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.
We are in the process of migrating our digital collections to the Internet Archive.
Our full periodicals collection can be found HERE.
Current Projects
CALL FOR YEARBOOKS!
HCLS is currently digitizing Hancock High School (Hancock North Central, prior to 1991) yearbooks! We have most years 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. Missing years include:
1978-1981
1983-1985
1990
1995
2013
2019
Yearbooks for other schools in Hancock County:
HCLS is interested in adding yearbooks from Bay-Waveland High School and other school yearbooks. Contact us for more information.
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
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 Digital Library
Mississippi Department of Archives & History
Mississippi State University, University Libraries
Digitized Newspapers from Library of Congress, Chronicling America
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.
