cutting-edge scholarship? :o

Why did history of science/technology/medicine departments organize separately from history departments?