Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

As history unfolds during the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries are collecting experiences and responses from Georgians to preserve for generations to come.

Georgia residents can contribute to the project by sharing how the crisis has impacted their family, business, education, and well-being. Digital submissions may include personal reflections, photos, poetry, recordings or any other means that demonstrate how the pandemic affects people’s lives.

“Georgians who contribute to the coronavirus collection will help to build our collective understanding of the kaleidoscope of human experience in this unusual circumstance,” said Toby Graham, university librarian and associate provost. “Even as we live through the COVID-19 crisis, we should begin to document this critical time for the benefit of future students and scholars.”

Twelve University of Georgia faculty members have been chosen as 2019-2020 Special Collections Fellows. The fifth cohort of the program represents six schools and colleges with interests ranging from art and education to social work and population health.

Sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries and the Center for Teaching and Learning, the program guides faculty members as they develop courses that apply archives-centered pedagogy and allow their students to engage with the rich array of materials held in UGA’s three special
collections libraries.

The University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library will pay homage to the centennial anniversary of women’s suffrage this spring. An exhibit entitled The Strategies for Suffrage: Mobilizing a Nation for Women’s Rights opens at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries on Jan. 17.

The exhibit, curated by Sidonia Serafini, a doctoral student in UGA’s department of English in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, explores the nearly century-long story of how women secured enfranchisement and campaigned for women’s civil rights in the United States.

The exhibition hall in the University of Georgia’s Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries will be named in honor of CNN founder, environmentalist and longtime Atlantan Ted Turner, subject to UGA Cabinet approval, thanks in part to a $550,000 donation made by WarnerMedia (formerly Time Warner), an entertainment and media conglomerate that merged with Turner Broadcasting in 1996.

In 1969, professor Jack Kehoe journeyed to Italy to create a unique opportunity for University of Georgia students. He found the ideal site for an experiential learning environment amidst the history, culture and beauty of Cortona.

Century-old stories of exploited Georgia prisoners have been lifted from the University of Georgia Libraries’ vault to the gallery and now to the stage, through a collaboration among archivists, faculty members and students at UGA and Spelman College.

Through the partnership, students and faculty have engaged with dozens of artifacts and historical documents to create [The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project], which will culminate in performances this fall and winter.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is pleased to announce the School’s Photograph Collection, which has been a part of the curriculum at the Dodd for 50 years, was moved to the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, one of three special collections libraries at the University of Georgia.

Lamar Dodd School of Art Professor Emeritus W. Robert Nix began assembling the photo collection in 1969 to provide opportunities for art students to have hands-on familiarity with examples of historic photographic processes, materials, and equipment. “As our culture becomes increasingly saturated with photographic images whose differences are neutralized by reproduction and through screens, encounters with these material, hand-crafted objects can be revelatory,” said Dr. Alisa Luxenberg, Professor of Art History.

The University of Georgia Libraries will celebrate three new inductees to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame with author discussions and a special dinner this November.

The festivities honor food writer John T. Edge and poet A.E. Stallings, as well as pioneering journalist Julia Collier Harris, who is being inducted posthumously.

The University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library takes a closer look at Georgia’s incarceration history in the new exhibit The New South and New Slavery: Convict Labor in Georgia, now on display at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The display examines the forced labor of prisoners in the state from the beginnings of the convict lease system in the 19thcentury until the abolition of the chain gang in 1945.

As players and fans prepare for the kickoff of the University of Georgia’s football season, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library plans to revisit recent program history in the new exhibit Beautiful and Brutal: Georgia Bulldogs Football, 2017. The display will open Friday, Aug. 30, at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries at the University of Georgia.