Author: Mandy Mastrovita

Friday, April 4, 2014

Contact: Sheila McAlister, 706-542-5418, mcalists@uga.edu

Gates Foundation provides funding for training public librarians

Athens, Ga. – The Digital Library of Georgia, based at the University of Georgia Libraries, is receiving $100,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Digital Public Library of America to provide digital skills training for public librarians to aid in exhibiting cultural heritage content.
This training is designed to reach public librarians in libraries with special collections that want to share their content with a broader audience but may not have the resources to do so.

UGA’s library is a regional “service hub” for the Digital Public Library of America. The funding will further support the project Georgia HomePLACE (Providing Library and Archives Collections Electronically). Since 2003, the project has encouraged Georgia public libraries and related institutions to participate in the digital library. It offers a collaborative model for digitizing primary source collections related to local history and genealogy.

“The Gates funds will allow the Digital Library of Georgia to initiate new digitization projects with the public libraries and update the Georgia HomePLACE survey to bring a better understanding of the digitization needs of the state’s public libraries,” said Sheila McAlister, director of the Digital Library of Georgia. “The funding will also provide the public libraries with ways to connect their community history to the larger national narrative through easy-to-create online exhibits and expose the rich local history collections of the public libraries on a national scale via inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America.”

Beginning in May, the Digital Library of Georgia will provide three day-long training sessions to public librarians designed to introduce the basics of digital projects. After the workshops, library staff will work with the attendees to identify suitable content for digitization, digitize the historical content, create metadata, host the files and create three online exhibits.

The project provides the foundation for a long-term relationship between local public libraries, state and regional hubs, and the Digital Public Library of America. The partnerships will allow public library content to be aggregated and made available at state, regional and national levels.

Additionally, the project will produce curricular resources for digital skills training for cultural heritage professionals. Through an iterative process of writing, implementation, revision and further implementation, the Digital Public Library of America and the hubs will have the opportunity to test and document best practices and share their findings publicly.

The Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative based at the University of Georgia Libraries 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.

NPR’s Fresh Air recently aired a book review of The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos.  An excerpt is available here.

The Heathen School was the familiar name of Cornwall, Connecticut’s Foreign Mission School, a nine-year venture that existed between 1817 and 1826, whose purpose was to educate and train non-white Christian missionaries. The book focuses upon the evangelical movement of the 19th century, and American attitudes on interracial relationships as demonstrated in the unfavorable, racially prejudiced reaction of Cornwall townspeople to two marriages: those of Harriet Gold and Elias Boudinot, and Sarah Northrup and John Ridge. Gold and Northrup were local white women; Boudinot and Ridge were Cherokee cousins from Georgia who were students at the Foreign Mission School. Both couples eventually moved to Cherokee Nation lands in the state of Georgia.

Elias Boudinot and John Ridge are represented in numerous materials in Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842, and Boudinot’s work as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, can be seen in the Georgia Historic Newspapers collection.

Both Boudinot and Ridge were supporters of the 1835 New Echota Treaty, which required the Cherokee Nation to exchange its national lands east of the Mississippi River and relocate to a territory in present-day Oklahoma.  Their position was extremely unpopular with much of the Cherokee Nation. After having relocated to the new Indian Territory, Ridge and Boudinot were assassinated by a group of men who had opposed removal.

A copy of  the New Echota Treaty is available in the collection Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842, and a letter from John Ridge to Georgia governor Wilson Lumpkin dated September 22, 1833 notifies the governor of murders committed against pro-removal Cherokees by anti-removal Cherokees.