The Public Library Partnerships Project

Public Library Partnerships Project

In April 2014 the Public Library Partnership Project (PLPP) launched its first one-day workshop. Since then the project has continued to mature and affect public libraries across the country.

Four Digital Public Library hubs are spearheading this project for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). These hubs include Digital Commonwealth, Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), Minnesota Digital Library, and Mountain West Digital Library. All four of these hubs have hosted multiple one-day workshops to teach public librarians the fundamentals of digitization and to connect participants to resources for further assistance.

The goal of the PLPP, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to train public librarians in digital technologies, and to digitize their content so that more people can have access to their archival materials. Ultimately the PLPP will produce two online exhibits per hub. The digitized content from public libraries in the area will provide visual context for these exhibits. This will be a way to globally showcase the materials kept in public libraries around the country.

The Role of the Digital Library of Georgia

As a DPLA hub, the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) plays a major role in training librarians around the state and digitizing their local content.

The DLG has already hosted three workshops for librarians. The first workshop was held in Macon, the second in Savannah, and the third in Augusta, Georgia. A total of 45 librarians attended these conferences where they learned digitization techniques and best practices.

Since these trainings the DLG has been planning and performing site-visits to libraries around the state. At these visits staff from the DLG pick up suitable materials for the PLPP project and bring them back to be digitized at the DLG office. So far, the DLG has completed 7 site-visits and come away with a total of 1715 objects to be digitized. Additionally, digitization has just begun on the first collection.

What’s Next…

The DLG will continue site-visits through early 2015 and digitization will continue through the spring of next year.  Once the digitization has been completed the DLG will begin collaborating with public librarians to create two online exhibits that showcase the materials. These exhibits will be completed by October of 2015. The DPLA will host these online exhibits, which librarians can link to from their own public library website. The ultimate goal of this project is to publicize the valuable archival collections held by public librarians around the country through these online exhibits.

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Enhanced Athens Historic Newspapers Archive

The Digital Library of Georgia is pleased to announce the re-release of the enhanced Athens Historic Newspapers Archive:

http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/athnewspapers

ahd1922-1764
Athens Daily Herald, November 17, 1922

The Athens Historic Newspapers Archive is now compatible with all current browsers and provides access to nine newspaper titles published in Athens from 1827 to 1928 without the use of plug-ins or additional software downloads. Consisting of over 77,000 newspaper pages, the archive provides historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date. The site will provide users with a view into the history of Athens in its early years as the home to the first state-chartered university in the nation and its eventual growth into the largest city in northeast Georgia.

The archive includes the following Athens newspaper titles: Athens Herald (1913-1923), Athens Banner-Herald (1923-1928), Southern Whig/Southern Herald (1838-1850), Clarke County Courier (1903-1913), in addition to the titles previously included in the archive: Athenian (1827-1832), Southern Banner (1832-1882), Southern Watchman (1855-1882), Daily/Weekly Banner-Watchman (1882-1889), Daily/Weekly Athens Banner (1889-1922).

The Athens Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia, as part of the Georgia HomePLACE initiative. The Digital Library of Georgia is a project of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia. Georgia HomePLACE is supported with federal LSTA funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (by nobles at here). Digitization is also made possible through a grant provided by the Francis Wood Wilson Foundation, Inc.

Other newspaper archives available through the Digital Library of Georgia include the Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive (1847-1922), the Savannah Historic Newspapers Archive (1819-1880), the South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive (1845-1922), the Macon Telegraph Archive (1826-1908), the Columbus Enquirer Archive (1828-1890), the Milledgeville Historic Newspapers Archive (1808-1920), the Southern Israelite Archive (1929-1986), and the Red and Black Archive (1893-2006). These archives can be accessed at http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html

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