Charles B. La Hatt family papers, ms 3778

Charles Burdge La Hatt (1839-1908) was born in Muscogee County, Georgia, son of Charles Henry La Hatt (1796-1872) and Elizabeth Windham (1824-1906). He was a teacher and Methodist minister, served in Terrell Light Artillery, and married Annie Engram (1844-1901) of Eufaula, Alabama. They later lived in Gainesville, Georgia, where he founded Methodist College of Georgia. The collection consists of correspondence, writings and printed material and the majority of the letters are between Charles La Hatt and his fiancée Annie from 1861 to 1865 in which he gives detailed descriptions of the camps around Savannah, Georgia – Camp Ashby, Camp Boyle, Camp Jackson, and Camp Ogeechee. Although he was not involved in any battles, he describes some that occurred nearby at Fort McAllister (1863 January 26 and 1863 February 14), Fort Sumter (1863 April 14), and the “Nashville” explosion (1863 March 1). 

Camden Evans letters, ms 3756

Camden Evans (1838?-1864) enlisted in the 45th Alabama Volunteers, Company C in 1862. He married Susan Emma Laney in 1861, daughter of Robert P. Laney of Russell County, Alabama, and died of a wound received on July 20, 1864 near Atlanta, Georgia. The collection consists of letters Evans wrote to his wife and her father in Columbus, Georgia, from 1862 to 1864, which he wrote from numerous camps including Tupelo, Mississippi, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Ringgold and Dalton, Georgia. In his letters he complained about how badly privates were treated and the lack of food and clothing. He asked Mr. Laney to bring him a boy to wash his clothes and forage for food, and he constantly tried to arrange for a furlough or a substitute. He also gave his opinions of Generals Grant, Johnson, Bragg and Hardee, and mentioned some details of battles.

Sturges family letters, ms 3764

John R. Sturges (1827-1862) served in Co. A, 3rd Georgia Regiment, “Burke Guards” and was killed at the battle of Malvern Hill, Virginia, on July 1, 1862. His brother William U. Sturges (1816-1884) was a businessman in Waynesboro, Burke County, Georgia, and was married to Georgia Anna Ward (1826-1905). The collection consists of letters written by William Sturges to his brother John beginning in 1844 while John was in college in Princeton, New Jersey and later studying law at Yale. The letters describe the social events and family life in Waynesboro with some mention of politics. After returning to Georgia, John was county surveyor for Burke County in 1852 and several letters addressed to him request his services. William’s letters to John continued while John’s regiment was in Portsmouth, Virginia in August 1861 and Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in December 1861, and contained local news of Georgia.

Samuel Mosely letters, ms 3782

Samuel Mosely was a Confederate private who served with the 58th Georgia Militia Regiment beginning in 1861. The collection consists of eleven letters written by Mosely between 1853 and 1861, addressed to various family members, but primarily to his wife, Olympia C. Mosely, and his mother. Mosely’s letters to his wife date from 1861, sent from Tennessee, and reported on his health, his travels and duties with the infantry, camp life, and discussed other relatives and mutual acquaintances. Mosely’s letters to his mother and siblings date from the 1850s and discuss family members, health, crops, and his life in Arkansas after moving from Georgia.

A number of collections documenting the Civil War have been digitized and are available online as part of America’s Turning Point: Documenting the Civil War Experience in Georgia through the Digital Library of Georgia.

The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library is open for research Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm and Saturday from 1pm to 5pm, with the exception of University holidays and home football games. For more information, please visit http://www.libs.uga.edu/scl or call (706) 542-7123.

The goal of the exhibition is to revisit, reflect and inform on past events for a better understanding of the present day, according to Jan Levinson, an outreach archivist at the Russell Library.

The exhibition explores the interactions of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government and how the decisions made by each branch conflicted with one another, and with public opinion, in choosing a path for the U.S.

1973 was the year of the Roe v. Wade decision and the return of POWs from the war in Vietnam. It was the year President Richard Nixon proclaimed he was not a crook, even as the Watergate scandal unfolded on national television. It was the year of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab oil embargo, the launch of Skylab and passage of the Endangered Species Act.

“We originally considered an exhibit focused exclusively on the anniversary of the Watergate scandal,” said Levinson. “But after some preliminary research found that there were so many big events happening in 1973 that touched on our key collecting areas, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a look a multiple events.”

Both Levinson, who curated the exhibit, and Jill Severn, the Russell Library’s head of access and outreach, saw that the events of 1973 shared connections with current events and issues that Americans are struggling with today. “In creating the text and selecting objects from our collections, we tried to highlight the connections between past and present, as well as to prompt visitors to consider the interactions of various branches of government in dealing with public issues,” said Levinson.

The Russell outreach team will spend this summer planning a slate of public programs scheduled for the fall that will complement the key themes and topics of the exhibit. In the coming weeks they hope to launch an appeal to the public, soliciting photographs from 1973 for display in the gallery and on the Russell Library blog (www.rbrl.blogspot.com).

Construction advisory:  Lumpkin and Baxter Streets lane and road closures (Ongoing)

When: May 13, 2013 - June 13, 2013

Details: Lanes of Lumpkin and Baxter Streets adjacent to the Bolton Dining Commons construction site will be closed to traffic at various times during the period May 13 through June 13. Through traffic will be slowed, but will be maintained except for the following planned road closures: The block of Lumpkin Street adjacent to the Bolton site will be closed to all traffic on Sunday, June 2 through 5 a.m. Monday, June 3. The block of Baxter Street adjacent to the Bolton site will be closed to all traffic on Sunday, June 9 through 5 a.m. Monday, June 10. During these closures, motorists must find an alternate route.

The footage was discovered as part of a donation to the Home & Amateur Movies Collection in the Walter J. Brown Media & Peabody Awards Archive. It is part of the Pebble Hill Plantation Footage.

If links become available to view the segments, we’ll update this post with links.

Sidney Pike papers

Sidney Pike’s (b. 1927) career in television began with producing and directing baseball programming for Boston’s WBZ-TV and WHDH-TV for 17 years. During his tenure at WHDH, Pike also produced a documentary, “American Way of Life,” using his own family for an exchange of television programming between Brazil and the U.S. from 1961 to 1963. In 1968, he moved to Atlanta to be the station manager of WQXI-TV, Channel 11. Three years later, Pike joined Ted Turner to develop the newly-purchased UHF channel, establishing a relationship that lasted for twenty-five years. He served as station manager of WTBS until 1980, when Turner created CNN. In 1984, Pike began travelling the globe selling CNN International programming and retired as President of CNN International Special Projects in 1996. The papers document the television broadcasting career of Pike at WBZ-TV, WHDH-TV, ABC, WQXI-TV, Channel 17, WTBS, and CNN. The collection includes scripts, correspondence, photographs, public domain research files, clippings, and audiovisual materials.

Aubrey Morris papers

Aubrey R. Morris (1922-2010) attended the University of Georgia and studied journalism (ABJ ’45). He began his career as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal covering the city of Atlanta and city hall. After thirteen years at the Journal, he joined WSB-TV and helped develop the first radio news department in Georgia. He served thirty years as news and editorial director at WSB, retiring in 1987. The papers include drafts, researched and written by Morris, of several WSB Radio productions including editorials (1981-1989), Dateline America (1975-1976), and Georgia Crossroads (1983). The collection includes certificates, photographs, plaques, scrapbooks, and audiovisual material related to Morris’ career. There are audio recordings of Dateline America, The World Today (1983-1984), and Georgia Crossroads (1983) and several films including Ernest Vandiver in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Furman Bisher papers

Furman Bisher (1918-2012) began his career in journalism as the editor of the Lumberton (N.C.) Voice in 1938 and later joined the Charlotte News in 1940, becoming sports editor eight years later. In 1950, he moved to Georgia to work at the Atlanta Constitution as sports editor and then joined the Atlanta Journal as sports editor and columnist on February 3, 1957. From 1950 to 1968, Bisher was also a moderator on the weekly Atlanta TV show, “Football Review.” After covering a multitude of major sporting events and writing more than 15,000 columns and articles (in addition to twelve books), Bisher retired from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2009. This collection primarily consists of notebooks created by Bisher to record sporting events, article ideas, and interviews with various athletes. The notes include coverage of the World Series, Super Bowl, Masters, Kentucky Derby, and five Olympic Games. There are clippings documenting Bisher’s column from Charlotte News, Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The research/professional files include clippings, correspondence, and printed materials about the Masters.

Ray Moore papers

Ray Moore (b. 1922) grew up in North Carolina and served in the Army during World War Two as a radio broadcaster with the Tenth Armored Division. He utilized the GI Bill to attend Columbia University and was able to train in at NBC Studios. After working in Johnson City, Tennessee, he joined WSB Radio in 1951 and then WSB-TV the following year. Moore worked for the station for 18 more years, serving as news director of WSB until 1969 when he left to join WAGA-TV (Channel 5). In 1974, he retired from broadcasting entirely. Moore produced a number of documentaries on penal reform, school desegregation, hunger, religion, and urban development. This collection consists primarily of news scripts from WSB-TV (1964-1968) and WAGA-TV (1969-1975) about a number of topics including urban development and race relations. Also included are scripts for two of Moore’s documentaries, The Search and Center of Creation.

The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library is open for research Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm, with the exception of University holidays. For more information, please visit http://www.libs.uga.edu/scl or call (706) 542-7123.

The symposium will be held 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Richard B. Russell Jr. Special Collections Building.

Croxall’s talk is titled “Harder Better Faster Stronger: Books from the Future.” Technology is not only the subject of his work, but also the method of his research and pedagogy; his work in the digital humanities uses geospatial tools to plot literary events, and he writes about integrating digital tools with his teaching in journals such as Writing and Pedagogy and The Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog, ProfHacker.  He co-edited an issue of Neo-Victorian Studies on the subject of steampunk and is a cluster editor for #alt-academ.

The symposium also will include a workshop on futurist books led by Jed Rasula, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English, and, a UGA faculty panel featuring Eileen Wallace, Mark Callahan, Elizabeth Davis, and Christopher Eaket. An exhibit curated by doctoral students in the English department will be featured in the gallery of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The event is sponsored by the Willson Center for Arts and Humanities, Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE), and the Department of English.

An exciting new initiative began today when the Digital Public Library of America launched its first six service and content hubs. The hubs promise to unleash millions of historical, scientific and cultural documents from many of America’s national and state institutions, making them easily searchable as digital records to anyone with an Internet connection.

In Georgia, the Digital Library of Georgia serves as the regional hub. The DLG is an initiative of GALILEO, Georgia’s statewide virtual library, and it is based at the University of Georgia Libraries.

The Digital Public Library of America’s common platform also provides an open programming interface and metadata structure that will allow for free and innovative use of these materials by educators, researchers, programmers and the public. Taking part in the launch as the first service hubs are state and regional libraries in Massachusetts, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Minnesota and the Mountain West region.

Driven by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Knight Foundation has supported the project since 2011 as part of its library initiative that aims to reimagine libraries as centers for community engagement and digital access. For us, the goal of Digital Public Library of America aligns with Knight’s strong belief that informed communities are able to best determine their own interests. And we are thrilled to be part of a project that furthers this strong vision of engagement.

The Digital Library of Georgia is a massive aggregation in its own right with one million objects in more than 200 collections from 60+ institutions and 100+ state government agencies. It also provides a portal to two jewel collections: this Civil Rights Digital Library and the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries’ Civil War Portal.

Associate Director of the Digital Library of Georgia and DPLA service-hub Director Sheila McAlister is excited to see what happens when Georgia’s content mixes with other local and national collections when DPLA launches in April. “Users all over the country are going to be exposed to content that tells the story of the country in a way they haven’t been able to do before,” she explained, saying she sees  ”so much potential to help fill out that nuanced history of our country.”

The Digital Library of Georgia‘s first exhibit for the Digital Public Library of America will focus on American social movements and feature some of the collection’s unique civil rights content. Current partners span libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions of every size.

Below, McAlister talks more about her hope for the project’s future and what she sees as major challenges, including metadata alignment across the diverse institutions involved, access to materials that are not in the public domain, and keeping project momentum and interest going so that the general public becomes just as excited about digital library as librarians are.

Could tell me about your organization and how you became involved with the Digital Public Library of America?

S.M: The Digital Library of Georgia is the cultural heritage digitization initiative for the state of Georgia. We work with libraries, archives, museums,and other institutions of education, and we help them take their important historical content and put it online for everybody all over the country to use—all over the world, even.

What’s unique about the collections that you have at the Digital Library of Georgia?

S.M: Aside from the wonderful Georgia-related content, the Digital Library of Georgia also is the host of two other projects that have nationwide import, and that would be the Civil Rights Digital Library, which at its heart has about 30 hours of raw news footage of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. And then we’re also the host for the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries’ Civil War Portal. And so we’re hoping to bring all of that content along with our amazing Georgia content into national digital library.

Do you think those will be part of any of the first exhibitions for the Digital Public Library? can you give us a preview of what will be there?

S.M: As you know, each of the hubs is going to be doing an exhibit, and our exhibit is going to be on social movements and activism in the United States, so I imagine that we’re going to be featuring a lot of civil rights content.

So what local benefits do you think that your position as a service hub will end up providing?

S.M: The local benefits will be that we’re able to work with institutions that are really strapped for resources to help them bring forward their own content and share it with a larger community. And one of the things that we’re really hoping to do is work with smaller libraries in the state, so I think to me that’s particularly exciting, given the kinds of budget stresses that libraries in our state are having.

Can you give any indication of the number of different historical societies, libraries, groups that you all serve as a hub for right now?

S.M: I believe we serve as a hub for about 100 different institutions. That includes all three of the portals. Plus, we also work with over 100 agencies of the state government through our Georgia government publications database.

What different types of libraries and societies do you work with?

S.M: We work with everything from large research libraries—for example,  Emory, University of Georgia, Georgia State, Georgia Tech—to small, public libraries. For example, we’ve done a number of projects with the Middle Georgia Archives, which is in Macon and is one of the Knight communities. We’ve also worked with historical societies, as well. A couple of the bigger ones like the Atlanta History Center and the Georgia Historical Society, both of which will be contributing content.

What affect do you think the Digital Public Library launch in April will have nationally—for libraries, for users, for other information providers?

S.M: I see it as a really exciting thing for libraries. The users all over the country are going to be exposed to content that tells the story of the country in a way they haven’t been able to do before. I think that only about 40 out of the 50 states have state-wide digital library initiatives, and there’s just really not one place where people can go to get content that really covers a lot of the different communities and histories. And DPLA is going to be that place. I’m really excited to see it grow in the future. There’s so much potential to help fill out that nuanced history of our country.

What challenges are you anticipating going forward after the launch, as the project grows and expands?

S.M: Some of the challenges are dealing with materials that are not in the public domain. So, that’s definitely something that I think is on the minds of not only the hubs, but also the project as a whole—how do we balance that and get people the kind of content that they want. I think another challenge is keeping the momentum going, and again, with tight budgets, our own state archives suffered really bad cuts over the last  year. Once the exciting big splash is over, how do we keep that momentum going and keep the interest going?

I hear that you’re the metadata brain behind the Digital Public Library.

Well, that’s exaggerating a little bit. I enjoy good, thorough metadata.

How has that experience been—trying to get all the metadata from all these really different types of portals aligning?

S.M: It’s a challenge, and I think really part of the challenge is balancing a boutique approach with getting as much out there as possible. So, we’re kind of working our way through that, and I think one of the things that we did with some of our constituent libraries was put a lot of effort into describing that content really, really well—from providing people with historic grounding in what’s going on in these clips, which are often unannotated; you have to go through and identify the people. It’s not useful to people unless they have that background information. For that project, we were able to do that. We’re not able to do that with all the projects, so we have to find that sort of sweet spot between the two.

For me, that’s challenging, because I wish I could do everything to that level, but the reality is that not everything can be that way. So we’ve been working a lot on automating and just thinking of new and different, faster ways to do things. I’m also really excited about some of the potential that the project is going to have to look at things like data, which at my institution, we love to do, but given the massive, massive amounts of data, and being on the ground, we don’t necessarily have the time to do that. And I’m really excited to see how the project leverages all of that together. And I’m hoping to learn new things and bring them back to Georgia’s digital library.

So what’s your hope for the Digital Public Library project going forward? What’s your big-vision dream?

S.M: I would like to see, again, more states and regions represented. I would like to really see the general public get behind it and embrace it and also see the value of libraries, which I think unfortunately they sometimes don’t do.

So how does that happen? How do we get the public to embrace it? Is that the library’s job?

S.M: I think it’s a grassroots kind of thing. Obviously, in the library community, there’s a lot of talk about the Digital Public Library. I don’t think it’s crossed into the general public as much, although I will say we did actually have a few individuals who were super excited about having their own personal items included in the archive. So, we’ve got to get the larger community, and I’m hoping that things like these exhibits—and maybe working with teachers and that kind of thing—that’s the way you hook people in.

By Annie Schutte, a librarian, teacher and consultant for Knight Foundation