Purdue celebrates 30th anniversary of the C-SPAN Archives

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the C-SPAN Archives with an Oct. 12 panel featuring C-SPAN founder and Purdue alumnus Brian Lamb, former Representative and Ambassador to India Tim Roemer and former Representative Steve Buyer.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is 6:30 p.m. in Krannert Auditorium, room 140 of Purdue’s Krannert Building.

The C-SPAN Archives is located at the Purdue Research Park, and it was founded in 1987. During the past 30 years, more than 230,000 hours of primary source video of C-SPAN programming has been recorded, indexed and archived. All programs are digital and can be viewed for free at https://www.c-span.org/about/videoLibrary/. The archives is operated and entirely funded by C-SPAN.

 “Labeled as one of the most comprehensive video archives of governmental and political content, the C-SPAN Archives allows this coverage to be immediately accessible to anyone through its database and electronic archival systems,” said Marifran Mattson, professor and head of the Brian Lamb School of Communication.

Lamb, who will moderate the panel, earned his bachelor's degree in speech in 1963 and received an honorary doctorate from Purdue in 1986. He founded C-SPAN - Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network - in 1977, and the network's initial telecasts of the U.S. House of Representatives commenced in 1979. Today there are three C-SPAN networks offering around-the-clock coverage of the political process. He is the executive chairman of C-SPAN, and Purdue’s School of Communication is named for him.

Buyer is the former U.S. Representative for Indiana’s 4th Congressional District, and previously the 5th District, serving from 1993 until 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. Buyer holds the rank of colonel in the United States Army Reserve. He represented the Monticello and Lafayette areas. He served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and at the time of his retirement was the ranking member of the Veterans Committee. During the Republican control of Congress from 2005-2007, he chaired that committee.

Roemer served in the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 2003 as a Democrat from Indiana's 3rd Congressional District. Subsequently, he was the president of the Center for National Policy (CNP), a Washington, D. C.-based national security think tank. He served as U.S. ambassador to India from 2009 to 2011.

Robert X. Browning, Purdue professor of communication and political science, is the director of the C-SPAN Archives. In 2010 the archives, where he serves as the executive director, won a George Foster Peabody Award for its work in creating an online video library. He is the author of three books featuring research using the C-SPAN Archives. 

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu 

Source: Marifran Mattson, 765-494-7596, mmattson@purdue.edu