Auburn University Digital Library

ACES Photographs

The Alabama Cooperative Extension Service (ACES) collections contain photographs and documents depicting the services programs in the first half of the twentieth century. They offer a unique and evocative glimpse into Alabama agriculture, education, rural life and rural pastimes in the first decades of the last century, including the activities of the African-American Cooperative Extension Service.

Agriculture and Rural Life Newspapers

This collection contains Southern U.S. newspapers published in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Most were published in Alabama, and most addressed a rural and agricultural audience. Article topics included agricultural science, livestock care, gardening tips, and household hints. One journal, The Manufacturers’ Review, focused on Alabama industry--the production of commodities such as textiles, lumber, coal, and iron.

Air Service Information Circulars

The Air Service Information Circulars are research reports produced in the 1920s by the U.S. Army Air Service (later Air Corps). Areas of research include airplane design, construction, and testing; airplane maintenance; airplane fuels and fuel systems; and pilot health.

Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES) Reports

Alabama Community Plans

The plans in this collection represent the work of KPS Group, a firm focused on sustainable planning and design with offices in Birmingham and Atlanta. The plans are the product of Darrell Meyer, the firm's director of planning and landscape architecture, Professor Emeritus at Auburn University and founder of the Master of Community Planning Program at Auburn and his staff of LEED accredited planners and landscape architects. The plans represent the best of city planning and urban design, downtown revitalization and preservation, and campus planning, and are essential documents in the continued development of communities across Alabama.

AlabamaMosaic

AlabamaMosaic makes unique historical treasures from Alabama's archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories electronically accessible to Alabama residents and scholars throughout the world. AlabamaMosaic was initially supported by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and is administered by the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries.

Alabama Postcard Collection

A collection of postcards depicting scenes from different eras across Alabama perfect for anyone interested in deltiology.

API Student Publications collection

Magazines and newsletters produced by the Agricultural Club, Engineering Societies, and Pharmacy students of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (later Auburn University) from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Architecture Watercolors

This collection contains architectural renderings in watercolor created by students of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). Some were prepared as class assignments, while others were entered into competitions. Some images depict historic buildings of Alabama and Georgia, many of which have been included in the Historic American Buildings Survey.

Auburn: The Loveliest Village Photograph Collection

Selected images and captions from Mickey Logue and Jack Simms, Auburn: A Pictorial History of The Loveliest Village, 2nd edition (Auburn, Ala.: s.n., 1996), that illustrate the history of the city and campus.

Auburn University Board of Trustees Minutes

Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Auburn University beginning with its incorporation as East Alabama Male College in 1856 and continuing into the twentieth century. Currently, the minutes are available through 1965.

Auburn University Discover Auburn Lecture Series

The lecture series features Auburn University faculty members discussing their latest research. They include presentations by Professors Ruth Crocker on philanthropist Margaret Olivia Sage, Geoffrey Hill on the Ivorybill Woodpecker, Gary Mullen on British naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, Angela Lakwete on the cotton gin in antebellum America, and Paula Backscheider on women, poetry, and social movements in eighteenth century Britain. The University Libraries, the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University Bookstore sponsor the lectures, which are hosted by Special Collections & Archives on the ground floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library.

Auburn University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The repository contains a PDF version of every thesis or dissertation successfully defended at Auburn since the Fall 2005 semester.

Auburn University Football Programs

Colorful covers of Auburn football programs from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, many by famous commercial illustrators. This collection includes descriptions of games from The Glomerata.

Auburn University Glomeratas Online

This collection contains viewable pages of Auburn University's yearbooks dating back to 1897.

Auburn University Historic Catalogs Collection

This collection contains catalogs from Auburn University's predecessor institutions--East Alabama Male College, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama, and Alabama Polytechnic Institute. In addition to course information, the catalogs list names of faculty members and students, admissions criteria, expected costs, and rules of conduct.

Auburn University Photographs Collection

Photographs of notable people, places, and events in the history of Auburn University, from the late 19th century onwards. Drawn from the holdings of the Auburn University Special Collections and Archives Department, this collection contains images of student life, sporting events, and campus leaders and landmarks during some of the most turbulent decades in Auburn's history, including the last quarter of the 19th century, World Wars I and II, and desegregation in the 1960s.

Auburn University Sesquicentennial Lecture Series

In 2006 Auburn celebrated the 150th anniversary of the founding of the East Alabama Male College, the university's earliest predecessor. Sesquicentennial events included a lecture series that illuminated topics and events essential to understanding the history of Auburn University. The Sesquicentennial Lecture Series grew out of the university's Sesquicentennial Committee. In addition to the committee, the Auburn University Libraries, the Center for Arts and Humanities of the College of Liberal Arts, and AU Outreach sponsored all of the lectures. The College of Agriculture and the Cooperative Extension System also sponsored the lectures dealing with their own histories. The Systems Department of the Auburn University Libraries videotaped the lectures, digitized and edited them, and designed this website for their online presentation.

Auburn University Theatre Collection

This collection includes a scrapbook containing newspaper articles, photographs of productions, programs, and a collection of posters. “Footlights”, the Auburn University’s first stage company, began in 1913 but ceased to exist beyond the First World War. In 1919, the “Auburn Players” revived the university stage company and developed the original social club into the Auburn University Theatre Department which has grown into an integral part of the university with an emphasis on professionalism in instruction and performance.

Auburn University Urban Studio Digital Collection

These posters are the work of the students of the Urban Studio, an outreach program of Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction. Each poster is a graphic "snapshot" of an Alabama community’s Small Town Design Initiative. Distributed to every household in the community and displayed at the post office and city hall and in churches, schools and storefronts, the posters provide a tool for building constituent support, recruiting, and promoting the community, and reminding everyone of their town’s assets, opportunities and economic strategies for advancement. The posters become support material for grant requests, partnership building and promotion. A community with a plan is more competitive, and the poster allows the community to easily and effectively communicate their town’s potential.

AUrora

AUrora is an open-access repository of research and scholarly works by Auburn University faculty members. AUrora supports the outreach mission of Auburn University by making research by Auburn faculty easily accessible to citizens of the state of Alabama and to the general public.

Caroline Dean Wildflower Collection

The Caroline Dean Wildflower Collection features images of wildflowers native to the Southeastern United States that are identified by both common and scientific names and are accompanied by a description. The majority of the images in this collection were photographed in the wild lands and along roadsides throughout Alabama. This collection has been created to share the beauty and knowledge of our most colorful of all natural resources, and to promote the appreciation, use, and conservation of native plants.

C. Harry Knowles Digital Collection

The C. Harry Knowles Collection consists of materials on the life and career of C. Harry Knowles, including digitized images as well as physical materials housed in Auburn University Library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives.

Civil War Diaries and Letters Collections

These collections consists of diaries and collections of letters from the Civil War era found in Special Collections and Archives. The diaries offer a unique look into the lives of common soldiers, spies and even a bodyguard of Abraham Lincoln. Letters include both private and official correspondence. Correspondents in the latter group include Rufus King and Ulysses S. Grant. Transcripts are provided for each handwritten page.

Confederados

In 1868, a number of families from former Confederate states in the South fled the Reconstruction policies for Brazil. The family of Colonel William H. Norris was the first to arrive from Alabama. His son Robert C. Norris and daughter-in-law Martha Temperance [Patti] Steagall as well as his own daughter Angela Norris accompanied the Colonel.

This collection contains correspondence from the Norris family [1861-1909] and John R. Buford [1862-1876] as well as early Southern Methodist-Episcopal Mission Reports about the Confederados community [c. 1867-1874], and memoirs of some of the descendants [1970s-1988]. Transcripts are provided for all but the letters written in old Portuguese.

Design Alabama

Design Alabama is a publication focusing on architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, graphic design, industrial design, and urban design and community planning in the State of Alabama.

Eugene B. Sledge Collection

This collection consists of materials on the life and career of Eugene B. Sledge. Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1923, E. B. Sledge enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 and saw combat on Peleliu and Okinawa. After the war he obtained degrees in biology and botany at Auburn and the University of Florida and taught for many years at the University of Montevallo. In 1981, Dr. Sledge published an account of his experiences during the Second World War in a book entitled "With the Old Breed: at Peleliu and Okinawa". "With the Old Breed" is now widely recognized as a classic war memoir. Dr. Sledge died on March 3, 2001. A second memoir, "China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War II", was published posthumously in 2002.

Everett Leavins Photographs Collection

Everett Leavins was born in 1904 on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. He grew up in the Bon Secour area near Mobile, Alabama. Leavins had very little formal education. When he left home after a quarrel with his father, he joined the U.S. Army briefly from 1923-1926. He re-enlisted in June 1928 and was stationed in the 6th Cavalry at Fort Oglethorpe in Tennessee until June 1931. Leavins was then transferred to Luke Field, an airbase at Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii, where he served until 1938 as an aircraft mechanic. After his enlistment ended, Leavins continued to serve as a civilian aircraft mechanic with the U.S. Air Force until 1956. Most of that time was spent in Hawaii. Leavins transferred to California in the early 1950s where he died in 1962. During his adult life, Leavins was an avid amateur photographer and collector of photographs. His collection of photographs donated by his nephew focuses mainly on military life in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hampton Roads Peace Conference Digital Collection

The Hampton Roads Peace Conference was a confidential meeting that took place between Union and Confederate leaders in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on February 3, 1865. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward met with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, Senator Robert M.T. Hunter, and Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell to discuss terms for peace. The conference was ultimately a failure.

This collection contains correspondence between Conference participants, US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and Thomas T. Eckert, Head of US War Department Telegraph Staff. It also contains notes from the Conference, a political cartoon depicting the Conference, and photographs of Thomas T. Eckert.

History of Auburn University (1856-1983)

Brief narrative chapters recount the history of Auburn University from its establishment (as East Alabama Male College) in 1856 through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II and the time period covered by Auburn University presidents Ralph Draughon, Harry Philpott and Hanly Funderburk. Early chapters contain links to the relevant editions of the Auburn yearbook, the Glomerata.

Intellectual Underpinnings of the Civil War

This collection is part of Auburn University Libraries contribution to the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries "Intellectual Underpinnings of the Civil War" digitization project. As part of this effort, ASERL libraries will provide online access to materials published between 1850 and 1865, from a broad array of subjects. The ‘Intellectual Underpinnings' umbrella will allow linkages between a broad variety of materials whose interrelationships might not have been obvious in a more closely focused collection.

Maps from the Treasure Room Collection

The collection contains digitized versions of maps whose originals are housed in Auburn University Libraries Special Collections and Archives.

Mrs. Russell Sage Digital Collection

This collection illustrates the life and career of Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (Mrs. Russell Sage), a ruling-class woman who created a new identity for herself in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America. A wife who derived her social standing from her robber-baron husband, Olivia Sage managed to fashion an image of benevolence that made possible her public career. In her husband's shadow for thirty-seven years, she took on the Victorian mantle of active, reforming womanhood.

Orange and Blue

The Orange and Blue was the student newspaper for the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama/Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) from 1893 through 1922. For part of this time, the Orange and Blue was published as a monthly magazine rather than as a weekly or bi-weekly newspaper.

P.H. Gosse Digital Collection

The Philip Henry Gosse Papers consist of forty-nine 4 x 5-inch positive color transparencies of drawings of Alabama butterflies, caterpillars, moths, beetles, dragonflies, and other insects. A gifted amateur naturalist, Gosse sketched and hand-colored the drawings in 1838 while he briefly visited Alabama. The forty-nine transparencies contain the complete set of his drawings of 233 Alabama insects contained in his unpublished Entomologia Alabamensis. The original sketches are in The British Library in London, England.

Plainsman

The Plainsman has been the student newspaper for Alabama Polytechnic Institute/Auburn University since 1922. Now called The Auburn Plainsman, the newspaper has used both names during its history.

Piano Bench Collection

"The Piano Bench Collection" is a collection of sheet music published before 1923. The musical content of the collection consists primarily of American popular songs and piano music. The majority of the items came from the collection of Fred Edmiston, a former librarian at Auburn University Libraries.

Praxis Alternative Newspaper Collection

Praxis was an independent, alternative (“underground”) newspaper published in Auburn, Alabama, in 1971. The paper described itself as "an independent publication by and for the community of Auburn University [whose] goal is to provide a medium of public expression for the people of this community.

Rickenbacker Collection

The finding aid, biographical information and a limited selection of photographs from this collection which documents the lives of the Rickenbacker family, particularly Eddie Vernon Rickenbacker. The physical collection contains scrapbooks and newspaper clippings, photographs, sound recordings, 16 mm motion pictures, correspondence, diaries, legal documents in original and copies, condolence letters upon Eddie's death, maps, declassified reports to Army Air Force in World War II, other various reports of travels, affidavits taken by movie studio regarding loss of Eddie at sea, publications by and about Rickenbackers, material relative to Eastern Air Lines.

Wade Hall 20th Century Paperback Collection

In 2018 Special Collections received an extensive collection of more than 1,600 20th century paperbacks from the estate of Dr. Wade Hall, an Alabama native as well as an educator, author, and avid collector of Americana. These books are excellent examples of paperback novel production, illustration, and popular entertainment during the modernist and postmodernist eras.