Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection

The University of Georgia Libraries and the Center for Teaching and Learning invite full-time UGA faculty from all disciplines to apply

UPDATE: UGA Libraries will resume normal operational schedules at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 28. The Miller Learning Center, Main Library, and McBay Science Library will reopen at that time, and other facilities will reopen on their normal schedules. For full hours visit libs.uga.edu/all-hours. 

Previously: All University of Georgia Libraries facilities will be closed Thursday, Sept. 26, and Friday, Sept. 27, in accordance with the campus closure due to inclement weather.

The Miller Learning Center and Main and McBay Libraries will close at midnight Wednesday night and, as of now, plan to reopen on Saturday. All events currently scheduled for Thursday and Friday have been canceled, including the Special Collections Libraries' Georgia Writers Hall of Fame event featuring Barbara Brown Taylor and John Bell.

The community is invited to submit their home movies for free digitization, offered by the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards, one three special collections units at the University of Georgia Libraries.

Online registration is now open for the second edition of “Free the Tapes,” where audiovisual techs from the archives will digitize up to three old videos in any format — from Super 8 and Betamax to VHS and more — at no cost. 

Participants can drop off their materials at one of four dropoff days:

A Q&A scrawled in marker onto a white record sleeve as well as on the vinyl, a hand-painted message on the back of a shovel, a battered straw hat with fraying pink trim, and photographs of pets. These items and dozens more add to the character of the Athens’ music community on display this fall at the UGA Special Collections Libraries along with colorful portraits of the artists taken at their homes.

A documentary presented by the University of Georgia Libraries has earned a regional Emmy Award. 

INSIDE The Warren Commission, a project that has aired on public broadcasting across the United States throughout the past year as part of the 60^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was selected as a Southeast Emmy Award recipient. 

The documentary delves into the inner workings of the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon Congressional body charged to investigate Kennedy’s assassination.

This June, the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries will host two free film screenings about past struggles with equality that echo headlines of today.

A Tuesday, June 4 screening of Love Free or Die will mark 21 years since Gene Robinson’s consecration as the first openly gay person to become a bishop in a Christian church. Held at 5:15 p.m. at Cine, the screening is sponsored by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

The screening will feature a discussion with director Macky Alston and Robinson, who wore a bullet-proof vest to the consecration ceremony of the Episcopal Church Diocese of New Hampshire and faced death threats during his tenure. The events caused a split in the Episcopal Church similar to the fracturing of the United Methodist Church occurring today.

Nine­ University of Georgia faculty members are preparing new classes this May as 2024 Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows, a program designed to help instructors incorporate UGA Libraries’ archival materials and active learning strategies into courses.

Have an old VHS that captured the childhood moments of basketball games and camping trips but no way to actually view the memories? Thanks to the University of Georgia Libraries, community members are invited to “Free the Tapes” with free digitization services to bring the images back to their screens.

The event is sponsored by the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Archive, one of three special collections units at UGA Libraries and one of the largest publicly available audiovisual archives in the country. 

“We believe that home movies are meant to be treasured, but with advances in technology, too many families are left with old tapes and no way to play and preserve them for the next generation to see,” said Ruta Abolins, director of the Brown Media Archives at UGA. “For Free the Tapes: Home Movie Edition, let us cover the expense of digitization, so you can enjoy rewatching your childhood memories.”

In the 21^st century, libraries don’t just store information on shelves — they also use servers. UGA Libraries recently reached a major milestone in its digital preservation of unique materials, eclipsing 1 petabyte of storage in its ARCHive.

Three UGA professors have been named the inaugural recipients of UGA Libraries’ Fairchild-Holcomb Awards for Innovation in the Humanities. The seed grants, totaling $8,600, will kick-start projects aimed at creating educational materials and a podcast or documentary drawing upon archival materials from UGA’s Special Collections Libraries.