SMU Libraries Digital Collections Update: June 2025

In June 2025, SMU Libraries uploaded 326 items into SMU Libraries Digital Collections. Highlights include:

70 negatives, ca. 1933, from the Robert Yarnall Richie Photographs collection. Highlights include a series of promotional images for LaSalle automobiles, with some taken as reflections in a hubcap, and aerials of various estates primarily in the New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, areas.

25 photographs, ca. 1910-1936, from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution, featuring portraits of government and military officials during the Mexican Revolution, and scenes from the State of Hidalgo showing members of the Labor Party of Hidalgo and others. Individuals include Gen. John J. Pershing, Presidents Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon, Governor Matias Rodriguez, Jose Yves Limantour, Maclovio Herrera, Ramon F. Iturbe, and many others.

105 newspapers, 1890-1891, from Historic Newspapers at Bridwell Library. The Texas Christian Advocate was a weekly newspaper published by the Methodist Episcopal Church that distributed news related to the Methodist Church in Texas. These newspapers were digitized by Texas Tech University using Bridwell Library’s copies on microfilm.

87 photographs and two photograph album covers, 1890-1897, from Volume 2 of [Bengal-Nagpur Railway, India], depicting various parts of the process of building the railway line, for example, the entrance to a railroad tunnel under construction.

Benjamin Franklin Hughes Memoir, Autograph Manuscript, 1835-1875, a memoir in pencil and ink where Hughes recounts his military and merchant seaman career from 1835-1875. The digital file includes a partial typewritten transcript following the manuscript.

Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk of India, ca. 1893, a lithograph poster perhaps used to advertise a lecture by this disciple of Ramakrishna and spiritual leader of India. The Swami Vivekananda visited and lectured in the United States in 1893 as a delegate to the Parliament of World Religions at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Mexican woman in her home, San Antonio, Texas, March 1939, a photograph taken by the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression.

24 historic Texas cookbooks, comprising 3,010 pages, were added to the DeGolyer Library Cookbook Collection. Items include promotional cookbooks for rice, citrus, and chili powder, as well as a cookbook from the Parent-Teacher Association of the Coldwell School in El Paso published during World War II as a “Victory Cook Book.”

3 oral history interviews were added to the SMU Oral History Projects digital collection. These interviews, with Hamza Azeez, Ifeanyi Okuzor, and Mario Walker, are part of the Voices of SMU project.

3 stereographs, 1867, from Across the Continent on the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, by Alexander Gardner. They are part of a series of photographs taken along the route of the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, later the Kansas Pacific Railroad, showing geological features in Missouri and Kansas.

2 cartes de visite, ca. 1864-1866, from the Collection of Civil War and Military Cartes de Visite and Portraits, showing a young girl and a woman.