Mississippi State University - University Campus - Mitchell Memorial Library

Mitchell Memorial Library

The Mitchel Memorial Library is located in the heart of the campus, on the eastern side of the Drill Field.

The library has a collection of 2,124,341 volumes and 70,331 Journals.

Mississippi State is one of the few universities to house presidential papers. In May 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ulysses S. Grant Foundation, Mississippi State University was selected as the permanent location for Ulysses S. Grant's Presidential Library. President Grant's artifacts are to remain permanently at the Mitchell Memorial Library on the MSU campus. These include Grant's letters and photographs while he was President from 1869 to 1877. The MSU library cataloged and cross-referenced 15,000 linear feet of material. Grant's letters have been divided into 31 volumes while a 32nd volume is due to be released.

The Library is also home to the The Congressional and Political Research Center which is located on the first floor of Mitchell Memorial Library, the Congressional and Political Research Center, established in November 1999, is based on the premier collections of Senator John C. Stennis and Congressman G. V. "Sonny" Montgomery. The careers of these two individuals span a total of seventy-two years of service as Congressional leaders. Their papers are invaluable to MSU's political research and teaching. The Center provides research materials and information on individual U. S. Senators and Representatives, the U. S. Congress, and politics at all levels of government and has begun to take on a significant role on a state, regional and national level.

One of the Libraries' premier collections is that of MSU alumnus John Grisham, who donated his papers to the university in 1989. Grisham's collection, now consisting of over 42 cubic feet, has brought national attention to the Library. Materials from the Grisham Papers are on display in Mitchell Memorial Library's John Grisham Room (3rd floor), which opened in May 1998. In addition to Grisham's papers, the Libraries receive his published works, including foreign-language translations.

In 2000, the Charles H. Templeton Collection, which includes over 200 nineteenth- and twentieth-century music instruments, 22,000 pieces of sheet music, and 13,000 records, was transferred to the Libraries. According to world-renowned author and musicologist David A. Jasen, the Templeton Collection contains the most complete collection of Victor Talking Machines from their debut in 1897 to 1930. This Collection, valued at over $495,000 in 1989, serves as one of the Libraries' premier collections. Items from the Collection are on display at the Templeton Music Museum, located on the 4th floor of Mitchell Memorial Library. In 2001, a digitization project was established to digitize and provide access to the entire sheet music collection. To date, over 6,000 pieces of music have been digitized, archived and cataloged.

The Library also hosts The Charles Templeton Ragtime Jazz Festival is an annual event that brings the sounds of ragtime past and present to Starkville. The Festival debuted in March 2007, the first of its kind in Mississippi. The multi-day event features seminars, tours of the Templeton Music Museum, and concerts by some of the world's most renowned ragtime and jazz musicians.

During final exams week the library usually host a massive rave party for about 20 minutes, with the intention of to provide fun during this stressful week. In previous years it has been estimated that about 2,000 people attend this rave.