The state’s most popular indoor sport – politics – is the focus a new exhibit in the Jefferson Caffery Reading Room in Dupre Library at UL Lafayette.
Books, sample ballots, newspaper clippings, and a 1935 thesis on colorful characters and memorable events serve as examples of the wealth of material available on the subject in the Louisiana Room and in the University Archives and Acadiana Manuscripts Collection. This exhibit was mounted by Jean Kiesel, Louisiana Room Librarian.
The exhibit in the first floor stairwell presents the history and importance of the rice industry in Southwest Louisiana. It draws together photos, pamphlets, reports, journals, cookbooks, and other documents from the Acadiana Manuscripts Collection which contains a large number of collections on the rice industry.
Among these are the Rice Millers Association Records, 1910s-1970s; records of rice milling operations and canal companies owned by the Godchaux family of Abbeville and the Freeland family of Crowley; and the papers of Abrom Kaplan, one of the pioneers in opening Southwest Louisiana to extensive rice production. Dr. I. Bruce Turner, Head of Special Collections, prepared this exhibit.
The exhibits are free and open to the public. They will be available for viewing through November. Call 482-2665 for library hours and 482-6031 for hours of the Jefferson Caffery Reading Room