Oral History News

The “Echoes of Lloyd-Ricks-Watson” Oral History Project Receives Award

Ryan P. Semmes, Interim Coordinator, Congressional and Political Research Center
Mississippi State University Libraries

The Mississippi State University Libraries recently received the Elbert R. Hilliard Oral History Award from the Mississippi Historical Society for the “Echoes of Lloyd-Ricks-Watson” Oral History Project.

The “Echoes of Lloyd-Ricks-Watson” Oral History Project, conceived by former Mississippi State University Interim-President Dr. Vance Watson, sought to record the memories, stories, and anecdotes of former Agriculture Extension, Home Economics, and Experiment Station faculty and staff regarding the history of the Lloyd-Ricks-Watson Building, where their offices were located on the Mississippi State University campus.  Participants were asked to reminisce about the building in its various incarnations and to describe their interactions with past MSU faculty and staff there.  Interviews were documented with both audio and video.

Lloyd-Ricks-Watson was named for the former Directors of the Mississippi Experiment Station and Extension Service, E. R. Lloyd, J. R. Ricks, and Vance Watson. Built in 1929 and added on to in 1939, Lloyd-Ricks-Watson was the center of important agricultural study in the state of Mississippi during the twentieth century.  The building has been home to research on a multitude of topics, including agriculture, economics, sociology, chemistry, animal husbandry, entomology, bacteriology, plant pathology, horticulture, forestry, and veterinary medicine.  During the renovation of the building in 2011, former faculty and staff were contacted and asked for their reminiscences.

The building has a unique architecture and many of the participants vividly remembered the peculiarities of the building.  Participants recalled flooding in the basement, the makeshift television and radio studios created in hallways to produce the agricultural news segments sent out across the state, getting stuck in the elevator, sharing offices with colleagues, and often sharing one phone per floor.  More so than the building, however, participants fondly recalled their former colleagues, projects, and other university related stories.  One of the most interesting interviews recalled the break room located in the center of the building.  In the break room, there was one of only two computer input machines for the entire university.  While waiting to input their scientific data into the university mainframe, faculty and staff would gather and discuss their research, often leading to groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

The “Echoes of Lloyd-Ricks-Watson” Oral History Project has been added to the MSU Libraries extensive online digital collections as part of a larger digital collection on the history of the Extension Service in Mississippi.  The transcriptions of the oral history interviews reside in the digital collection along with Extension Service histories, photographs, books by Extension faculty and staff, and a variety of other digital items all of which can be found at the following web address: http://digital.library.msstate.edu/cdm/search/collection/lrw/searchterm/Stories/field/subser/mode/exact/conn/and/order/nosort/collection/lrw

The Elbert R. Hilliard Oral History Award is presented to an oral history project in the state of Mississippi which “exemplifies a distinguished collection, high-quality preservation, and proper use of oral history.”

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