Browsing by Author "Brannock, Jennifer"

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    Cookbooks as Local History and Genealogy Sources
    (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), 2023-09-04) Brannock, Jennifer
    Over the past 10 years, Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) has made it a priority to collect Mississippi community cookbooks. Community cookbooks are created by church groups, woman’s clubs, and other organizations to raise money for the groups. The cookbooks are a compilation of recipes submitted by members of the organizations and include the names of the people who recommended the recipes. Most people use these books to find recipes for dinner, but the cookbooks can also be used as local history and genealogical resources. The Mississippi Community Cookbook Project has grown over the years to become the largest collection of Mississippi cookbooks in the world. The creation of this collection is a collaborative endeavor between curator Jennifer Brannock and history professor Andrew P. Haley. Through their efforts, cookbooks have taken on a life outside the kitchen. They can be used to tell the the histories of forgotten clubs and towns, while focusing on the lives and work of the women who created these cookbooks. Community cookbooks are warmly embraced by local groups and cookbook enthusiasts. To publicize the use of these cookbooks as local history and genealogical resources, Special Collections at USM has hosted annual cookbook events where Dr. Haley gives a talk about one cookbook and attendees prepare items from the cookbook for a potluck dinner. In addition to these events, more than 150 cookbooks have been digitized and are available online for researchers around the world. This presentation highlights the cookbook collection at USM and how cookbooks can be used for local history and genealogical research. The talk will also focus on the efforts to use cookbooks to engage with users locally and online. Keywords: local history, genealogy, cookbooks, gender, publicity
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    Digital Research Topics: Reimagining Digital Collections to Facilitate Student Research
    (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), 2022-09-19) Brannock, Jennifer; La Beaud, Elizabeth
    This presentation focuses on creating curated digital collections in response to the pandemic. The Digital Research Topics (DRT) provide 15-20 images for each subject with curated items representing a variety of perspectives and primary source formats. The DRTs help inexperienced student researchers engage with primary sources in a pre-packaged way that eliminates the initial stress of the research process and helps students connect with the sources. Through the curation of the images, librarians have compiled lists of sources that allow researchers to engage with the digital collections in a unique way, outside the standard process of searching and getting results.
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    Opening Up the Archives: Teaching Non-Majors About the Joys of Archival Collections and Research
    (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), 2023-10-04) Brannock, Jennifer
    In Fall 2022, Jennifer Brannock, the curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana at the University of Southern Mississippi, conceived and taught an undergraduate Honors College course about archival research and use. The course integrated Special Collections’ materials into classes with active learning as a key component to the course design. One of the initial challenges was to design a course that engaged 14 students from varying backgrounds and majors including polymer science, geography, history, library science, and anthropology. Whereas, the archives and special collections are often directed at history students, Brannock had to look at ways to incorporate resources and exercises that related to various majors and interests. A vital component of the class was to make sure the active learning exercises could be used as experiences to include on the students’ resumes. This poster will focus on course and syllabus design, creating an interdisciplinary focus, and how students engaged through active learning exercises.