Eudora Welty Collection: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Abstract

Eudora Welty Collection:Mississippi Department of Archives and History Elisabeth Cambonga The materials transferred to the Archives and Records Services Division (A&RS) from the Museum Division since March 2011, along with those transferred to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) upon the settlement of Eudora Welty's estate, continue to be incorporated into the Eudora Welty Collection. Any newly acquired collections of Welty-related material not donated to MDAH by Eudora Welty or her heirs are established as collections unto themselves, in accordance with archival rules of provenance, and are not added to the Eudora Welty Collection proper. In 2019, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded an implementation grant to MDAH to support the preservation, digitization, and enhancement of access to the papers and photographs of Eudora Welty. The Eudora Welty Foundation matched MDAH's contribution to the grant. Although scheduled to be completed in May 2022, project revisions related to Covid-19 delayed progress and MDAH received a second grant extension from NEH. The project aimed to professionally conserve and scan selected items in the Eudora Welty Collection. The preparation and digitization of items necessitated the closure of selected series during scanning and quality control review. The grant was completed in January 2023 and can now be accessed via the digital archives on MDAH's website by visiting https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/welty. The Welty Family Papers, Series 45, has been processed and is open as of April 2022; a new subseries, the Garden Papers of Chestina Welty, will open in April 2023. Series 33, Works on Welty, was opened in January 2023, and Series 34, Dramatizations of Welty's Fiction, is scheduled to be opened in 2023. The preparation of items may necessitate the temporary closure of this series. [End Page 199] We suggest researchers contact MDAH, refdesk@mdah.ms.gov, to verify the availability of series that are of particular interest to them prior to visiting the archives. Researchers are invited to visit the MDAH website where the home page https://www.mdah.ms.gov/ features Welty information with some regularity and provides a portal to the online catalog where new series and series revisions may be posted. The A&RS division continues to use Koha, a recently updated open source system, for its online catalog. An instruction sheet, The Eudora Welty Collection: Collection Research and Access via the Online Catalog, has been prepared to aid researchers in readily locating catalog records for the Eudora Welty Collection and other Welty-related materials in the division's holdings. The instruction sheet now includes information on accessing the Eudora Welty Digital Archives and concludes with a current series list. Researchers interested in obtaining publication rights for, and/or reproductions of, material in the Eudora Welty Collection may benefit from information provided in The Eudora Welty Collection: Contacts for Use Permission and Reprographic Services. The 2023 Eudora Welty Research Fellowship co-sponsored by the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History will be awarded in April. On-site research at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, supported by the stipend of $5,000, will be conducted during the summer. The 2022 Fellow was Pamela J. Merryman, a PhD candidate in Liberal Studies at Southern Methodist University. Ms. Forrest Galey, who served as the curator of the Eudora Welty Collection since 1997 retired in December 2022 after more than thirty-seven years of outstanding service to MDAH and the state of Mississippi. Galey joined MDAH in 1985 as an archivist and Graphic Records Collection curator of Special Collections. She then served as the Archival Program Supervisor and later as Special Projects Officer. In 2012, she received the Public Humanities Award for Special Recognition presented by the Mississippi Humanities Council. During her tenure, Galey was instrumental in the multi-year construction planning of the William F. Winter Archives & History Building and the move from the Charlotte Capers Building, the former home of the archives and library. Galey also led the grant project Sharing the Literary and Photographic Legacy of Eudora Welty, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Eudora Welty Foundation, and MDAH, involving the improved conservation and...