Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection

A University of Georgia collaboration that presented Georgia’s incarceration history in an exhibition and on stage is being honored as one of the top public history projects in the nation.

Archivists with UGA’s special collections libraries partnered with theatre and dance faculty on campus and at Spelman College to engage students in an exploration of reports, correspondence, newsfilm, photographs and other original materials from archival collections documenting the history of convict labor in Georgia. Over the course of three semesters, students and faculty created a devised theatrical performance grounded in that history.

Tuesday, July 31, 2018
(News 12 First at 5)

ATHENS, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Over the past 64 years, many of you or your family have appeared on News 12, as well as countless stories and events. All those memories are now being preserved for future generations.

The WRDW archives show everything from old anchor signoffs, to James Brown interviews, to Masters coverage decades back. Now, we’ve donated those tapes to the University of Georgia in hopes of preserving all our history.

Margaret Compton is a media archivist at UGA. Her job is to keep these cherished records safe for years to come.

“As stations have been saving their tape, that really compares to a family's home movies. The home movies of Augusta are at the TV station,” Compton explained the value, both educational and sentimental, of these ¾” tapes.

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of Georgia town films and home movies digitized by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection (BMA). 

DLG staff provided enhanced description of these moving image resources that enables users to locate segments of the moving image footage without having to view the footage in its entirety.

Some 4,000 hours of programming produced by public radio and television stations between 1941 and 1999 will be digitized and made available to the public, thanks to a federal grant for the Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia Libraries. The programming was originally submitted for consideration for Peabody Awards.

Tyler Ortel, a student audiovisual technician in the Walter J. Brown Media Archives, was awarded first place in the UGA Student Employee of the Year Awards, sponsored by the Career Center and Office of Student Affairs. 

Ortel, an entertainment and media studies major in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications, has been employed by the Brown Media Archives for almost two years, and he has completed digitization of hundreds of hours of film, audio, and videotape in that time. This work includes inspecting archival materials to assess the condition, performing minor conservation treatments when necessary, and playing the materials on analog playback machines connected to specialized converters and adapters to capture preservation-quality digital signals. 

The University of Georgia Libraries have suspended tours and community events in the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries through March 29.

The decision is in accordance with the University System of Georgia decision to suspend classes at UGA and other universities amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

The building houses the operations of the Libraries’ three special collections units, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, and Brown Media Archive. Research activities will continue by appointment only.

In addition, the Georgia Capitol Museum, a unit of the Russell Library at the Capitol in Atlanta, is closed for tours.

For updates, visit libs.uga.edu.

The James U. Steele Vintage Broadcast Microphone Collection is one of the most comprehensive collections of American made microphones from the first half of the 20th century.

Since the birth of broadcast radio in 1906, the microphone has been the centerpiece of emerging technologies that allowed the human voice to be heard live by vast audiences. Many microphones became icons of the radio and television industry, including the RCA 44 and 77 series microphones which seemed ubiquitous in the early television era, and the Shure 55 series, dubbed “The Elvis Microphone” for its frequent appearance on stage with Elvis Presley.

A popular exhibit of microphones has debuted online via the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection. In displays at the Russell Special Collections Libraries room allows for only a portion of the Steele Microphone Collection but the  online exhibit shows the entire collection and puts the microphones in more historical context.

In addition to a look at the advent of broadcasting history and evolution of the microphone, biographical information on the collection creator, the late James "Jim" U. Steele, is provided. 

https://digilab.libs.uga.edu/scl/exhibits/show/steel_vintage_mics

Amateur films and filmmaking will be the stars of the day Oct. 21 when National Home Movie Day 2017 will be observed  in Athens at the UGA Special Collections Libraries.

National Home Movie Day is a worldwide celebration of amateur films and filmmaking, held annually in October.  The event provides an opportunity for attendees to bring in their home movies, learn more about their own family films, how to care for films and videotapes, and how home movies have helped capture personal history.

The event will be 2-4 p.m. at the Richard b. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries, 300 S. Hull Street, on the University of Georgia campus.  Free parking is available in the Hull Street parking deck. This year’s event is being sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries’ Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

An extraordinary educator who took over operations of the family farm after his father 's death, Andrew Avery helped create the Decatur County Peanutorama, highlighting the crop and the surrounding county's contribution to its marketing.

Avery’s family has donated his papers to the University of Georgia Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, including correspondence, photographs, printed material, notes, legal documents, plats, and various ephemera.  Of note is the scrapbook documenting farm improvements he made for the Atlanta Constitution's Plant-to-Prosper contest of 1938, which he won, as well as many photographs of schools he was involved with in southwest Georgia.