Digital Snaphosts
Digital Snapshots uses free digital exhibits to help experts and non-experts alike navigate the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s (MDAH) rich Digital Archive. Designed by the team at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Digital Humanities, Digital Snapshots features well-known, massive collections like the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and smaller features like Mississippi State Department of Health Photographs, the Crowe Album featuring the Mound Bayou community and beyond, and the 1927 Mississippi River Flood collection. These exhibits include short contextualizing essays by historical experts, recommended readings, and lesson plans for K-12 educators. Digital Snapshots is especially valuable for non-experts, but they are also designed to aid college and secondary educators and researchers.
Smith Papers Collection
History of the project This project began in August of 2019, with the first students in LIB 201: Intro to Digital Research. These students paved the way for others to learn about, interact, and access the letters in this collection by creating transcripts, metadata, and digital scans of the contents in the Ellard-Murphree-Pilgreen-Smith Collection (from here on, referred to as the “Smith Family Papers”).
Content Notes of the Smith Family Papers Collection The majority of the contents of the Ellard-Murphree-Pilgreen-Smith Collection (referred to from here on out as the “Smith Family Papers”) includes letters, diaries, financial and academic records, wills, birth records among family members and friends, with most letters from members of the Smith Family–Pauline and Sam H. and their children, Bernice, Christine, Martha, and Sam E (or “Sonny Boy.”). The geographic center of the collection is Pittsboro (or Calhoun County) Mississippi, where the family maintained their home since 1914, and where Pauline wrote most of her letters. Several letters from Jackson, MS are from Sam H. Smith, who was a state senator between 1932 and 1936. Letters to and from Columbus, MS are from Bernice, Christine and Martha, who each attended and graduated from the Mississippi State College for Women between 1931 and 1938. As Pauline and Sam H. grow older and continue to write from Mississippi, the children move around the country, and with a few military appointments, around the world. The letters reflect this.
Early explorations of project’s collection include a look at the role of women’s letters in their social networks, the history of the TVA in rural Mississippi, and the experiences of a WWII soldier in basic training.