Digital Archives

About the Hancock County Library Digital Archives

Our digital archives began with the digitization of microfilm and bound newspapers in our physical collection. With funding provided by The Library Foundation of Hancock County we were able to create a searchable digital collection of historic periodicals about Hancock County, Mississippi. Initial access to the Vault—a digital preservation and storage platform from the Internet Archive—was acquired with grant funding from the Community Webs program. As participating members of Community Webs, HCLS received 500GB of Vault storage from grant funding provided by the Mellon Foundation to preserve our digital collections.

HCLS is in the process of building our collections on the Internet Archive where we can expand access to researchers around the world and track the use of our digital collections.

HCLS welcomes born-digital and physical items from the community to preserve as part of our commitment to collecting the history of Hancock County for future generations.

Explore Our Digital Archives Collections

View all of our digital collections on the Internet Archive’s archive.org.

Current Projects

CALL FOR YEARBOOKS!

HCLS is currently digitizing Hancock High School (Hancock North Central, prior to 1991) and Bay High School yearbooks! We have most years for Hancock High between 1977 and 2024. If you have copies in good condition prior to 1977 or one of our missing years, please contact us to have your copy digitized for this collection.

Yearbooks for other schools in Hancock County:

HCLS is interested in adding yearbooks other schools. Contact us for more information.

Missing years include:

Hancock High Bay High St.   Stanislaus/OLA St. Rose
2020s 2021-current Pending agreement with school n/a
2010s 2013,   2019 n/a
2000s 2000,   2003, 2004 n/a
1990s 1990,   1995 1990,   1994-1997, 1999 n/a
1980s 1980,   1981, 1983-1985 1982,   1984-1986, 1988 n/a
1970s 1970-1976,   1978-1979 1970,   1972 n/a
1960s All 1960-1963,   1965, 1966, 1969 All All
1950s All All All All
1940s n/a 1941-1945,   1947-1949 All All
Earlier n/a All All All

Seeking Volunteers & Partners

HCLS is seeking volunteers, student interns, and project partners for our community archiving initatives.

Opportunities for contributing to community archive projects include:

  • Assisting the public and library staff in digitizing materials (training will be provided)

  • Assisting library staff with community archive programs and events

  • Creating descriptive metadata for digitized items and collections

  • Donating materials for HCLS digital collections; manuscripts, volumes, and other materials can be digitized and returned to the donating individual/organization

  • Partnering with HCLS for oral history projects, with the intention of donating interviews and supporting materials to HCLS to preserve and provide public access

UPCOMING PROGRAMS

Help Improve Our Collections

HCLS welcomes feedback on the quality of the images and metadata describing our collections. Help us identify and make corrections for future users by completing this online form for each item or collection with identified issues. Examples of issues we can correct include pages out of order or incorrectly oriented (upside down), duplicate pages, and cropping issues. We can also add or adjust descriptive metadata to help researchers find items or collections. Issues that may take longer depending on available resources include rescanning an item or part of an item to correct poor visibility, missing pages, and blurring.

How To Donate:

HCLS accepts born-digital, digitized, and other materials as part of our collection development policy, including photographs, texts, audio, video, and objects. Materials should represent the people, places, and events of Hancock County and the surrounding area and fit within one of our existing or planned collections. Not all materials will be accepted, but we encourage anyone interested to contact us.

Donors of materials may complete the Deed of Gift form. You can also participate in a community scanning event to have your items digitized. Check back here or on our event calendar for upcoming digitization dates.

Donation Forms

Other Resources for Mississippi History

Mississippi State University, University Libraries

Oral History Kits

Grant funding from Community Webs has been used to further our Strategic Plan goals of collecting Hancock County history through the acquisition of resources to support community archiving initiatives, including oral history kits, digital preservation resources, and programming and outreach.

Community members interested in donating recordings of oral history interviews may submit electronic files with a completed Oral History Agreement.

Resources