Mythopoeic Society Digital Collections:
Exploring the Legacy of Myth and Fantasy

The Mythopoeic Society Collections is a repository of digitized documents and photos produced by the Mythopoeic Society (Mythsoc) throughout its history from 1969 to the present. The Mythopoeic Society Digital Collections offer a curated archive of materials celebrating the scholarly and creative works inspired by myth, fantasy literature, and the Inklings—particularly J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. These digital holdings include rare periodicals, newsletters, conference programs, scholarly papers, artwork, and both video and audio recordings that document the Society’s history and its contributions to the study of mythopoeic literature. Whether you're a researcher, student, or fan, the collections provide a rich portal into the evolving world of myth-inspired storytelling and criticism.

The Mythopoeic Society Collections are hosted by the Al Harris Library at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) in Weatherford, OK. on the SWOSU Digital Commons https://dc.swosu.edu/. Phillip Fitzsimmons is the University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at SWOSU. He is the administrator for the digital platform and responsible for physical collections in the General Thomas P. Stafford Archives in the Al Harris Library. He is allowed to use the digital and physical facilities to be the archivist for the Mythopoeic Society.

In less than eight years, the Mythopoeic Society’s publications have been downloaded more than one million times by readers from around the world. That milestone for the 4,981 items on the society’s archive was reached on Feb. 24, 2025. The Mythsoc archive was opened on July 7, 2017.

By comparison, the entire SWOSU Digital Commons’ 27,815 items, in all its collections, have been downloaded 2,158,788 times since March 7, 2016. The Mythopoeic Society collections represent approximately 18 percent of all the SWOSU Digital Commons collections but account for nearly half of the downloads from SWOSU’s collections. Usage figures for Mythsoc publications as of April 24, 2025, show:

• Mythlore: 915,941 downloads in all of the world’s countries of 2,025 works. The million-mark milestone for this publication alone should be reached by the end of 2025, estimated by Fitzsimmons.
• The Mythic Circle: 27,489 downloads in 140 countries/regions of 966 works and 115 streams of 27 audio files from June 27, 2019, through April 24, 2025.
• Mythprint: 10,236 downloads in 119 countries of 489 works, Dec. 1, 2022, through April 24, 2025.
• Mythprint Book Reviews: 960 downloads in 69 countries/regions of 29 works, May 31, 2024, through May 5, 2025.

The Mythsoc Digital Collections https://dc.swosu.edu/mythsoc/ includes:

1. The complete runs of the three Mythsoc publications: Mythlore https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/, The Mythic Circle https://dc.swosu.edu/mcircle/, Mythprint https://dc.swosu.edu/mythprint/, and the Mythprint Book Reviews page https://dc.swosu.edu/mpr_rev/.
2. Mythcon programs https://dc.swosu.edu/mythprog/, presentation videos https://dc.swosu.edu/ms_events/, Proceedings https://dc.swosu.edu/mythpro/, Souvenirs https://dc.swosu.edu/mythsouv/, photos https://dc.swosu.edu/ms_photos/
3. Art galleries from the publications includes: Mythlore https://dc.swosu.edu/ml_art/, The Mythic Circle https://dc.swosu.edu/mcircle/, and Mythprint https://dc.swosu.edu/tolkien_art/

Use of the Mythsoc Digital Collections:

1. Everything on the Mythsoc Digital Collections is free and open to the public. Most items can be downloaded to the user’s computer.
2. Some items have embargos to protect the value of membership dues and subscriptions. Mythprint has a two-year embargo, The Mythic Circle has a one-year embargo. Mythlore has no embargo. A journal embargo is a period of time during which a publisher restricts access to the full text of articles in the most recent issues. A one-year subscription to Mythprint is one of the benefits that come with Mythsoc annual membership dues. The two-year embargo of the newsletter keeps Mythsoc news exclusive to subscribing members. The exception is for book reviews in Mythprint. All Mythprint book reviews are now available, as soon as they are published in the newsletter, on the Mythprint Book Reviews page at https://dc.swosu.edu/mpr_rev/. Stewards decided that book reviews should be made available to readers. educators, and librarians, close to when books are released. The one-year embargo of The Mythic Circle is also intended to protect the value of subscriptions to the literary journal.
3. Some items cannot be downloaded. Videos of event presentations can be streamed but not downloaded. Also, images from the publications’ art galleries can be viewed on the platform but not downloaded. This restriction is in place to protect the interests of the artists.
4. Internet users can search the Mythsoc Digital Collections visually on the index page at https://dc.swosu.edu/mythsoc/.
5. The collections can be searched by the platform using the search box in the left navigation bar.
6. The user can download PDFs of most items from the Mythsoc publications. Once downloaded, the user can do keyword searches using a PDF reader of the optical character recognition (OCR) that is incorporated into most files on the repository. For example, the user may need to download an issue of Mythprint to their computer and then search the PDF for specific names or keywords.
7. The user can look for specific issues for each publication by using the All Issues dropdown menu in the left navigation bar. Click the desired issue from the menu, then click browse; and the requested journal issue will appear.
8. The user can click the Browse button next to the All Issues menu, and it will show a list of all issues in the collection with links to each issue.

If you have any questions, contact Phillip Fitzsimmons at phillip.fitzsimmons@swosu.edu