Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

During a two week stretch this September, University of Georgia Libraries will host three acclaimed authors (and some notable musicians) for fun, free events open to the community, as well as UGA students, faculty, and staff.

The first event celebrates Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Brandon Som and acclaimed Jordanian writer Siwar Masannat to campus to celebrate their recent publications with the Georgia Review Books, an imprint by the Georgia Review with the University of Georgia Press. Som's book Tripas was a finalist for the National Book Award before winning the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Masannat's book cue was released in the spring of 2024.

Celebrate the Olympic glory of University of Georgia Athletics this fall by visiting a new exhibit on display at the UGA Special Collections Libraries.

The exhibit Bulldog Olympians takes viewers through decades of the international competition, which has hosted more than 200 UGA athletes competing for Team USA or their home countries. The display includes original Olympic artifacts and rarely seen photographs of Georgia's Olympians, including a look behind the scenes from retired swimming and diving coach Jack Bauerle, who served as an Olympic coach for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

A trailblazing newspaper founder, an influential teacher and poet, and an inspirational author/priest have been selected as the newest members of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

The 2024 class of honorees include Robert Sengstacke Abbott, publisher and editor of one of the most influential Black-owned newspapers of the early 20^th century; Wyatt Prunty, founding director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Tennessee Williams Fellowship Program; and Barbara Brown Taylor, an author and Episcopal priest.

Prunty and Taylor will inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, administered by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, at separate events this fall. The celebration of Abbott’s posthumous induction is slated for early 2025.

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.

Books about past and present racial injustices in the Southern cities of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Charleston, South Carolina are the winners of the 2024 Lillian Smith Book Awards, a University of Georgia Libraries-based award recognizing the best writing on social justice topics in the United States.

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.

"UGA Athletics in Your Town," a traveling exhibit of materials from the University of Georgia Athletic Association archives, will be coming to cities and counties around the state of Georgia this summer. The exhibit will begin on May 20 in Cedartown and continue through Aug. 2 along the way visiting Whitfield County (Dalton), Columbia County (Evans), Johns Creek, Pickens County (Jasper), Rabun County (Clayton), Screven County (Sylvania) and Glynn County (Brunswick).

Jason Hasty, Athletics History Specialist for the UGA Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, will bring a collection of historic Georgia Bulldogs athletics artifacts to the Cedartown Library as part of a statewide summer tour of public libraries across Georgia.

When Savannah Chruszcz took on a project to research the Georgia Museum of Natural History, she knew that it would take a lot of time and focus. But with help from UGA librarians and archivists, she figured out how to make the work interesting and rewarding… and in the end, she earned a cash prize for her efforts.

The second year history and geology major earned an honorable mention in the 2024 Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards this month.

“I learned that I just have to have a lot of patience because sometimes a document will have a treasure trove of information, sometimes not, but there will always be something else to look into,” she said. “Research is a very long, tedious process, but a rewarding and fulfilling one.”

The University of Georgia Libraries have sponsored the Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards each year since 2007 as a way to connect students with resources, faculty, and librarians as they pursue projects of their choosing.

A University of Georgia doctoral student will focus on stories of Athens’ diverse communities this summer during the inaugural term of the Hargrett Library Fellowship in Local History.

Theodora “Tedi” Light, an Athens native who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in history at UGA, will help grow and increase public access to the Athens African American Oral History Initiative during her fellowship, a new opportunity available thanks to a donor to the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Story from our partners at the College of Family and Consumer Sciences