Abstract
As sport historians we choose to engage in public history projects and thus are faced with both opportunities and challenges. Our involvement in the Alberta Sports History Project provides an opportunity to engage in the ongoing discussion about how members of the academy can effectively move into the realm of public sport history. By involving oneself with a museum or sports hall of fame a historian must recognize that her/his own expectations for the work they produce and partnering groups will not always be congruent. In this research note, we draw on specific examples from the experiences arising from our role in envisioning, researching, and working to produce a history of Lethbridge, Alberta’s sporting past. We suggest that the importance of recognizing and embracing the inherently imperfect nature of public sport history provides historians of sport an opportunity to assist with the important work of preserving, documenting, and exhibiting our sporting past.
