Tag: progressive era to World War II (1900-1945)

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Enhanced description of Georgia town films and home movies digitized by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection now available

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). The Georgia Town Films Collection is available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_bmatf and the Georgia Home and Amateur Movies collection is available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_bmahm.

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.

The BMA digitized 126 home movies and 5 town films from Georgia, but did not have the cataloging staff available to create fuller, richer representations of this content unique to Georgia and Georgians. Providing the broadest access for this content demanded more robust description. DLG staff provided shot lists, and, through the use of the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), have provided users with word-level search capability and a time-correlated description that connects the text search term to the corresponding moment in the moving image footage. DLG staff also assigned Library of Congress subject headings to each of the films so that librarians and researchers can locate relevant information without having to refer to various versions of names or keywords.

Items in the Georgia Town Films Collection include films covering the towns of Fitzgerald, Bowman, and Athens. Items in the Georgia Home and Amateur Movies digital collection include a film from the Pebble Hill Plantation film collection that contains footage of African Americans playing baseball in Thomasville, Georgia in their plantation uniforms; a film from the Kaliska-Greenblatt home movie collection that includes a parade honoring Bobby Jones in 1930 on Peachtree Street in Atlanta; a film from the Joseph and Marion Rossiter home movie collection that shows a 1950 St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah; and a film from the Newman Family home movie collection that shows congressman John F. Kennedy at the airport in LaGrange campaigning to become President of the United States.

Ruta Abolins, director of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection notes: “Georgia home movies and town films document everyday rituals, ceremonies, and behavior, and demonstrate how people really lived.  Home movies and town films have been used by history, art, drama, and storytelling classes at the University of Georgia, and they have been viewed and used by documentary filmmakers and writers. Describing these films marking local history can be challenging but making them more widely available via the Digital Library of Georgia  and DPLA will make them even more accessible to the people of Georgia and beyond who will have access to the regular everyday life of people who made their own movies.”


About the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

The Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection was started in 1995 and currently preserves over 300,000 titles in film, video, audiotape, transcription disks, and other recording formats dating from the 1920s to the present. Our mission is to preserve, protect, and provide access to the moving image and sound materials that reflect the collective memory of broadcasting and the history of the state of Georgia and its people.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia https://dlg.usg.edu is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished through the ongoing development, maintenance, and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources.  DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.

 

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2018 Grant Program Increases Digital Participation in the Digital Library of Georgia

ATHENS, Ga — Berry College, Georgia State University, and the Oconee Regional Library are among three Competitive Digitization grants awarded through an ongoing subgranting program with the Digital Library of Georgia.

 

These institutions are recipients of the second set of grants awarded in a program intended to broaden partner participation in the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). The DLG solicited proposals for historic digitization projects in a statewide call, and applicants submitted proposals for projects with a cost of up to $5,000. The projects will be administered by DLG staff who will perform digitization and descriptive services on textual (not including newspapers), graphic, and audio-visual materials.

 

Sheila McAlister, director of the Digital Library of Georgia notes: “Thanks to our review partners from Georgia Humanities, Georgia Public Library Service, Georgia Arts Council, Georgia Historic Records Advisory Council, and DLG partner volunteers, we’ve selected another strong slate of digital projects that reflect the diversity of Georgia. The collections document Berry College’s history from the 1940s to the 1960s, African American education in Laurens County during the 1930s, and finally, Atlanta LGBTQ entertainment and news during the last decade of the 20th century.”

 

Preference in the selection process was given to proposals from institutions that had not yet collaborated with the DLG. The Oconee Regional Library is a new partner for the DLG.

 

The three recipients and their projects include:

 

  • Berry College (Mount Berry, Ga.) – Digitization of the Southern Highlander (Spring/Summer 1943 – September 1966). The Southern Highlander, the official magazine published by the Berry Schools in Mount Berry, Georgia, documents the Berry Schools’ history. This publication, which was the primary publication used by the Berry Schools to communicate with potential donors and the public, is an invaluable primary source for anyone doing research on the history of Berry or education or philanthropy in Georgia in the first half of the twentieth century. The time frame of 1943-1966 includes the transitional period after Martha Berry’s passing, the impact of World War II on the school, the school’s fostering of liberal arts education and professional programs, earning accreditation by Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and expanding recruitment to urban, non-traditional, and commuter students.

 

  • Georgia State University (Atlanta, Ga.) – Digitization of the Mike Maloney Out TV Collection (1999-2000). Out TV Atlanta, a half-hour weekly news and entertainment show focused on LGBTQ life, ran from 1999-2000. The brainchild of Michael B. Maloney, the show was supported financially by Maloney’s family and friends. Maloney used his funds to purchase air time, and Out TV aired in Atlanta and Savannah. Its reporters (most of whom were volunteers) included Rob Martin, Leane Reed and Terence Steele. As producer of the show, Maloney saw that most of the coverage of LGBTQ life involved night clubs and drag queens, and he wanted to focus on “ordinary” gay people who were firefighters, attorneys, and regular members of the community. Issues covered include Governor Roy Barnes’ address to an Atlanta gay professional organization (the first in the state), and the first Gay Pride Parade in Savannah.

 

  • Oconee Regional Library (Dublin, Ga.) – Digitization and description of teacher’s monthly reports from 37 of the African American rural and city schools in operation during the 1930s in Laurens County, Georgia. The reports were created by individual teachers for submission to the Laurens County Superintendent, and list student names, ages, grade levels, and attendance for the month. Many of these records also display teacher’s salaries, addresses, and other information. These resources are of significant value to family and local historians given that much African American educational history was not recorded or recounted elsewhere. Genealogists will appreciate the listing of children by name and age.
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