Jacksonville State University Eminent Scholar Glen Browder —who previously served as a U.S. Congressman, Alabama Secretary of State, and Alabama State Legislator has donated his public and private records to the JSU library. In this project, Jacksonville State University has inventoried, organized, analyzed, and made publicly available the Browder Collection, which consists of information, documents, manuscripts, and scrapbooks pertaining to the life and career of Glen Browder.

The Browder Collection has been prepared as a resource for interested citizens, news journalists, and academic researchers. Over 300 boxes (450 linear feet) of material have been processed for housing at JSU’s Houston Cole Library and the JSU McClellan Center in Anniston. This task is an ambitious undertaking, and it promises a uniquely valuable collection for several reasons: (a) Browder’s broad combination of academic, political, and governmental activism at local, state, and national levels, (b) his realistic yet positive and effective style of civic service and democratic leadership, and (c) his assistance in compiling and structuring the material for open, objective analysis as well as his own approach to government, politics, and political science.

To maintain the historical reality of the material as much as possible, the actual boxed files will remain for the most part in their original physical condition and order; however, the primary objective is to provide an analytic guidebook that enhances, in printed and electronic manner, the collection’s value as an historiographic record of Browder’s career and as useful insight into important aspects of Alabama politics and American democracy. Initially, we simply inventoried boxes of documents; now we are organizing a more comprehensive, coherent guidebook within a political and philosophical framework reflecting the nature of Browder’s public service. Most of the material has already been reconfigured in thematic format; and various aspects of Browder’s work are being analyzed and incorporated for easy access and usage.

This analytic guidebook is available online at: www.jsu.edu/depart/library/browdercollection/.

For additional information, contact: JSU University Librarian Bill Hubbard (256-782-5248, bhubbard@jsu.edu) or Glen Browder (256-782-5650, browder@jsu.edu).