impact story – Page 9

For well over a decade, the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center has enjoyed a strategically valuable partnership with the Digital Library of Georgia that has expanded the reach of our collections in immeasurable ways. Through its technical expertise and partnerships with other data aggregators, the Digital Library of Georgia has enabled the Kenan Research Center to provide online access to tens of thousands of digitized pages from archival collections.

Our 2012 partnership with DLG, the University of Georgia and the Georgia Historical Society created over 80,000 digitized pages of records documenting the Civil War in Georgia. Many of the more than 30,000 digitized resources created from the Kenan Research Center’s collections were used extensively in a 2014 documentary aired on Georgia Public Television. 37 Weeks: Sherman on the March won three Emmy’s at the 2015 Southeastern Emmy Awards.

As a partner and content hub for the Digital Public Library of America, in 2013 the Digital Library of Georgia encouraged submissions from archival institutions throughout the state for participation in a project to digitize unpublished historic materials significant to Georgia. This project enabled the Atlanta History Center to provide online access to the papers of Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell. A similar project in 2017 provided funds to digitize 150 programs from WABE’s Southwind series recorded in the 1980s. Most of these digital assets are linked to archival finding aids and hosted at the Digital Library of Georgia.

The Atlanta History Center has further benefited through its partnership with DLG to facilitate online access to nearly 2,000 archival finding aids. Digital Library of Georgia staff set up an instance of Archivist’s Toolkit, the open source archival data management system, at the Atlanta History Center in 2007. DLG staff also configured an online platform specifically developed for the display of our finding aids. The cost effectiveness of this partnership, coupled with the expertise of their staff in providing the setup and continual support of this resource has proven invaluable in ensuring the discoverability of our online resources, thus attracting new researchers to the Kenan Research Center.

The Digital Library of Georgia is an incredible support resource for libraries and archival institutions in the state of Georgia and beyond. The staff at the Kenan Research Center looks forward to new partnerships with the Digital Library of Georgia through grants and other projects.

–Paul Crater, Vice President of Collections and Research Services, Atlanta History Center

A goldmine has been excavated here in Athens—not the orange metal that decorates the lairs of the incredibly rich and presidential, trust me, but the rich loam of irreplaceable local history. Thanks to the efforts of UGA’s Digital Library of Georgia project and the hard work of the Athens-Clarke County Library staff, 25 years of Flagpole’s lost archives have been recovered and made available to everybody for free.

Cover of the inaugural issue of Flagpole, “Colorbearer of Athens Alternative Music,” October 1, 1987.

We all tend to believe, in spite of our own crashes and losses, that digital is forever, that the digits will remain long after the printed paper has crumbled. Ha. Dream on. In the late ‘90s, while backing up our main computer, our resident technical expert (to remain nameless here) lost the first decade of Flagpole issues. Wiped out. Gone. The UGA library had microfilm, and we had paper copies, but there was no database online and no searchable files anywhere, except thumbing through back issues, looking for something.

Then, around 10 years later, it happened again. Our homemade website turned out to have inadequate protection and got hacked (the Russians?). We had to take it down, and along with it went the archives we had built up since the last catastrophe. Flagpole was lobotomized.

Since that time we have hired various programmers and companies who promised to reestablish our archives, but nobody has been able to deliver—nobody, that is, until the Digital Library of Georgia, hand-in-hand with the Athens-Clarke County Library, swooped in like Superman and Wonder Woman to restore Flagpole’s memory banks.

The library’s Heritage Room staff, with their stalwart interns using a high-speed copier, went through each issue of Flagpole page-by-page and shot digital images from their microfilm. When that laborious part of the project was finally completed, the Digital Library of Georgia over at the UGA libraries, created the searchable database and put it online.

Meanwhile, our own online archives have been rebuilt back through 2013 and are searchable issue by issue on our website, sort of.

You can search the whole Digital Library Flagpole site from 1987 through 2012. Type in R.E.M. and immediately get 181 articles … What fun! You can watch as Flagpole progresses through the years from a harum-scarum, slapped-together weekly music rag into a finely-tuned, professionally produced, seriously written harum-scarum weekly music rag.

This database is of inestimable value to people wanting to write about Athens, to explore local history, or to relive their youth. It’s all here, a rabbit hole just waiting for you to go down it. Research your favorite band. See what bad stuff we wrote about local politicians. Delve into the history, the music, the people who have made the news during the 25 years from 1987 to 2012 and more recently in our own archives. Flagpole has been at the center of our community life for the last 30 years, and now, thanks to the Digital Library of Georgia, we can all remember where we’ve been.

—Pete McCommons, editor, Flagpole magazine, January 17, 2018, http://flagpole.com/news/pub-notes/2018/01/17/the-digital-library-of-georgia-uploads-flagpole-s-archives. Reprinted with permission.

Tag: impact story

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