Digital Library of Georgia

The Georgia Historical Society has announced that Mr. Donald S. Summerlin, the Digital Projects Librarian and Archivist at the Digital Library of Georgia at the University of Georgia Libraries, has been named the recipient of the 2020 John C. Inscoe Award for his article, “‘We Represented the Best of Georgia in Chicago’: The Georgia Loyalist Delegate Challenge at the 1968 Democratic Convention.”

“We are pleased to recognize Donald Summerlin as the recipient of this year’s Inscoe Award for the best article in the Georgia Historical Quarterly for the year 2019,” said Dr. W. Todd Groce, President and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society. “His meticulous research sheds light on the controversial 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and Georgia’s role in it, during one of the most turbulent years in American history.”

The UGA Libraries invites students to compete in the Fourth Annual Capturing Science Contest. The competition, co-sponsored by the Office of Research, offers cash prizes for students who convey STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) concepts in creative and compelling projects that range from artistic endeavors to classroom activities, games and videos. The deadline for virtual submissions is 5 p.m. Dec. 7, 2020.

Historical issues of a popular Georgia agricultural bulletin that document decades of farming trends during the 20th century are now available freely online. 

The University of Georgia Libraries will open to the public Aug. 10 with measures in place to promote the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The reopening comes as UGA prepares to welcome students for fall classes beginning Aug. 20.

Yearbooks that chronicle a critical period in the University of Georgia’s history will be available online, thanks to a partnership between UGA Libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia.

A grant project will digitize Pandora yearbooks from 1965 to 1974, a period that includes the transition after UGA’s integration and chronicles increasing diversity at the birthplace of public higher education in America, including movements to increase representation among women and support the LGBTQ+ community.

Over 11,500 pages of digitized African American funeral programs from Atlanta and the Southeast are now freely available in the Digital Library of Georgia. The digital collection of 3,348 individual programs dates between 1886-2019 and contains contributions from the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, a special library of the Fulton County Library System; the Wesley Chapel Genealogy Group; and the Atlanta Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. Digitization was funded by Georgia HomePLACE, a program of the Georgia Public Library Service.

The Digital Library of Georgia has just made Sanborn fire insurance maps produced between 1923-1941 for 39 Georgia towns and cities in 35 counties freely available online. The maps, which are now in the public domain, can be retrieved at dlg.usg.edu/collection/dlg_sanb, and complement the DLG’s existing collection of the University of Georgia Map and Government Information Library’s 539 Sanborn maps dating from 1884-1922 that have been available since 2005. The DLG has also upgraded its image viewer, which will allow better access and improved navigation to the new and older Sanborn images from this collection.

Three map and plat collections featuring historical maps, plats, deeds, records, and correspondence pertaining to South Georgia land holdings dating from 1767 to 1899 are now available in the Digital Library of Georgia.

These resources belong to Valdosta State University Archives. They have been made available online thanks in part to the DLG's Competitive Digitization grant program, a funding opportunity intended to broaden DLG partner participation for statewide historic digitization projects.

The three digital collections are:

As part of a $27,405.00 grant from the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation, the Digital Library of Georgia has digitized over 100,000 pages of Georgia newspaper titles published from 1861 to 1877 from microfilm held by the Georgia Newspaper Project (libs.uga.edu/gnp/).

The project creates full-text searchable versions of the newspapers and presents them online for free in its Georgia Historic Newspapers database at gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu in accordance with technical guidelines developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress for the National Digital Newspaper Program (see loc.gov/ndnp/).

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of the Bartow History Museum vertical file record collection at dlg.usg.edu/collection/barhm_bhmvf. The collection, which belongs to the Bartow History Museum, is available online thanks in part to the DLG's Competitive Digitization grant program, a funding opportunity intended to broaden DLG partner participation for statewide historic digitization projects.

The digital collection consists of a portion of a compilation of county documents that include topics such as guardianship (1850-1929), indentures (1860-1929), lunacy (1866-1929), pauperism (1866-1879), land grants/deeds (1866-1929), and other records. The records were created by court officials to document legal proceedings and transactions.