Welcome to the Hattiesburg Sound Map, a collaborative digital map of Hattiesburg's soundscape.
In 2026, students at the University of Southern Mississippi began the Hattiesburg Sound Map, a project designed to capture the soundscape of USM’s campus and the greater Hattiesburg area to encourage reflection on the relationship between sound and place. Every year, we continue to build onto this work. Participants record short, 30-second clips of audio (voices, ambient noise, and other activity) on campus and then add those clips to a collective map. The result is a large repository of sounds that create an immersive experience for the listener.
In this project, participants gain experience doing fieldwork (going out and collecting data), processing that information and cataloging its metadata (the information about the source), and producing born-digital records (the audio file that can only be experienced digitally). Although the map is made up of individual contributions, the result is a collaborative and publicly accessible Digital Humanities project.
Please explore the map and click on points to hear the sound files. You may also access the recordings in a list by browsing the library of sound "items."
Faculty leader: Dr. Jennifer Andrella