CUL: Digital Collections: April 2011

This blog is designed to provide more information on the items that are uploaded into Southern Methodist University’s digital collections.

I work for the Central University Libraries (CUL) as the digital collections developer. Each month, we upload hundreds of digitized photographs, works of art, manuscripts, imprints, and more that are held by our seven special libraries.

I hope you will enjoy looking at these rare items in a “virtual” format. We would love to hear what you think about the items in our digital collections, and how you are using them.

This first posting reviews what we uploaded in April 2011, as well as highlights special events and activities.

 

 

 

In April, digital collections from SMU’s DeGolyer Library were used extensively in tandem with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

We have digitized hundreds of cartes de visite of Civil War generals, officers, soldiers, and statesmen, as well as photographs by notable Civil War photographers such as Alexander Gardner, Andrew Russell, and Mathew Brady. You can view these items in Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints.

There are also more than 100 photographs of Texans in the Civil War in the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs collection.

In April, the Texas State Historical Association used approximately 40 Civil War-related items from the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs in a series of specialized articles in its Handbook of Civil War Texas.

Looping slideshows containing images from the Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints and the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs digital collections were used in the following venues:

• on the SMU News & Communications web page Remembering the Civil War on its 150th Anniversary;
• preceding a Stanton Sharp lecture sponsored by the History Department, Why the Civil War Mattered, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Hahn;
• preceding a Stanton Sharp lecture, African Americans and the Struggle to Win British Support During the Civil War, by Vanderbilt University history professor Richard Blackett; and
• preceding a lecture and book signing, sponsored by the Friends of the SMU Library, with Robin Oliveira, promoting her book, My Name is Mary Sutter.

In April, the Texas Artists: Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper digital collection was presented at the Center for the Advancement of the Study of Early Texas Art’s annual symposium.

The Texas Artists collection was also profiled in the Spring 2011 edition of Annotations.

An informational article on the John N. Rowe III Collection of Texas Currency was published in the March/April newsletter of the Texas Numismatic Association.

We added 730 items into our CONTENTdm collections in April. SMU now has 11,375 published items.

Below are some highlights from April:

– 81 items into Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints

– 73 slides in the Hamon Library’s Octavio Medellin: Works of Art and Artistic Processes collection

– DeForrest Judd’s Big Bend Sketchbook (127 pages) in Texas Artists: Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper

–75 items into the SMU Archives’ Southern Methodist University Campus Memories

– 216 items into the DeGolyer Library’s Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs

– 2 items into the Hamon Library’s Mary McCord-Edyth Renshaw Collection on the Performing Arts

– 37 items in the DeGolyer Library’s Texas: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints collection

– Bridwell Library uploaded 52 items into the Images from the John Vincent Heyl Papers collection, and began development of the Prints by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) collection.

– 67 .pdf files in the  SMU-in-Taos Cantonment Burgwin Postings collection.