Contact: Maridith Geuder
The archivist for Mississippi State's libraries is a new member of a national committee advising Congress on the management and preservation of its records.
Michael B. Ballard is among six from academic institutions recently appointed to the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress, which assists the National Archives and Records Administration. Other new representatives come from Johns Hopkins, Aurora and South Dakota State universities and the universities of Minnesota and Tennessee-Knoxville.
Created by federal law in 1990, the committee includes the clerks of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the Senate historian and the national archivist.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) selected Ballard for the two-year position.
Ballard, who resides in his native Ackerman, has been a Mississippi State archivist for 18 years. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the university.
In 1999, he also became the library's first coordinator of the Congressional and Political Research Center. The center includes the collections of Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), and former Sen. John C. Stennis and former congressmen David R. Bowen, Mike Espy, Charles Griffin, and G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery, among others.
Ballard is an accomplished author of several Civil War books, including "A Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy" and "Pemberton: A Biography." Both were History Book Club selections.