Mississippi Digital Humanities Hub Preserves, Promotes State’s History

Wed, 10/08/2025 - 09:48am

The Mississippi Digital Humanities Hub at The University of Southern Mississippi provides resources and training to support the preservation of documents and other materials of historical and cultural significance to Mississippians.

Funded by a three-year congressional grant administered by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, part of the National Archives, the “Hub” also works to make these materials more accessible to the public.

“The digital humanities are everywhere—blogging, podcasts, interactive games, digital exhibits and archives, and documentaries. These technologies bridge the gap between the online world and our lived experiences,” said Dr. Andrew Haley, associate professor and director of the Mississippi Digital Humanities Hub. “At the Hub, our focus is on how digital tools provide both experts and the public new ways to preserve, study and interpret information in ways that would be difficult, if not impossible, without the use of computers.”

In the past year, the Hub launched a website providing tools to help transcribe documents so that even the most illegible handwritten records are more easily readable, along with a chat room offering Mississippians assistance with their digital projects. This past summer, the Hub hosted a two-week residential workshop where college faculty, librarians and museum personnel received training on document preservation, data organization and telling Mississippi’s stories. During the fall 2025 semester, the Hub will distribute more than $250,000 in grants to help spur digitization efforts throughout the state.

The Hub is offering grants of up to $40,000 to help public institutions and nonprofits in Mississippi digitize and make collections available online. Funds can be used to purchase equipment and hire temporary staff to digitize materials, and the Hub will work with grantees to make these digital collections more accessible to researchers, students and the public statewide.

In June, the Hub held its first two-week summer residency on the Southern Miss Hattiesburg campus—the first of three such programs it will offer. The residency brought together faculty, librarians and museum personnel from across the state to explore new ways to make archives and materials more accessible. Participants learned how to digitize and preserve documents, as well as digital humanities fundamentals such as data management, website development, TEI markup, audio technology and podcasting, video interviewing, photogrammetry and effective grant writing.

“What made the summer residency a great experience for both the presenters and the participants was how we brought together experts from across the university,” Haley said. “These experts in library science, geography, oral history, computer science, the humanities and grant writing shared one goal: to tell the story of Mississippians well. This collaboration across disciplines and between institutions is what we are building at the Hub.”

More than 10 experts shared their knowledge with participants, including:

• Adrian Wisniski, digital humanities coordinator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who provided an opening lecture on the importance of digital preservation.
• Elizabeth La Beaud, director of the Mississippi Digital Library, who taught participants how to preserve everything from an old book to fragile audio tapes.
• Kayla Stan, assistant professor of geography at Southern Miss, who led training on mapping and data visualization.

The workshops were also designed to spark new digital humanities initiatives throughout the state, and early feedback shows they are succeeding.

Presenter Dr. Jose Martinez, an assistant professor in the Southern Miss School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering, said, “Being part of the summer residency program was an enriching experience. I’m confident the material, tools and solutions shared with the attendees will empower them to become more effective digital humanists.”

Participants represented colleges and cultural institutions across Mississippi, including Millsaps College; Waveland’s Ground Zero Hurricane Museum; Holmes Community College; Department of Chahta Immi of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians; Meridian Community College; University of Mississippi; Mississippi State University; Jackson State University; Tougaloo College; Mississippi Valley State University; Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art; and Meridian Community College. Future workshops will host Mississippi undergraduate students and secondary school educators.

Dr. Detrice Roberts, history instructor at Jackson State University, said the residency helped her begin developing the Africana Digital Humanities Lab at Jackson State. “In just days, I gained years’ worth of wisdom surrounded by brilliant minds, guided by care and grounded in a space where every detail mattered,” Roberts said.

“The Hub wasn’t just a learning experience,” she added. “It was a masterclass in collaboration, purpose and possibility.”

K.C. New, digital humanities librarian and assistant professor at Mississippi State University, said she and her Digital Scholarship team are already working to incorporate the skills she learned into the classroom. One idea is to collaborate with anthropology faculty to expand a current project by mapping data from field study trips.

Casey Sullivan, collections manager and registrar at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, said he has already started applying what he learned to managing and executing digital projects at the museum.

Another presenter, Southern Miss Associate Vice President for Research Erica Kennedy, emphasized the value of digital humanities as well as the need to fund new initiatives.

“The digital humanities are near and dear to my heart,” Kennedy said. “Too often, we forget that funding opportunities aren’t just for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Humanities scholars have powerful, impactful stories to tell, and they deserve the resources to bring those stories to life.”

For more information, visit MS Digital Hub.