Mandy Mastrovita – Page 45

George Jones, His majestys colony of Georgia in America, 1734, Hargrett Library. Part of the SS8H2 Lesson Plan

I taught Georgia history during the 2018-2019 school year. When I began the process of planning out the academic year, I was so overwhelmed! How on earth was I going to be able to teach my students all that they needed to learn?

As I began to search for lesson plans, curriculum maps, and many other resources to help in this endeavor, I came across the Digital Library of Georgia. I was amazed by the resources that were available at my fingertips!

One of the activities I used these resources for was over the Georgia SS8H2, analyzing the colonial period of Georgia’s history. Thankfully, the DLG had amassed all the resources in one place, and I was able to pick and choose what I wanted to share with my class. One of the activities I made using the DLG was over colonial Georgia.

I set up stations in the classroom where students would analyze either a primary resource or image to help them understand how Savannah came to be. I went further and used biographies of Mary Musgrove and Tomochichi that had been collected by the DLG from the Georgia Historical Society. These biographies helped me teach about how Europeans used native Americans in the establishment of the state of Georgia.

As the school year went on, I continued to use the resources of the DLG. As I taught about the Bourbon Triumvirate, I went to the DLG to find images of these prominent figures of Georgia’s New South Era. When I taught about the Leo Frank Case, I was able to use Frank’s papers to teach about what had happened to him. Because I was able to show through images what it was like to work at the Bell Bomber Plant, I was able to make World War II more interesting.

The access that I have had through the DLG helped to enhance my lessons every day. This enhancement helped my students so much that the 8th grade at Odyssey Charter was able to improve their milestones scores by twenty-five percent. I am so grateful for this resource and would highly encourage all educators to use this invaluable resource.

Becky Brown

7th/8th Grade Social Studies Teacher

In 2017, Piedmont College Library was fortunate to receive a grant from the Digital Library of Georgia. This grant provided us with training and advice about metadata creation, digital formats, and how to handle the complexities of our online repository platform, CONTENTdm. We were able to move forward with the creation of other unique online collections of Piedmont College’s historical materials, including Piedmont College-related books, yearbooks, and student newspapers. Moreover, we were able to create two collections of even wider significance: our Johnny Mize and Lillian Smith collections.

Johnny Mize was a very famous professional baseball player whose home was Demorest, Georgia. Mize was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1981 and is still remembered as a highly-skilled batter who set records that stand to this day. Mize’s family donated to Piedmont College a treasure trove of memorabilia. While Mize’s publicity photos are widely known, we were able to publish many photographs and fan letters that were unique to the family’s collections.

Lillian Smith lived most of her life in Clayton, Georgia. She was a powerful voice for civil rights for African Americans from the 1940s through the 1960s, with such outspoken works as her novel, Strange Fruit, and her memoir, Killers of the Dream. During the 1930s and 1940s, Lillian Smith and her partner, Paula Snelling, published a magazine known variously as Pseudopodia, North Georgia Review, and South Today. Their influential magazine of liberal Southern opinion has heretofore been available in print at only a small number of libraries. But now, it is available online for all who are interested in the work of a tireless advocate for social justice in the United States.

Without the support of DLG, we probably wouldn’t have accomplished much, if any, of this. In the process, one of the goals we established was to become an ongoing partner of the DLG. To achieve this, we adopted DLG’s metadata standards and opened our CONTENTdm repository to DLG for harvesting. This work has led to what has made our association with the Digital Library of Georgia really worthwhile.

Piedmont College’s archival metadata is shared with DLG and, through DLG, with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). So, our online archives are now an easily accessible part of the historical record of Georgia and our nation. And all because of the work of the Digital Library of Georgia. What a cause for celebration!

–Bob Glass, Dean of Libraries & College Librarian, Piedmont College

Author: Mandy Mastrovita

A Teacher’s Appreciation of DLG Educator Resources

A Successful Partnership with Piedmont College Library