The PNW Archives and Special Collections department has combined its archive websites for the former PUC and PNC into one website for the unified university.

Joseph Coates, university archivist, oversees archival documents from both campuses. He worked on creating the new website, titled PNW Digital. He said the website can benefit students by teaching them how to use primary source documents and by providing insight to past inventions and innovations from the PNW, PUC and PNC communities.

“One of my goals for the future is to take senior projects and presentations and have online publications of what they did,” Coates said. “When you go into a job interview and they ask what you have done while in college, you have one more thing that you can show them.”

Josh Birky, graduate student, works with Coates in the archives department. He said that one of the biggest reasons the website is important is because the history of an institution can help people learn from others’ mistakes.

“If we forget where we have been and we don’t know where we are from, we don’t know where we are going to go,” Birky said. 

Along with the new digital archive, the archives on both campuses underwent remodeling in the past year. Plans for remodeling at the Westville campus began in October 2016 and finished during the summer of 2017. The Hammond campus added the Research Room during the summer of 2017.

On Jan. 3, the librarians also introduced LibChat, a way to text reference questions to them. Librarians answer questions from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Questions asked after hours are answered the next business day. Questions can also be sent via text message to (219) 228-7974.