Read this interview, “Digitizing Georgia’s Cultural Heritage,” with associate director of the Digital Library of Georgia and DPLA service hub director Sheila McAlister to learn more about the Digital Library of Georgia, and its role as one of the six service hubs for the DPLA project, the first national-scale endeavor to aggregate existing content from state and regional digital libraries to be made searchable from a single portal.

The interview was conducted by Annie Schutte, a consultant for the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, and originally appeared on the Knight Foundation’s blog Knight Blog.

And what can you expect to find initially at the DPLA?  John Palfrey, President of the DPLA Board of Directors, describes the launch:

“On April 18, we will launch the first beta version of the DPLA. In its first iteration, the DPLA will combine a group of rich, interesting digital collections, from state and regional digital archives to the special collections of major university libraries and federal holdings. The DPLA will demonstrate how powerful and exciting it can be to bring together our nation’s digitized materials, metadata (including catalog records, for instance), code, and digital tools and services into an open, shared resource. Imagine the ability to access a vastly larger set of materials than ever before, both through a single web portal and through your local library, which has carefully curated a subset of the national database.”

Several collections from Georgia institutions are a part of this launch, with more to be added over time. These include the Gay Bolling Shepperson photographs from the Atlanta History Center; the Ships for Victory collection from the Brunswick-Glynn County Library (hosted by the DLG); and the earliest known plantation baseball film, from the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia.

The Digital Library of Georgia is proud to be a member of this endeavor. We will keep you updated as the Digital Public Library of America grows.

See the press release below for more information on the film and the effort to make it publicly available.

Writer: Margie Compton

Athens, Ga. – A 26-second film of a game played by African-American employees at Pebble Hill Plantation, circa 1919, may be the earliest moving images of baseball filmed in Georgia.
The 28 mm home movie, part of the Pebble Hill Plantation Film Collection (circa 1917-circa 1976), was donated last year to the University of Georgia Libraries’ Walter J. Brown Media Archives, the only public institution in Georgia devoted entirely to preserving unique moving images and sound from the state. Pebble Hill, a hunting plantation located just outside Thomasville, was bought in 1896 by Howard Melville Hanna of Cleveland, Ohio, as a winter home. In 1901, he gave the property to his daughter, Kate Hanna Ireland, and her children, Livingston and Elizabeth “Pansy” Ireland. Pebble Hill’s trustees donated the family’s films to the Media Archives to preserve their unique scenes of the family and property.

“It is believed to be the only existing moving image of a baseball game between teams made up of African-American employees on Southern hunting plantations. The precise date of the film is unknown, but based on photographs of Pebble Hill teams and from other films wound on the reel with this film, it appears to have been made around 1919,” said Margaret Compton, moving image archivist at UGA. The opposing team in the game is from Chinquapin Plantation, also situated just outside Thomasville.

According to James “Jack” Hadley, co-author of “African-American Life on the Southern Hunting Plantation,” many plantations in south Georgia and north Florida had baseball teams made up of the African-American plantation employees. Hadley grew up at Pebble Hill and now operates the Jack Hadley Black History Museum in Thomasville.

In researching the footage, archivists and baseball scholars were contacted to determine if other plantation baseball team game films exist and no one knew of any, Compton said.

“It is an extraordinary piece of footage and I wish we had known about it 20 years ago, when we were making ‘Baseball,’” said Lynn Novick, directing/producing partner of Ken Burns at Florentine Films, which made the landmark 1994 documentary. “In all the research we did seeking early film of the game, we never came across footage from the 1910s or 1920s of African Americans playing organized ball.”

Warren Bicknell III, president of the Pebble Hill Foundation, says, “We are astonished at how many unique images have come out of the Ireland family’s home movies. Of course, we are proud to know that Pebble Hill is contributing such unique images to the story of Georgia in the 20th century.”

Ruta Abolins, director of the Brown Archives, was excited to see the footage and hopes it encourages others to think about what moving images may be in their home collections. “We are thrilled that this particular aspect of Pebble Hill’s life is represented in the collection. We have dedicated some of our funds to preserve it to digital files and to a new negative and new print on long-lasting polyester film so future generations can see it. I hope that this film will spur people with early home movies to bring them out of their cans and boxes and have a film archivist examine them. ”

For information about the Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection, see http://www.libs.uga.edu/media/.

For more information on Pebble Hill Plantation, see www.pebblehill.com.

For information on the Jack Hadley Black History Museum in Thomasville, see http://www.jackhadleyblackhistorymuseum.com/.

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Filed under: University News

The Digital Library of Georgia is a digital hub for the DPLA, and materials from the DLG will be included in the launch.

The beginnings of the first public, national, on-line library will soon be unveiled in Boston – home to the country’s first publicly supported municipal library.

A prototype of the Digital Public Library of America, or DPLA, will launch during a two-day event, which will include a series of events April 18 and 19 at the Boston Public Library, according to leaders of the digital library.

Read the rest of the article here.  More information about the DPLA launch events can be found here.

The University of Georgia and the UGA Libraries have a strong commitment to achieving diversity among its faculty and staff. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from members of underrepresented groups and strongly encourage persons of color to apply for these positions. The University of Georgia is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer.

Atlanta Georgian, February 22, 1909

On this day in 1909, the Masonic Temple in Atlanta was opened to the public on the corner of Peachtree and Cain streets. The project took two years to complete at a cost of $250,000 and was built to serve as the headquarters for several different white Masonic groups in the Atlanta area (African American Masons met at separate locations, including the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge later in the century). The impressive structure consisted of four main stories, three mezzanine stories, and a basement. It was built with Manganese brick and featured two separate tiers of columns. The interior of the building was adorned in mahogany and contained meeting and banquet rooms to accommodate the needs of the different Masonic organizations. On February 22, the building opened to the public in a celebratory event and the Masonic Temple was featured on the front page of the Atlanta Georgian.

Masonic Temple fire, September 7, 1950, Vanishing Georgia Collection

The Masonic Temple stood for over forty years before catching fire on September 7, 1950. The blaze began on the top floor of the structure. Authorities believed at the time that the fire originated from the torch of an elevator repairman, but the cause ultimately remained unknown. At the time of the fire, workers were also installing sprinklers to prevent such a catastrophe. The fire burned for five hours before the city’s fire department was able to extinguish the flames. All that remained of the structure the next morning was the exterior walls, which were eventually torn down. Surprisingly, not a single life was lost and only a few people suffered minor injuries, including a waitress who fainted across the street. A parking structure was eventually built in the Masonic Temple’s place and remains there today.

The DPLA blog highlights the DLG today, as part of their ongoing introduction to the digital hubs. Take a look:

I was glad to spend time this week searching through the collections of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). The DLG serves as part of the University of Georgia’s GALILEO initiative. The DLG’s services extend beyond the access it provides to the documents in its portals, and includes metadata aggregation, text encoding, scanning and digital imaging services, and the preservation of the library’s massive Georgia Newspaper Project.

The Digital Library of Georgia is accepting applications for original, unpublished historic materials significant to Georgia to be digitized and included in a nationwide digital library.

Waycross Evening Herald, December 22, 1911

The tradition of children writing letters to Santa Claus  rose in popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States. By the early 1900s, newspapers in south Georgia began publishing these letters in their December issues. They provide amusing and sometimes poignant insight into Christmas culture, familial relationships, charity, war, and consumerism from a century ago. The letters hint at other traditions related to Santa Claus, including his list of good and bad children and the practice of leaving foods for him to eat. The letters reproduced below and hundreds of others can be found in the South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive.

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Waycross Journal, December 16, 1902

Bainbridge Search Light, December 15, 1911

Daily Times Enterprise (Thomasville), December 24, 1918

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Valdosta Times, December 12, 1905

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Americus Times-Recorder, December 11, 1913

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Daily Times Enterprise (Thomasville), December 24, 1918

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Americus Times-Recorder, December 11, 1913

The University of Georgia Libraries seeks a Digital Public Library of America Coordinator who will be responsible to the Associate Director of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) for metadata aggregation, creation and upgrade; project management; staff supervision; rights management; vendor and partner relations; and other duties related to the DLG’s participation in the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Hubs Project. As a hub for the DPLA, DLG will provide digital services to Georgia institutions, such as digitization, metadata, data aggregation and storage services. In addition, the DLG will host community outreach programs to bring users in contact with digital content of local relevance. This position is a 24-month, grant-funded position. To view a full description of duties and qualifications and application procedure please go to http://www.libs.uga.edu/humres/jobs/dplacoordinator.html

The University of Georgia and the UGA Libraries have a strong commitment to achieving diversity among its faculty and staff. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from members of underrepresented groups and strongly encourage persons of color to apply for these positions. The University of Georgia is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer.