subgrants – Page 15

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

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of the Bartow History Museum vertical file record collection at dlg.usg.edu/collection/barhm_bhmvf. The collection, which belongs to the Bartow History Museum, is available online thanks in part to the DLG’s Competitive Digitization grant program, a funding opportunity intended to broaden DLG partner participation for statewide historic digitization projects.

The digital collection consists of a portion of a compilation of county documents that include topics such as guardianship (1850‐1929), indentures (1860‐1929), lunacy (1866‐1929), pauperism (1866‐1879), land grants/deeds (1866‐1929), and other records. The records were created by court officials to document legal proceedings and transactions.

Trey Gaines, the director of the Bartow History Museum, says: “The digitization of these items provides documentation of under‐represented subjects, particularly citizens of lower economic standing, from the Civil War through the Great Depression. The movement and financial status of families and individuals that lived and moved in and out of Bartow County are demonstrated through the collection’s land, indenture, and guardianship papers. Family dynamics and cultural or social values can be studied through the lunacy and guardianship records that contain information on how people were diagnosed and labeled, as well as how children were legally handled in cases of custody or guardianship. Some of the indenture records show the plight of children after the Civil War, and some further contain information that speaks to matters of race relations.”

Genealogist Yvonne Mashburn Schmidt notes “This area’s rural, agricultural and yeoman families generally were unconcerned with creating records themselves…This record collection held by the Archives contains uncommon records such as mercantile and miscellaneous receipts, voter lists, smallpox lists, pauper lists, indentures, and estray records. These county records generally are not available to researchers. Ancestral names in these records might be found when no other record for the ancestor exists…Historical migration routes and early land grants make Georgia’s records especially important. Ancestors from northern and mid-Atlantic states often settled in or passed through Georgia. Some of these and their descendants who settled or stayed for a time participated in Georgia land lotteries. Cass (now Bartow County) was one of the original counties created after Cherokee County’s division, and this county’s land was part of the 1832 Georgia land lottery. Many of this collection’s loose records were created between 1850-1880 and include land grants and deeds that may not exist in any other local or state repository. These grants and deeds are original records.”

About the Bartow History Museum (Cartersville, Ga.)

The Bartow History Museum, located at 4 East Church Street in downtown Cartersville, Georgia, documents the history of northwest Georgia’s Bartow County. Visit bartowhistorymuseum.org/.

Tag: subgrants

A Successful Partnership with Piedmont College Library

Bartow History Museum vertical file records from 1850 to 1929 now freely available online