News from the DeGolyer Library
February 2020

Southern Methodist University
Our Upcoming Exhibit


The World at War, 1939-1945: Stories and Images

Coming March 2020
 

For the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the DeGolyer Library will draw on its holdings to examine the conflict through the experience of participants, in combat and on the home front, from SMU and Dallas to the theaters of war in the South Pacific, North Africa, and Europe. Highlights will include the photographs of U.S. Army photographer Melvin Shaffer, whose memoir we are publishing, as well as materials documenting the work of Stanley Marcus (War Production Board) and E. DeGolyer (Petroleum Administration for War). Letters, diaries, photographs, posters, books, and other memorabilia will be on display to illustrate the monumental impact of the war on American and global society.

Andy Hanson: Picturing Dallas, 1960-2008

Virtual Exhibit

Did you miss the Andy Hanson exhibit? Then make sure to check out our virtual Hanson exhibit, created and curated by Danae Renieri , special projects assistant.

Click here to explore the virtual exhibit , which celebrates Andy Hanson’s long career in Dallas, where he was a staff photographer for the  Dallas Times Herald , covering society, politics, the performing arts, and the major news events of the day.
In the Reading Room
This semester, we're hosting Professor Emma Wilson's undergraduate English course, Literature As Data. The course asks students to encode 17th and 18th century books with the Text Encoding Initiative, and use the data created to facilitate new forms of literary analysis.

Pictured here are the students working with items including playbills and scripts, obscure poetry collections, and songbooks.
News & Notes
Like any Texas archive worth its salt, we've got a range of material documenting and commemorating the Battle of the Alamo. Check out Cynthia Franco's blog post Remember the Alamo to learn more.
During Donald Trump's Impeachment trial, we decided to look at DeGolyer holdings related to previous Impeachment investigations and trials. Check out Impeachment Season to see the highlights.
In Kirk Douglas, Passing of a Hollywood Icon , Anne Peterson remembers the screen legend's career and shares photographs of Douglas found in the Andy Hanson collection.
From the Stacks
Collections Highlight
This beautiful frontispiece comes from Poly-Olbion , or, to quote the full title, " Poly-Olbion, a chorographical description of tracts, rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britain: with inter-mixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarities, pleasures and commodities of the same. digested in a poem by Michael Drayton, Esq. with a table added, for direction to those occurrences of story and antiquity, where unto the course of the volume easily leads not."

Along with the allegorical frontispiece, Poly-Olbion features thirty songs which describe the history, traditions, and topography of English counties


Recent Accessions

This small family photo album just arrived at the DeGolyer, featuring sixteenth plate (3.5x4 cm) ambrotype images. If you'd like to browse more family photo albums like this, check out the large collection of digitized albums which are part of the Lawrence T. Jones III collection of Texas Photographs.
Newly Digitized Items

A Scrapbook featuring seventeen images from the Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon papers was added to the SMU Libraries digital collection. The images were taken in 1933 across China and Japan, and notably feature scenes from Shanghai waterways. The Sassoon papers and photographs is one of our most exciting collections-- take a moment to browse the images here.
DeGolyer Library | Southern Methodist University | 214-768-3637 | degolyer@smu.edu | https://www.smu.edu/Libraries/DeGolyer