{"id":6932,"date":"2018-04-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/?p=6932"},"modified":"2024-11-20T13:50:16","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T18:50:16","slug":"unique-partnership-captures-athens-music-and-art-scene-from-the-1980s-onwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/?p=6932","title":{"rendered":"Unique Partnership Captures Athens’ Music and Art Scene from the 1980s Onwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

A goldmine has been excavated here in Athens\u2014not 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\u2019s Digital Library of Georgia project and the hard work of the Athens-Clarke County Library staff, 25 years of\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u2019s lost archives have been recovered and\u00a0made available to everybody for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>
Cover of the inaugural issue of Flagpole, “Colorbearer of Athens Alternative Music,” October 1, 1987.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 \u201890s, while backing up our main computer, our resident technical expert (to remain nameless here) lost the first decade of\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0issues. 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0was lobotomized.<\/p>\n

Since that time we have hired various programmers and companies who promised to reestablish our archives, but nobody has been able to deliver\u2014nobody, 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\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u2019s memory banks.<\/p>\n

The library\u2019s Heritage Room staff, with their stalwart interns using a high-speed copier, went through each issue of\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0page-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.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, our own online archives have been rebuilt back through 2013 and are searchable issue by issue on our website, sort of.<\/p>\n

You can search the whole Digital Library\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0site from 1987 through 2012. Type in R.E.M. and immediately get 181 articles … What fun! You can watch as\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0progresses 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.<\/p>\n

This database is of inestimable value to people wanting to write about Athens, to explore local history, or to relive their youth. It\u2019s 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.\u00a0Flagpole<\/em>\u00a0has 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\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n

—Pete McCommons, editor, Flagpole magazine, January 17, 2018,\u00a0http:\/\/flagpole.com\/news\/pub-notes\/2018\/01\/17\/the-digital-library-of-georgia-uploads-flagpole-s-archives. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A goldmine has been excavated here in Athens\u2014not 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\u2019s Digital Library of Georgia project and the hard work of the Athens-Clarke County Library staff, 25 years of\u00a0Flagpole\u2019s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Unique Partnership Captures Athens’ Music and Art Scene from the 1980s Onwards”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[428],"tags":[46,286,504,16],"class_list":["post-6932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-impact-stories","tag-athens-ga","tag-georgia-homeplace","tag-impact-story","tag-newspapers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6932"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9034,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions\/9034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}