OXFORD, Miss. – Visitors from the League of Women Voters are to be
guest panelists at a Brown Bag Lunch program Sept. 4 at the University
of Mississippi.
Cora Norman and Fran Leber, representing the LWV, join the library’s
Political Papers Archivist Leigh McWhite to present the program “Women
in Politics: The Archival Record in Special Collections.”
Scheduled for noon in the Faulkner Room of Archives and Special Collections on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library, the program is free and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to bring their lunch and enjoy the hourlong discussion.
Soon after the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that the university would be hosting the first 2008 presidential debate, the library’s Modern Political Archives were revised and finding aids were posted online for the Lily Thompson Collection, Southern Women Legislatures Collection and League of Women Voters of Mississippi Collection, according to McWhite.
“We in the library’s archives had decided to participate in debate activities by sponsoring a series of brown bag lunch programs, and a presentation focusing on women in politics offered a wonderful opportunity to draw researchers’ attention to these valuable resources,” McWhite said.
Leber is the lobbyist and a past president of the LWV of Mississippi. Norman graduated from Ole Miss in 1964. She helped establish the Oxford LWV chapter and was involved throughout her professional life in the issues women faced in the state. She retired as director of the Mississippi Humanities Council.
The discussion is to focus on the library’s Special Collections resources for researching women in politics, including the Lily Thompson Collection (Mississippi suffragist), Southern Women Legislators Collection (information on female state legislators in Southern states) and League of Women Voters of Mississippi Collection, McWhite said.
“I was delighted to receive the invitation to participate in the panel,” Norman said. AIt is my hope that the program discussion will somehow get more educated women involved in the political process.”
Presidential frontrunners John McCain and Barack Obama are to meet Sept. 26 on the Oxford campus for presidential debate. The panel discussion is among dozens of UM events planned to prepare students and local audiences for the debate. For a complete list of events, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/debate/calendar/ .
For more information about the brown bag or the library’s collections or to request assistance related to a disability, contact Leigh McWhite at 662-915 1850 or slmcwhit@olemiss.edu.
Following are links to the finding aids for the three collections: Lily Thompson Collection at
http://purl.oclc.org/umarchives/MUM00446/ , Southern Women Legislators Collection at
http://purl.oclc.org/umarchives/MUM00422/ and League of Women Voters of Mississippi Collection at
http://purl.oclc.org/umarchives/MUM00261/ .
For more information, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general?library/ .