Friday, March 25, 2011

Cataloging Small Collections within the Museum

This week I have started to cataloge a formatted list of small collections for the African American Military History Museum closed library. First the library was a small writing room for soldiers visiting the USO when they were off duty or in town. Later the small library was made formal to the public in the 1950s. This library came into existence because the Forrest County Public Library was segregated and did not allow African Americans to check out books, so a small library was started within the USO.
The small library has a very knowledgeable collections that it offered to the African American public who were interested in reading and research. Going through the collection I have found a variety of novels, cookbooks, academic literature, atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, poetry books, newspapers, and bibles. Majority of these books dated back to the late 1890s to the late 1950s, and some of them are in very good condition. Some of these items were donated to the library from the public and several were second hand books thrown out from the public library. Yet the USO made use of all these books and items in the 1950s and they still remain in the library to this day. Even though the library has not been in public use for awhile, the story of its existence and legacy remains in the USO.

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