The Society of Mississippi Archivists will hold its annual meeting at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on March 26-27, 2026.

Theme: Reflecting on American History in the Archives

The Society of Mississippi Archivists invites proposals for presentations and panels that explore the 250^th anniversary of the United States by focusing on how archivists, archival collections, and archival practices reflect, interpret, and preserve American culture and history.

We welcome proposals that address topics such as (but not limited to):

• Interesting stories uncovered while processing collections or working with researchers
• Collection development
• Exhibits (physical or digital) highlighting collections
• Integrating collections into bibliographic instruction
• Working with donor and collection supporters
• Digital archives
• Programming centered on collections
• Using archives in K-12
• Preserving archival material
• Collecting materials on under-documented histories
• Working with born digital collections

Submission Guidelines

• Submit an abstract of approximately 250 words describing the topic.
• Include the names, affiliations, contact information and presentation titles of all presenters.
• All proposals are welcome. While the theme is “Reflecting on American History in the Archives,” we will consider archival-related proposals beyond the theme.
• Submissions are open to Society of Mississippi Archivists members and non-members, and we welcome proposals from students at the undergraduate or graduate level.

Deadline: January 12, 2026

Submit to: Jennifer Brannock at Jennifer.Brannock@usm.edu.

Questions: Contact Jennifer Brannock at Jennifer.Brannock@usm.edu.

Congratulations and welcome to our new officers: vice president Jennifer Brannock (USM) and board members Gabriel Fequiere, Jr. (Hinds) and Melissa Hering (Columbus)!

Archivists in Mississippi see a lot. We organize photographs of Civil Rights Movement marches. We touch flyers distributed by the Ku Klux Klan. We catalog books that defended slavery and books that condemned it. We digitize bills of sale for Black men, women, and children who were traded like livestock. We preserve Blues recordings by legendary Mississippi musicians. We manage an extensive, bipartisan body of records for public servants at every level of government. We process the collections of pioneering women in journalism and letters written by newly emancipated African Americans to their governor in the 1860s. We help researchers find the records of the first women and the first Black people to attend our universities. We preserve the stories of Chinese immigrants in the Mississippi Delta.

We are information scientists. We risk our health, safety, and wellness in this work. We are trained in tasks such as disaster prevention and conservation. We routinely handle highly flammable materials such as nitrate film. We handle molded, water-damaged, and smoke-damaged materials. We develop storage solutions to extend the life of every type of record imaginable, from moving image to thousands of linear feet of paper. We build boxes to protect the rarest and oldest publications. Our repositories contain, in some cases, the only copies or editions of certain media in the world. We are conservationists of the historical record.

For many years, Mississippi archives and written histories told only one side of the story. Many of our predecessors in the field of archival work did not value and did not seek to preserve materials like the ledgers of Black businessmen at the turn of the century or scrapbooks from Black civil, religious, and fraternal organizations. Our archives reflected the narrative we wanted to tell. They did not tell the truth, and Mississippi’s story was incomplete. 

The past few decades have seen increasing emphasis on acquiring documents and artifacts from groups that were and still are underrepresented in our collections, as well as creating more exhibits that tell these stories. In 2017, we celebrated as the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened its doors and invited visitors from across the nation and around the world to learn the true story. Future historians of our state, as well as future generations of students, will have a much more diverse – and therefore a much richer – body of primary sources for their research, cultural enrichment, and learning.

Now, we are at another crossroads. As we witness the dismantling of diversity programs at the state and national level, we share in the outrage and sadness of many Americans at the rejection of decades of progress. From our perspective as information scientists, the greatest threat to these records is time. The past support of our public leaders has allowed us to invest in technology, resources, and staff to better fight the uphill battle of time, and for that we are grateful. However, as exhibited by reductions in staff and services at the National Archives and Records Administration and the dismissal of National Park Service guides and educators at historical sites, we stand to lose the fight against time even faster, and records will be lost as these decisions are litigated. Additionally, attempts to erase certain people such as members of the LGBTQ+ community from federal historic monuments and spaces serve only to revive antiquated limitations on the wide, inclusive repositories of human and institutional histories that we have dedicated our careers to preserve. Limiting our ability to provide access to these records is a direct violation of the ideals of democratic freedom inherent to American experience.

The Society of Mississippi Archivists is a non-profit professional organization funded by individual memberships, which gives us the freedom and the privilege to reject this political push against diversity and inclusion. We call upon our membership to recommit without reservation to the necessary work of collecting the records, preserving the history, and telling the stories of all Mississippians, and we humbly ask the people of Mississippi for continued support of our mission. Our archives document American history at its ugliest and at its most heroic, and our job is to protect it all – to ensure that future generations have access to the truth regardless of ever-changing trends in political ideology that have no bearing on the existence or facts of our records or the basic rights of people to learn from them.

Signed,
The Board of the Society of Mississippi Archivists
February 21, 2025

This year’s annual meeting will be held March 27-28 at Fant Memorial Library on the campus of Mississippi University for Women in Columbus. You can register here. Information about parking and hotels is also available at that link.

“Praise the Bridges that Carried Us Over”: Mississippi Women in the Archives

Thursday, March 27

8:30 – registration, coffee, breakfast snacks

9:00 – Researching Everyday Women

• Jennifer McGillan – Cooking with Ketchup
• Danielle Bishop Stoulig – Finding Nancy: One Student’s Search for a Female Cotton Planter in Antebellum Mississippi”

10:00 – break

10:15 – Rory Grennan and Katie McCormick – “Let Them See”: Mamie Till-Mobley in the Emmett Till Archives

11:15 – lunch break

1:00 – Institutional Records

• Heather Moore – Hillman College Legacy
• Melissa Hering – Silent Stories: Examination into Circuit Court Felony Cases from Lowndes County, Mississippi

2:00 – break

2:15 – Aaron Waterson, Jennifer Burt, Brad Johnston – Progressive Mississippi: An Unconventional Angle to Mississippi History

3:15 – break

3:30 – Lorraine Stuart, Jessica Clark, Ella Lauderdale – Southern Miss, Mrs., and Ms.: The Women of USM Special Collections

Friday, March 28

9:00 – coffee, breakfast snacks

9:30 – Revisiting Collections and Their Legacies

• Stephanie Salvaterra, Jared Quist, Sarah Parrish – “The Mystery and the Detective”: Rediscovering Blanche Colton Williams
• Jennifer Brannock – Bumping Into an Old Friend: Becoming Reacquainted with the Will D. Campbell Papers

10:30 – Lorraine Stuart, Elizabeth LaBeaud, and Brennan Collins – Bridging Southern Miss Digital Collections and Finding Aids: The O’Keefe Family Archive Case Study

11:30 – closing remarks by SMA President Miranda Vaughn

12:00 – lunch / SMA board meeting (board meetings are open to any member who wants to attend)

The Society of Mississippi Archivists will hold its annual meeting at the Mississippi University for Women’s Fant Library on March 27-28, 2025.

Theme: “Praise the Bridges that Carried Us Over”: Mississippi Women in the Archives

Mississippi archives are brimming with women’s stories. Our collections contain letters and diaries of wealthy women who lived on the fruits of stolen labor, records and photographs of dedicated educators and home demonstration agents, notes of trail-blazing journalists, political materials saved by bold civil rights activists, scrapbooks and cookbooks produced by women’s clubs, and even sentimental keepsakes like hair and baby teeth. The record cartons in our stacks document what women in the United Daughters of the Confederacy and women in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party wanted history to remember about them.

For our 2025 meeting, we invite proposals related to women in Mississippi archives, including:

• Interesting stories uncovered while processing collections or working with researchers
• Writing finding aids and metadata that make women’s materials more discoverable
• Obtaining more collections related to women
• Exhibits (physical or digital) of materials that document women
• Working in the archival field as a woman
• Projects that research and document prominent alumnae of educational institutions
• Stories of Mississippi women preserved in out-of-state archives

Proposals are not restricted to the conference theme. All proposals related to archives will be considered.

This call is open to non SMA members, and student proposals are encouraged!
Please write your proposal in roughly 250 words and send to DeeDee Baldwin at dbaldwin@library.msstate.edu) by January 15, 2025.

60 Years of Civil Rights

The 2024 annual meeting of the Society of Mississippi Archivists will be held at the COFO Civil Rights Education Center in Jackson on April 18-19. Click here to register!

Wednesday, April 17

10:00 a.m. (virtual)

Pre-Conference Table Talk: From Emancipation to Desegregation: Black Experiences through Materials at MSU Archives

Brad Johnston, Graduate Student, Mississippi State University

Carley Hill, Graduate Student, Mississippi State University

Ben Hillerman, Graduate Student, Mississippi State University

Heath Anderson, Graduate Student, Mississippi State University

Thursday, April 18

9:00 a.m.

Registration (breakfast snacks provided)

10:00 a.m.

From This Building Til Now

Jan Hillegas, F.I.S. Library Project and Conversations Mississippi

Dr. Christina Thomas, Visiting Scholar, JSU Margaret Walker Center

11:00 a.m.

Struggling for What is Right: Work at the COFO State Office during 1964 Freedom Summer

Angela Stewart, Archivist, Margaret Walker Center

Chioma Ajuonuma, HCAC Graduate Fellow

Garrad Lee, Digital Humanities Program Manager

Dr. Christina Thomas, Visiting Scholar, JSU Margaret Walker Center

12:00

Lunch

1:00 p.m.

Integration at Mississippi College

Camryn Johnson, Mississippi College

2:00 p.m.

Panel: Freedom in the Finding Aids: Civil Rights Collections newly processed under NHPRC grant

Lorraine A. Stuart, Head of Special Collections, University of Southern Mississippi

Brennan Collins, Graduate Assistant, University of Southern Mississippi

Crystal Walker, Graduate Assistant, University of Southern Mississippi

Julia Sumrall, Graduate Assistant, University of Southern Mississippi

Jessica Clark, Assistant Curator of Historical Manuscripts, University of Southern Mississippi

3:00 p.m.

Closing remarks

3:15 p.m.

Tours (Smith Robertson Museum, Mt. Olive Cemetery, M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge)

6:30 p.m.

Iron Horse Grill Meetup

Friday, April 19^th

9:00 a.m

Breakfast and snacks

9:30 a.m.

Moving Mayfield: How a Documentary Helped Save an Archive

Jeannie Speck-Thompson, University Archivist and Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi

10:30 a.m.

Panel: Exploring Civil Rights in Archival Instruction

Greg Johnson, Professor, Head of Special Collections & Blues Curator, The University of Mississippi

Jennifer Brannock, Professor, Curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana, The University of Southern Mississippi

Jessica Perkins Smith, Associate Professor, University Archivist, Mississippi State University

11:30 a.m.

Closing remarks and SMA board meeting

Questions? Please contact SMA Vice-President, Miranda Vaughn, mvaughn@mdah.ms.gov

Please welcome SMA’s new officers:

President – Kate Gregory

Past President – Carrie Mastley

Vice President – Miranda Vaughn

Board members – Angela Stewart (2022-2024), Heather Moore (2022-2024), Mona Vance-Ali (2023-2025), Jessica Perkins Smith (2023-2025)

SMA’s 2023 annual meeting was held at Mississippi State University on April 20-21.

THURSDAY, APRIL 20

9:00-10:00 a.m.

Registration and poster presentations

POSTERS

“Behind Locked Doors: A Practicum Journey”

Lara Taylor, Library Associate, Mississippi State University Libraries

“A Content Analysis: Using a Context Strategy to Write Metadata for a Photography Collection”

Brennan Collins, student, University of Southern Mississippi

10:00 a.m.

Welcome from the President

Carrie Mastley, Assistant Professor, Curator of Material Culture, Mississippi State University Libraries

PANEL #1 (Virtual) – Reimagining Archives

“We Are All Lichens: Archive as Translation Poetics”

Corrine Dekkers, Ph.D.; Katherine Gaffney, MFA; David Greenspan, MFA

11:00 a.m.

PANEL #2 – Training and Education for a New Generations of Archivists

“Tire Matters, Women’s Health, and UFOs: Creating an Interdisciplinary Archival Experience for Undergraduates”

Jennifer Brannock, University of Southern Mississippi, Curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana

“Archival Triage! Stat!”

Jeff Hirschy, Assistant Professor, The University of Southern Mississippi

“Passing the Torch: A Proposal to Inspire High Schoolers to Protect the Past” (virtual presentation)

Victoria Patrick, graduate student

12:00 – 1:30 p.m.

Lunch on your own

Visit dining.msstate.edu for on-campus options

1:30 p.m.

PANEL #3 – Communities of Archival Users — Virtual Panel

“Getting Your Digital Content Noticed by Genealogists”

Melissa Barker, Archivist/Records Manager

“Prison Libraries: 50 Years of Decisions and Discussions A Bibliometric Study on Prison Libraries in Court Decisions and Academic Literature from 1970-2020”

Donnie Boman, graduate student, the University of Southern Mississippi

2:30

PANEL #4 – Outreach Skills for Archivists

“Connecting the Dots: Strategies for Training Online Students in Hands-On Archival Processing”

Danielle Stoulig, Head of Archival Processing, Louisiana State University

“Innovation in Community Engagement”

Jennifer Greene, University Archivist, Associate Professor, the University of Southern Indiana

3:30 p.m.

Visit library museums on your own

Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, 4^th floor; Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana Gallery, 4^th Floor; Templeton Music Museum, 4^th floor, assorted exhibit cases, 2^nd floor atrium

6:00 p.m.

Keynote dinner

Keynote speaker: Dr. Sharron Streeter, Tougaloo College

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

9:00 a.m.

PANEL #1 – Developing Archival Skills for Graduate Students

“The Disciplines and the Archives: Experiences from a Pilot Program”

Erin Cain, Brad Johnson, Riley Cheek, graduate students, Mississippi State University

10:00 a.m.

PANEL #2 – Student Engagement with the Archives

“Grant Us the Serenity: Challenges and Achievements Thus Far”

Lorraine Stuart, Associate Professor, Head of Special Collections/Curator of Historical Manuscripts and Archives, the University of Southern Mississippi; Karlie Herndon, Assistant Curator of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, the University of Southern Mississippi; Jessica Clark, Assistant Curator, Historical Manuscripts, the University of Southern Mississippi; Emma Anderson and Jaq Jefcoat, graduate students, the University of Southern Mississippi

11:00 a.m.

PANEL #3 – Creating Inclusive Archival Experiences

“Fall 22 Queer Mississippi Exhibit Case Study”

Danielle Townsend, Audiovisual Special Collections Librarian & Associate Professor, The University of Mississippi

“Collecting, Describing and Discovering Women’s Health Ephemera for Student Research and Exhibits”

Diana Simpson, Assistant Professor/Catalog Librarian, The University of Southern Mississippi; Jennifer Brannock, Curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana, University of Southern Mississippi; Dipper Nobles, USM sophomore History major and Library Science minor

12:00 p.m.

Closing remarks from the Vice-President

Kate Gregory, Assistant Professor, Director of the Mississippi Political Collections, Mississippi State University

1:30 p.m.

Executive Board Meeting

All SMA members are invited and encouraged to attend, especially if they are interested in leadership positions!

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SMA’s Virtual Table Talks are one-hour informal discussions to promote the sharing of knowledge between archivists working in Mississippi galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Each talk will feature a speaker who will share their experience and knowledge on a given topic. The theme for the 2022-2023 season is “Representation Matters.” SMA is looking for presenters to speak on their experience working in underrepresented archival repositories and/or collections related to underrepresented groups and subjects.

Presentation ideas include, but are not limited to:

• Church or non-profit organization archives
• Historical societies
• Collections related to religious minorities
• Collections related to sensitive topics in your community
• Ways to build or market collections related to underrepresented groups and subjects
• Relationship building with underrepresented/marginalized communities
• DEI-centered hiring practices

If you are interested in serving as a speaker for a Virtual Table Talk, contact Miranda Vaughn (mvaughn@mdah.ms.gov) no later than September 9, 2022. Please iclude your name, institution, presentation title, and a description of your presentation (description not to exceed 200 words). In your description, you may wish to include how your activity/project originated, how you instated or completed the activity/project, why it is important to our profession and patrons, what problems or issues it might resolve, and any insights or lessons learned. Final presentations should be no longer than 45 minutes in length. Student presentations are encouraged.

Tentative Series Schedule

Fall 2022 Session

Friday, October 28, 12:00 pm CST

Spring 2023 Session

SMA Annual Conference

Summer 2023 Session

TBD       

Xavier Sivels, a PhD candidate in History at Mississippi State, won SMA’s first Distinguished Student Presentation award for his presentation, “Metadata Musical: Perspectives on Digital Archives Management,” at the 2022 annual meeting.