Department of History

A native of Mississippi, Reagan Grimsley has lived in the Chattahoochee Valley for the past seven years. At Auburn he will direct the archival studies program and offer course in archives, public history, and urban history.

From 2001-2008 he served on the faculty of Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. He holds a BS and MA in history, as well as a MLIS in library and information science from the University of Southern Mississippi. Professor Grimsley is an ABD doctoral candidate at Georgia State University, where he is writing his doctoral dissertation entitled "A Small City in a New South: The Urban Development of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1884-1945" under the direction of Dr. Timothy Crimmins.

Grimsley's research interests include place and environment in southern towns and cities, oral history and archival administration, and he frequently presents his scholarship at local, regional and national conferences. Recently he has shared his work at the Southern Archivists conference, the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Historians, the Popular Culture Association national conference, the Society of Georgia Archivists annual conference, and the Georgia Integrated Libraries users group meeting.

He has published articles in Music Reference Services Quarterly, The Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians, The Primary Source: A Semiannual Publication of The Society of Mississippi Archivists, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia. Since 2001 he has served as regular book reviewer for Choice Magazine. He is currently working on three journal articles which focus on access to oral histories in academic libraries, the role of archives in the undergraduate American history survey, and the cultural impact of photography on memory in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

His image-based work, Hattiesburg in Vintage Postcards, was published in October 2004 by Arcadia Publishing His most recent work is Enriching Lives: A Pictorial History of Columbus State University published by the Donning Company Publishers in March 2008. In addition to his own research, Grimsley is editor of Provenance: The Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists .

Grimsley is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of Historic Westville, Inc., and a member of both Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Alpha Theta Academic Honor Societies. He received an Alfred Bell Jr. Fellowship from the Forest History Society in 2000 and was the recipient of the Columbus State University Faculty Research Award in 2006.

• MLIS, MA, BA, University of Southern Mississippi

Books

• Enriching Lives: A Pictorial History of Columbus State University (Donning Company Publishers, 2008)
• Hattiesburg in Vintage Postcards (Arcadia Publishing, 2004)

Articles

• "Discovering Blind Tom Wiggins: Creating Digital Access to Original Sheet Music in the Columbus State University Archives," Music Reference Services Quarterly 10 (2006)
• "Thirty Years of Preserving the History of the Chattahoochee Valley: A Brief History of the Columbus State University Archives," Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians XXVI (2005-2006)
• "Primary Sources Via Ebay: Building an Archival Postcard Collection," Primary Source 26 (Summer 2004)
• "Providing Web Access to Archival Photographs," Conference Proceedings of the 2003 University System of Georgia Academic Computing Conference (http://www.usg.edu/oiit/re/re03/proceedings/ )
• "Timber Related Source Material About Mississippi's Piney Woods: An Archival Survey of the McCain Library and Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi," Primary Source 21 (Winter 1999)

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