It was a very nice funeral. Speaking were: Bishop Robert Fannin, Dr. Anne B. Kerr (Florida Southern College President), Deb Scott (one of his many former students), Dr. Rubert Prevatt (FSC Citrus Dept. colleague) and Dr. Richard Burnette (fellow professor and good friend).  They spoke about his life, the things he did over the years, and the way he was. We did a lot of nodding, and laughing through the tears, and I believe Professor Mack would have heartily approved.  I think if everyone who wanted to attend had been there, we would have been lined up all the way down the road to the college. There are yet many who do not know of his passing. Please pass the word along.

His final wishes were that we should build the endowment fund for the continuation of the archives, so please, if anyone should wish to contribute to the Florida Citrus Archives in his memory, be sure to make your check payable to "FSC Account # 5-1186", mark it in the notation area "In Memory of Tom Mack" and mail it to:

Florida Citrus Archives
Roux Library
Florida Southern College
111 Lake Hollingsworth Drive
Lakeland, FL  33901-5698

and in advance, thank you so very much.  He would be very pleased.

2004 Computer upgrade: We have a new Dell Optiplex GX280 computer with over 200GB of hard drive space and an Epson Expression 10000XL 12"x17" large-bed scanner for imaging the collections.  We are cataloging the images in an MS Access file to help find the features requested when our patrons request them.

The Archives can no longer be open from 9am to 5pm, since the college has had to rearrange some people.  The archivist's time is now divided between the archives and the Center for Florida History.  If you need to visit, please call first and make arrangements for someone to be there for you.  The archivist is either at 863-680-4583 or at 863-680-3001 [or somewhere in between the two offices].   Both are located on Callahan Court, on opposite ends of the street.  The archives is in 901 and the Center is in 960.  

OLDER NEWS:

2003

The Julian Fussell Collection consists of a cubic foot of materials concerning a drink product under development.  It is called Orange Scream, a smooth blend of orange juice and milk.

The Gordon Smith Collection consists of approximately 5 cubic feet of materials from Citrus & Vegetable Magazine, including correspondence, reference material, books and photographs, all pertaining to all aspects of the citrus industry.  The approximate date span runs from the 1950s through 2000, predominately dealing with the 1960s through the 1990s.

The Walter Hawkins Collection consists of six framed and five mounted photographic reproductions (too large to scan on our scanner - these are dated 1896 to 1935), two newspaper clippings about the company (dated 1975 and 1995) and one framed, mounted 1917 cartoon.

Scanning of the Florida Citrus Exchange Collection of photographs was completed and many images were added to the website donated for this purpose.

2002

New Link to Images Online

We are preparing to post a sampling of images from our various collections in the effort to make the archives more accessible to everyone, regardless of their proximity to Florida Southern College.  

This service is generously donated by: 
The Fourth Medium, website development, hosting, marketing, LLC.

13 Lake Byrd Boulevard
Avon Park, Florida 33825
Phone:  863-453-6621
Fax:      863-453-8820
www.thefourthmedium.com 

2001

New Home at 901 Callahan Court 

This is a beautiful old faculty home on the east end of the campus.  It has been remodeled, re-landscaped and repainted inside and out to give it a cheerful, citrus-y look throughout.  Our Open House was held on Wednesday, June 19, 2002, from 2:00 pm until 5:00 pm.  We had a great turnout, and many more people have dropped in to see us here than did when we were housed in a corner of the Jack Berry Building.

New Conservation Procedure 

Now that we have a document scanner and a CDRW drive, we are scanning the collections piece by piece and saving high resolution TIFF images to CD. Once this is done, it will allow us to serve our patrons better by simply finding the information desired and sending it in whatever form is best for them.  We recently supplied images and information via fax and email to an online magazine for their April publication.

New Equipment 

We have a new Dell computer with an 80GB hard drive, running Windows 2000 Pro, and using Microsoft Office 2000 to keep the records straight.  It is equipped with a Zip Drive, a CD-ROM, a CD-RW, and a wide-format HP printer.  We have a simple document scanner for scanning legal and letter size documents (the great majority of our collection) and photographs. Eventually we hope to have a slide scanner and possibly a larger flatbed scanner for some of the larger materials in our collections.