Antebellum &
Civil War Mississippi
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In 2000, Special Collections marked its twenty-fifth anniversary. While not as anticipated an event as the new millennium, it nonetheless offers an opportunity to review several decades of growth and provides sufficient occasion to celebrate a silver anniversary with a retrospective exhibition and catalogue. Cartoon by Eudora Welty Back in 1975, administrative changes in the library
transformed the old "Mississippi Collection" into the Department
of Archives and Special Collections. Along with new personnel, including a
University Archivist to head the department, a fundamental change in
collecting policy occurred. Rather than seeking only printed
Mississippiana, we began to acquire private and corporate papers, literary
manuscripts, and Mississippiana in a variety of non-book formats including
maps, broadsides, sheet music, photographs, and ephemera.
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