SMU Libraries Digital Collections Update: April 2024

In April 2024, SMU Libraries uploaded or enhanced 349 items in SMU Libraries Digital Collections. Highlights include:

The JCPenney Collection was created and added to SMU Libraries Digital Collections, with 92 items in the inaugural upload. The collection will feature items from James C. Penney’s papers in addition to corporate records and materials, including photographs and advertising from the JCPenney Company. It is also the new home of the JCPenney Dynamo newsletters, formerly in their own digital collection. To learn more about the new digital collection and the JCPenney archives, read the blog post from archivist Joan Gosnell.

24 WFAA newsfilms from December 1971 were updated and enhanced with annotations researched and written by staff at the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection. The annotations provide detailed descriptions of each shot based on time-code, making the newsfilms easy to search and retrieve, as well as providing information on the people, places, and events that are depicted.

4 imprints, 1891-1936, comprising 1804 pages, were added to the Texas: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints digital collection. These items include the “Texas state gazetteer and business directory” from 1891 (presented in multiple parts), a pamphlet outlining Catholic education efforts in Texas, a business directory for Bay City, Texas, and a recounting of Price’s Missouri expedition during the Civil War. 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.

150 postcards, ca. 1907 to 1924, by W. E. Hadsell, from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Subjects include scenes in Veracruz and images related to the United State’s occupation of Veracruz in 1914.

1 photograph album, ca. 1920s, entitled the [Samuel Levi Sadler Photograph Album], was added to the U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints digital collection. This album features photographs of Sadler’s family and of young Black college students and graduates at Langston University in Oklahoma.

32 volumes of Sparks, 1939-1970, the Belo Corporation’s staff round table newsletter, were added to the Belo Records, 1842-2007 digital collection. Please note that due to their large file size, the .pdf files of these items may take longer than expected to download or open.

4 interviews were added to the SMU Oral History and Digital Humanities Student Projects collection. These interviews, with Shara Jeyarajah, Ruchi Ranganathan, Aabid Shivji, and Dennis Spencer, are part of the Voices of SMU project.

3 photographs, ca. 1930s-1940s, showing young men in various parts of Clements Hall (then Atkins Hall) on the SMU campus, were added to the Southern Methodist University Campus Memories collection.

24 stereographs, ca. 1936, from the Collection of Texas Stereographs. Highlights include images from the Texas Centennial Exposition, including an image of the original Tenor and Contralto statues at Fair Park, which were melted down during World War II.