Preface...

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. 

Strengthening the Faulkner collection was an immediate goal. In 1981, Special Collections obtained the Rowan Oak papers, comprising 1,800 sheets of autograph and typescript drafts by Faulkner of poems, short stories, film scripts, and novels. These papers, discovered in a broom closet at Faulkner's home are the crown jewels of our collection.                                                                    Introduction page two