News & Events
| First portion of massive Doy Leale McCall
Collection now open! Click here to
access the guide. |
Former USA Archives Given Gift
Worth $3.1 Million
On May 6, the University of South Alabama held a press conference
to announce that the former USA Archives has acquired a collection of historical documents
worth $3.1 million. As part of the gift, the University also announced that the Archives
will now be called The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection
of historical documents donated by the family of Doy Leale McCall Sr. include material
from the late 17th through the 20th century. In it are presidential land grants, papers
related to slavery and Reconstruction, plantation documents, Civil War diaries, and papers
of the Winter Iron Works, among others.
The collection remains closed for now. Staff of The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and
Manuscript Library plan to open it in stages, with the printed material being first.
Announcements of the periodic openings will be made. Below are two of the images from the
May 6 press conference. You can also read the press
release. For more information, please call 251.434.3800 or email us at mccalllib@usouthal.edu.
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Seated from left to right are Doy Leale
McCall III, Margaret Rolfsen McCall, John McCall (grandchildren of Doy Leale McCall Sr.),
USA president Gordon Moulton, Senior Vive-President for Academic Affairs David Johnson,
and Vice-President for Development Joseph Busta.
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| Staff and Students of The Doy Leale McCall
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the May 6 press conference. |
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Friends of the Archives meeting,
Tuesday, May 10
Plan to attend the next Friends of the University Archives
meeting on Tuesday, May 10, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.. Featured will be more information
on an exciting new collection and a presentation of some of the rich historic documents
from that collection. For more information call 434.3800 or email archives@jaguar1.usouthal.edu.
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Gulf South Historical Association
Annual Conference
Call for papers for the 2011 Gulf South Historical Association's
annual conference. A .pdf of the CFP is available here.
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Wilson C. Burton Portrait Index Now
Online
The Wilson C. Burton portrait collection is made up of nearly
77,000 negatives taken between 1935 and 1998. Primarily consists of portraits but also
includes other significant images. An index to the collection is available here. |
Panoramic Images Now on Sale!
The Archives is pleased to announce the long-term sale of nearly
160 panoramic images taken by Erik Overbey from the mid-1910s through 1940. For more info,
please click here.
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Large Bequest Left to Archives
On June 8, the archives received a check for $45,944.53 from the
Mark J. Hanrahan Trust. The amount was left to us by Mr. Hanrahan in memory of his
long-time partner Robert E. Bell. Mr. Hanrahan donated Mr.
Bell’s papers to the archives after Mr. Bell’s death in 1999. Mr.
Hanrahan’s trust contained no instructions for how the money should be used, and its
disposition has not yet been decided. We plan, however, to do something in memory of Mr.
Bell. Do you have an idea? If so, give us a call at 251.434.3800 or email us at
archives@jaguar1.usouthal.edu.
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Book Signing
The local chapter of The Links, Incorporated, presented three
opportunites to see and hear Linda Kenney Miller, whose book, Beacon on the Hill, about
her grandfather's relationships with Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver,
was recently published. |
Friends of the Archives' Spring Meeting
The Friends of the University of
South Alabama Archives held its annual spring meeting on Tuesday, March 30, 2010, in room
181 of the University Library. The featured speaker for the event was Scotty E. Kirkland,
a recent MA graduate at the university. The title of his talk was "Mobile, the
Boswell Amendment, and the transformation of Alabama's Democratic Party." Please click here to see some images from the event. |
Archives Receives Another Grant
Late last year we told you about our grant application, in
conjunction with Junior League of Mobile,
to the J. L. Bedsole Foundation for funds to purchase supplies to process Junior League
Records. On January 11, we received confirmation from the foundation that our grant
application had been fully funded. The check will soon be in hand, the records transferred
to us, supplies purchased, and processing begun. Please click
here for the press release announcing the grant award. |
Grant Awarded
On November 25, the Archives was notified that its grant
application in the amount of $5,917 to the National Endowment for the Humanities was fully
funded as a We the People grant. The monies will go to complete processing of the
Wilson C. Burton Collection and begin processing of
the Wilbur F. Palmer Collection. We will
continue to post reports on the progress of the projects. |
Archives partners with Junior League of Mobile
Several months ago the Junior League of Mobile
approached the Archives about donating its records. The two organizations then partnered
to apply for a grant from the Bedsole Foundation for funds to purchase archival supplies
to re-house and organize the Junior League's papers. We should receive word on the success
of the grant by the middle of December. The official donation of the records is pending
that decision. |
Archives completes
requirements for NHPRC/HRAB grant
On April 6, 2009, the National Historic Publications and Records
Commission, through the Alabama state Historical Records Advisory Board, awarded the
Archives a $2,500 grant. The grant was applied toward supplies to re-house and organize
the Wilson C. Burton photographic collection. The monies arrived and this past summer,
graduate students began working on the collection. To date, 80 percent of the collection
has been re-housed, or an estimated 72,000 negatives. For more on the collection, please
see our guide to photographic collections. |
Archives announces change to scan policy
Effective October 1, 2009, the Archives instituted a new policy
for scans. Scans for for personal use, for computer monitor viewing, or for a web site
viewing are limited to 72 to 96 dots per inch (dpi). Those for inclusion in powerpoint
presentations will not be scanned any higher than 300 dpi. Only scans for commerical
publication or special projects (with the prior approval of the archivist) will be
reproduced at a dpi higher than 300 .jpg. |
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