SMU Libraries Digital Collections Update: August 2018

In August 2018, SMU Libraries uploaded 122 items into SMU Libraries Digital Collections.

Additionally, Bridwell Library has added five new incunables and 117 new images to the Fifteenth-Century Printed Books collection.

Highlights include:

42 documents, ca. 1910-1936, into the Texas: Photographs, Manuscripts and Imprints digital collection as part of the TexTreasures FY2018 grant program, sponsored by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. These documents feature promotional literature encouraging urban and rural development throughout Texas, vacations in Texas, and rail travel through the state.

Among these items are a number of pamphlets produced by chambers of commerce in Dallas, Fort Worth, Junction, Austin, Weatherford, and other locations throughout Texas. These items showcase industrial and residential developments in these cities and list the virtues of each location, describing their fitness for business, industry, agriculture, and daily life. A notable pamphlet from this selection is Oak Cliff: A City Within a City, which promotes the early development of Dallas’s historic Oak Cliff neighborhood.

21 images, 1857-1912, from the Jack and Beverly Wilgus History of Photography Collection. Included in this set of items, which also comprise photographs and glass lantern slides, are 16 stereographs taken throughout the United States. Images feature American Indians in Arizona and Nevada, views of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Park, and natural features in Utah.

20 negatives, 1944-1974, were added to the Richard Steinheimer Photograph Collection. This new collection contains photographs by American railroad photographer Richard Steinheimer, who is often referred to as the “Ansel Adams of railroad photography.” Among the images are views of locomotives on the Apache Railway in Arizona, and the Cajon Pass in California, as well as train yards and depots in San Diego, San Bernardino, and Richmond. One noteworthy image is a photograph of two different generations of passenger engines taken at the San Diego Depot in 1949.

24 photographs, 1932-1960, were added to the Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive. These images include several portraits of Kelly, as well as photographs of her preparations for departing for her fieldwork with the Southern Paiute people and a number of views of her home in Tepepan, Mexico.

2 handbooks from the 1974-1975 school year have been added to the Southern Methodist University Publications and Media Collection. These competing handbooks were issued officially by the university and unofficially by a group of students. The unofficial version of the handbook, which contained photographs and humor, was rejected by the Student Senate.

9 videos, taken between 2000 and 2011, from the SMU Video Archive Series. These videos feature interviews with SMU deans, professors, alumni, and other dignitaries with ties to the university. Among those interviewed are James Early, Dean of the Faculty of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Sue Whitfield, whose interview was conducted by University Archivist Joan Gosnell.

Exhibitions:

The Pietists is open in Bridwell Library’s Prothro Galleries through December 14, 2018. This exhibition presents works from Bridwell Library Special Collections written by precursors to and leaders of the Pietist movement in The Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These historical materials illustrate the theological and geographic diversity of the movement during its period of greatest influence, from the late seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century.

The Uniting Conference of 1968 and the Birth of The United Methodist Church is currently on exhibit in the Entry Hall of Bridwell Library. The exhibition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of The United Methodist Church. A selection of publications and images document Methodist integration, the Methodist-EUB merger, and the Uniting Conference that created the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States.