In January 2023, SMU Libraries uploaded 507 items into SMU Libraries Digital Collections. Highlights include:
224 images, ca. 1906-1950s, from the John Miller Morris Real Photographic Postcards and Photographs of Texas Collection. This project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and Texas State Library and Archives Commission (Grant Number LS-252486-OLS-22). (2023). These postcards and photographs feature images from central Texas, the Permian Basin, east Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley. Included are images of courthouses and other notable buildings, landscapes, and scenes of daily life in cities throughout Texas.
103 oral history transcript excerpts, 1970s, from the newly-published Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection. The interviewees are from all branches of the performing arts, but the emphasis is on motion pictures and popular music. Other groups of interviews are with exotic dancers and nightclub managers in Dallas, and Dallas theater executives, including those who worked for the Interstate Theatre. Many interviewees give detailed accounts of personal experience and reflections from their professional career. Highlights include excerpts from interviews with Maria Tallchief, Gregory Peck, Rosemary Clooney, Yul Brynner, Fred Astaire, and Edith Head.
26 real photographic postcards, ca. 1910-1920, from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Included are several bird’s eye views of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, the international bridge between the two cities, views of soldiers marching, riding, camping, and preparing for combat in trenches, and scenes of Francisco Madero near his headquarters. Two less typical images show children with an American soldier and a scene from inside a prisoner of war camp. Warning: some photos contain graphic content.
7 interviews from the Southern Methodist University Oral History Interviews and Digital Humanities Student Projects collection. These interviews, with Jose Ramon Campos, Leia Hannum, Elise Johnson, Maura Mangum, Hanan Muzemil, Cit’clati Santos, and Haley Taylor Schlitz are part of the Voices of SMU project.
95 negatives and transparencies, ca. 1940-1954, from the Richard Steinheimer Photograph Collection. These images, taken in California and Utah, depict train stations, locomotive, railway workers, and landscapes. Of particular note are images taken on Steinheimer’s trip with other railway fans to Eagle Mountain, which feature photographs of the Kaiser iron mine.
52 course catalogs, 1940-1949, from the Southern Methodist University Course Catalogs collection. These catalogs contain general information and course descriptions from each of SMU’s programs of study during the 1940s.