SMU Libraries Digital Collections Update: November 2024

In November 2024, SMU Libraries uploaded 330 items into SMU Libraries Digital Collections. Highlights include:

138 negatives, ca.  1930s, from the Robert Yarnall Richie Photograph Collection. Highlights include a series of images of the American Radiator Building (today the Bryant Park Hotel) in New York City and images from the Texas State Fair in the centennial year of 1936. The Texas State Fair photographs include an animatronic dinosaur from the Sinclair Oil display and a series of six photographs of two Texas Rangers seated at a table, with famed Ranger Manuel T. ”Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas on the left.

25 WFAA newsfilms from March 1972. The videos are 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.

36 letters, photographs, and other items, ca. 1910s-1970s, from the Stanley Marcus Papers. Items include letters and drawings from prolific illustrator Rockwell Kent, including the bookplate he designed for Stanley and Billie Marcus.

15 historic Texas cookbooks, 1896-1955, comprising 1,658 pages, were uploaded to the DeGolyer Library Cookbook Collection, including a cookbook from the Red Cross Canteen Corps of Travis County and a cookbook from the 1934 Turkey Trot in Cuero, Texas. 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‐256843‐OLS‐24).

17 photographs, ca. 1930s-1960, from the JCPenney Records. The images depict storefronts, sales floor displays, and sales associates from JCPenney stores in LaGrange, Georgia and Anaconda, Montana.

20 oral history transcript excerpts, 1986-1988, from the 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. Many interviewees give detailed accounts of personal experience and reflections from their professional career. Highlights include excerpts from interviews with Roy Huggins, Lynn Bari, Edmund H. North, Adele Mara, and Walter Bernstein.

79 photographs, ca. 1870s-1941, from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Women and girls are the subject of many of the photographs, including images of Zapotec women in traditional clothing. Also included are a variety of photographs, 1913-1914, showing scenes of the U.S. Atlantic fleet’s sailors arriving in Veracruz and departing as the Army arrived to relieve them, ships of the U.S. Atlantic fleet, refugees fleeing Mexico, the U.S. Atlantic fleet’s return, funeral processions for U.S. soldiers who died during the occupation, and various scenes of buildings and people in Veracruz. Also included are photographs from Sabino Osuna dating from the Decena Tragica in 1913.