Making History By Recording It



    For Patrick Diepen, the Digitization Technician for the West Texas A&M University for the Cornette Library Special Archives, exploring history is a daily occurrence.
    “I love museums, archives, special collections types of things,” said Diepen. “They are just an endless source of fun for me.”
    After Diepen finished his undergraduate studies at WTAMU, he chose to continue working at the on-campus library as a library specialist II position.
    “I had skill sets that would allow them to open a digitization lab,” said Diepen. That is where Diepen’s historical knowledge, mixed with his computer abilities, and photography skills came into play. With a continuous workload of converting books, newspapers, and other information into a digital versions, Diepen is not only kept mentally sharp with his current duties, but he is also kept engaged by requests from students.
    “Occasionally…[students] will appear and say, ‘I have question, can you help us answer it,’” said Diepen. “The answer is usually ‘yes.’ And then it becomes a whole thing. Those are the projects that show up at our proverbial doorstep. Those are the most fun [tasks]."
    While Diepen keeps an annotation of special requests, he also notes that many requests are not entirely the same.
    “Working with student researchers is so much fun,” said Diepen. “They will come at issues or scenarios from completely different angles than I would have expected them to be coming at it. It’s just fun see what people come up with while chasing their interests.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elton "Buck" Amburn Project

Image
WTAMU Students Search Campus Resources to Help Family Elton "Buck" Amburn was a student at West Texas State Teachers College from 1936-39. He returned to receive his masters degree from West Texas State University in 1949. The Search for Elton Amburn    One of the most valuable pieces of information we can ever be gifted with, is the history of our parents. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 8, 2021, Elton Philip Amburn, of Tucson, AZ, had emailed The Prairie News, the West Texas A&M University online campus newspaper, located 660 miles east, in Canyon, TX. In the electronic message, Philip Amburn had written that he was looking for more information about his father, the late Elton “Buck” Amburn, who attended the Canyon, TX college in the late 1930’s.       “There were whole sections of my dad's life that I don't know a lot about,” said Philip. “I initially got in contact with [The Prairie] asking if there was any way I could look at some online records fro
Read more

Data Visualization-Jiwa's Favorite Amarillo Restaurants

       For this map, Adam Jiwa has complied a list of his top 14 restaurants that enjoys to eat at when he does not feel like cooking.      The choices he made include Dinner, Lunch, and Breakfast or great weekend Brunch places to share company along with a mimosa or three. For breakfast and brunch places, a hidden gem starts the list off. El Manantial Restaurant is off Amarillo Blvd. Serving authentic Mexican Food with a menu that makes you wish you paid more attention in high school Spanish classes, El Manantial is hidden by a bridge, but remains a must go to.      Other places on his breakfast and brunch list include: Bagel Place, Drunken Oyster, Hud’s, Baby Crush. International House of Pancakes is also encompassed in this list because, "who doesn’t like pancakes?"      For the lunch time round up, Golden Light Café, Pondaseta Brewing Co., Joe Taco. A quick go to if you don’t have time to wait, is Chicken Express.      The dinner lineup does not disappoint either. La Fies
Read more

Adam-Jiwa-MJ-Buffalo Courts

  WTAMU Journalism students get an 88 year old history lesson. When we think of journalism, many of us think about political news, sports news, or even current events from around the world.  On Monday, September 27 th , students from West Texas A&M University traveled to the oldest building on the campus. The students from Dr. Nancy Garcia’s multimedia journalism class were assigned to put together a photo journal of their visit. Buffalo Courts, built in 1933, originally served as an athletic dormitory of then, West Texas State Teacher’s College. Housing 55 student athletes at the time, the project was funded by gifts and grants that totaled $150,801.00.  The building was made using petrified wood, stalagmites and stalactites from Carlsbad Caverns, blue flint from the all areas of the Texas Panhandle, as well as native stone from the second largest canyon in the nation, Palo Duro Canyon. Almost 50 years later, the university’s alumni association moved into the building to serve as
Read more