Web Services

Stephen Dill Lee, first President of Mississippi A&M College, 1880-1899

In conjunction with Mississippi State University's historical investigation of the sesquicentennial land-grant university, "Thinking Land Grants: A 'Cerebration' of the 150th Anniversary of the Morrill Land-Grant Act, October 3-6, 2012," and the national recognition of October as Archives Month, the MSU Libraries announce a number of online and onsite resources celebrating the Morrill Land-Grant Act.

An exhibit detailing the land-grant origins of MSU is newly installed on Mitchell Memorial Library's second-floor Information Mall. Utilizing materials from the vast collections of the University Archives, this exhibit hosts for visitors documents, photographs and memorabilia related to the early days of the University, known then as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi. Among the items on display are excerpts from the original Board of Trustees meeting minutes from 1878, showing the selection of Starkville as the site for the College and of Stephen D. Lee as the College's first president.

The MSU Libraries have also created The Mississippi State University Founders Digital Collection as a supplement to the exhibit. This collection features the complete 1878 Board of Trustees meeting minutes and the Presidential Papers of both Stephen D. Lee (from 1880-1899) and John Marshall Stone (from 1899-1900), second President of the College.  This collection can be accessed by visiting http://library.msstate.edu/specialcollections/archive/founders.

In addition, “The Morrill Act, Celebrating Land-Grant Universities,” a new research guide, is now available, providing users with access to information on the Morrill Act, land-grant institutions in the United States, agricultural resources on the web, books and journals dealing with agricultural and mechanical topics and a variety of digital resources related to land-grant institutions and their missions. This research guide can be accessed by visiting http://guides.library.msstate.edu/MorrillAct.

For more information and to begin accessing these resources, please visit http://library.msstate.edu/ or contact MSU Libraries Assistant Archivist Ryan Semmes at 662-325-9355 or by email at rsemmes@library.msstate.edu.

Mississippi State University's Reveille has gone digital.

Every volume of the student-published yearbook  is now freely available online via MSU Libraries' website. The project to digitize all Reveille volumes began in April 2012, and was completed in August. Pages from the yearbooks have typically been the most often-requested material for digitization from the University Archives. While the more recent volumes are pretty sturdy, some of the oldest books are not able to be handled by the public due to their frail condition. Now, due to the completion of this digitization, anyone can access all years of the Reveille from anywhere in the world.

The Reveille chronicles the lives and events of Mississippi State University (previously named Mississippi Agricultural & Mechanical College and Mississippi State College) throughout the institution's history. MSU Libraries partnered with the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative to complete this digitization project through a subsidy grant from the Sloan Foundation. Each of the volumes from 1898 to 2008 is searchable – thanks to the use of optical character recognition (OCR) software – and freely available for partial or complete download.

For more information on MSU Libraries and to peruse the yearbooks, please visit http://library.msstate.edu/Reveille.

Not only is Mississippi State University (MSU)'s yearbook, the Reveille, returning in print for 2012, but soon every volume of the Reveille will be digitized and published online.

The MSU Libraries have partnered with the Lyrasis Mass Digitization Collaborative to complete this digitization project through a subsidy grant from the Sloan Foundation. The Reveille was first published in print in 1898, and then continuously from 1906 to 2008, with the exception of 1944 when no volume was published in order to conserve paper for the war effort.

“The Reveille issues are being digitized in reverse order," says Randall McMillen, coordinator of MSU Libraries' Digital Projects & Access Unit, "with the first batch spanning 1950-2007 mostly complete."

Each of the volumes is searchable, thanks to the use of optical character recognition (OCR) software, and they will be freely available for partial or complete download. Some of the later volumes are very large and may take a while to download. MSU students, staff, faculty, alumni, and others interested in the digitized Reveille are encouraged to check the MSU Libraries' website for updates.

To view the digitized volumes visit http://library.msstate.edu/Reveille.

Mississippi State University Libraries have teamed up with the Mississippi Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission to promote events, sites, and educational materials relating to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

The Instructional Media Center designed a logo for the Commission, and the Web Services Department built a website to help distribute information about Mississippi's role in the Civil War and about Sesquicentennial commemorative events. The website includes a photo gallery, videos, an extensive timeline of the Civil War in Mississippi, and maps of important battlefields and cemeteries. Visitors can submit events to be displayed in an interactive calendar. Visit the website at http://www.mscivilwar150.com.

The Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War begins in January 2011 and will continue through 2015. Check the website often to find out what's happening in your region!

The Mississippi State University Libraries announces the MegaResource School Librarian Workshop blog! While the workshop happens only once a year, the blog will keep K-12 library professionals up-to-date year round. Our goal is provide MegaResource attendees (and others!) up-to-date information on topics such as information literacy, database instruction, grants, and collection development. The moderated blog allows users to make comments on posted items and will highlight new developments in the K-12 environment at the state and national level.

The blog is available online at: http://blogs.library.msstate.edu/megaresources/. For additional information about the blog, please contact Dr. Deborah Lee at (662) 325-0810 or dlee@library.msstate.edu.

Are you looking for a way to provide your students with access to your class notes, homework, old tests, or articles 24 hours a day via the web?

Electronic Reserve provides students with access to articles, class notes, homework assignments, syllabi, etc. 24 hours a day via the web. Students are able to access these materials through the Library's online catalog.

Materials are password protected to ensure only MSU faculty, staff and students are able to view the files. Full-text articles may also be placed on electronic reserve. This provides students one location to retrieve materials instead of searching the databases.

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