Wichita ? Jay Price is quickly becoming Kansas’ go-to person for community history.

Not bad, considering he has lived in the state less than six years.

His friends call him the Energizer Bunny because of his tireless work to keep history alive.

Already, he has written three books about the state.

Price is perpetually in motion. He steps forward and backward, leaning in to listen.

“He’s so enthusiastic,” said Deborah Amend, executive director of the Kansas Oil Museum, who worked with Price on his most recent book, “El Dorado: Legacy of an Oil Boom.”

“It’s so hard trying to keep up with him,” she said. “There is so much he wants to do, achieve and share with everybody.”

His next project is researching the Cherokee Strip land run of 1893. People flocked from around the world to the Kansas-Oklahoma state line for the chance to homestead 160 acres of land for free.

He jokes that the story is more about “how the West was run.”

Price, director of Wichita State University’s public history program, said public history was all about getting people to think about their own history and their community’s place in history.

“It’s a sense of connectedness,” he said. “I’ve been allowed into Wichita’s local history. I’m still amazed I get to do as much as I have. I am trying to tell the history of a place I am not from and yet treat it with sympathy.”

Rather than approach history from a strictly academic viewpoint, Price encourages people to tell their own stories.

“Popular history isn’t written by historians,” he said. “It’s written by folks who have passionate interests.”

His job, he said, is to bridge the academic world with the popular.

His interests are eclectic.

Price, 36, is a board member and consultant for Old Cowtown Museum and serves as a “living history” interpreter and lecturer.

“He’s my knight in shining armor in making sure we know what our mission is and why we are here,” said Jan McKay, executive director at Cowtown. “I’ve seen him sitting in the parking lot with staff members having mini-roundtable discussions on a piece of Wichita history.”