Localized nature of damage in structures requires local measurements for structural health monitoring. The local measurement means to measure the local, usually higher modes of the vibration in a structure. Three fundamental issues about the local measurement for structural health monitoring including (1) the necessity of making local measurement, (2) the difficulty of making local measurement and (3) how to make local measurement are addressed in this paper. The results from both the analysis and the tests show that the local measurement can successfully monitor the structural health status as long as the local modes are excited. Unfortunately, the results also illustrate that it is difficult to excite local modes in a structure.Therefore, in order to carry structural health monitoring into effect, we must (1) ensure that the local modes are excited, and (2) deploy enough sensors in a structure so that the local modes can be monitored.