Libraries

When most people think of climate science, their only visual reference is a disaster movie. But Alison Banks knows that things are more complicated. As she modeled scenarios in her work as a master’s student in geography, Banks was inspired to create her own representation of the possibilities.

With an image in her head that draws from Dante’s journey in “Inferno” through the circles of hell, Banks set to work on an art project that combines the positives and the negatives that could occur based on various models developed through her research.

The finished project earned Banks $1,000 and first place in the graduate student category of the Capturing Science Contest, sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries and Office of Research.

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 latest issue of The Georgia Review, Winter 2019, is now available for purchase. Featuring 250 pages of original poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews, some of the issue’s highlights include a tribute to the late Toni Morrison, an innovative poetry project presenting the words of Hong Kong protesters, a new story by novelist Tiphanie Yanique, an essay by conservationist Susan Cerulean, and an art folio of work by Atlanta-based artist Michi Meko. The Winter issue is the first curated by new editor-in-chief Gerald Maa, who took leadership of the Review after the July retirement of longtime editor Stephen Corey.

With a librarian’s help, Isabell Ott’s research project grew exponentially into a complete history of an understudied group of viruses comprised of 300 sources of information. Jeri Sasser learned sophisticated methods for an extensive literature search that are key to her new adventures in graduate school, and Lauren Boyd discovered new sources and new ways of thinking critically that lead to summer field research in Baja Big Sur, Mexico.

These three students are just a few examples of the influence that the UGA Libraries Undergraduate Research Award has had on students in the past year.

Since 2007, the Libraries’ Undergraduate Research Award (LURA) has encouraged and

rewarded research excellence and growth as a scholar.

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.

The Course Reserves service provided by the UGA Libraries ensures that your students have free, timely access to your choice of course-related journal articles and/or books. Requests may be submitted at any time. Requests submitted by the guarantee date will be completed by the first day of classes. For Spring Semester 2020, the guarantee date is Friday, November 29, 2019. Requests received after this date will be processed as quickly as possible, but we cannot guarantee their availability by the start of classes.

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.

University of Georgia students can now develop—and play—virtual reality from the comfort of their dorm rooms. Two Oculus Rift VR headsets and accompanying Alienware 15 R3 gaming laptops are now available for checkout from the Science Library Makerspace. Any UGA student may borrow the equipment for a 72-hour loan period. The gaming laptops are enabled for VR prototyping and exploration and loaded with Oculus Rift, Steam and Unity Game Engine software.

This equipment is on loan from Kyle Johnsen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering.

“The systems will help students work on virtual reality projects anywhere, without requiring access to a specialized laboratory,” Johnsen said. “[They] are specifically designed to be self-contained, with all required software and hardware to get started.”

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.

University of Georgia Libraries’ books will soon transcend shelves and be available online to students, faculty and members of the community in Athens and around the world.

Through a new partnership with Google, about 120,000 of the Libraries’ 4.5 million volumes will be digitized, allowing further access to literary, historic, scientific and reference books and journals through UGA’s library catalog as well as one of the largest digital book collections in the world.

“The University of Georgia Libraries’ collection of 4.5 million volumes is a vast resource for students and scholars at our campuses, and the Google Books partnership extends those benefits to people across the globe,” University Librarian and Associate Provost Toby Graham said. “The ability to search through the full text of these digitized materials will make it even easier for researchers to gain access to the knowledge that helps them to better understand our world.”