Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection

A documentary presented by the University of Georgia Libraries has earned a regional Emmy Award. 

INSIDE The Warren Commission, a project that has aired on public broadcasting across the United States throughout the past year as part of the 60^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was selected as a Southeast Emmy Award recipient. 

The documentary delves into the inner workings of the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon Congressional body charged to investigate Kennedy’s assassination.

This June, the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries will host two free film screenings about past struggles with equality that echo headlines of today.

A Tuesday, June 4 screening of Love Free or Die will mark 21 years since Gene Robinson’s consecration as the first openly gay person to become a bishop in a Christian church. Held at 5:15 p.m. at Cine, the screening is sponsored by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

The screening will feature a discussion with director Macky Alston and Robinson, who wore a bullet-proof vest to the consecration ceremony of the Episcopal Church Diocese of New Hampshire and faced death threats during his tenure. The events caused a split in the Episcopal Church similar to the fracturing of the United Methodist Church occurring today.

Nine­ University of Georgia faculty members are preparing new classes this May as 2024 Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows, a program designed to help instructors incorporate UGA Libraries’ archival materials and active learning strategies into courses.

Have an old VHS that captured the childhood moments of basketball games and camping trips but no way to actually view the memories? Thanks to the University of Georgia Libraries, community members are invited to “Free the Tapes” with free digitization services to bring the images back to their screens.

The event is sponsored by the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Archive, one of three special collections units at UGA Libraries and one of the largest publicly available audiovisual archives in the country. 

“We believe that home movies are meant to be treasured, but with advances in technology, too many families are left with old tapes and no way to play and preserve them for the next generation to see,” said Ruta Abolins, director of the Brown Media Archives at UGA. “For Free the Tapes: Home Movie Edition, let us cover the expense of digitization, so you can enjoy rewatching your childhood memories.”

In the 21^st century, libraries don’t just store information on shelves — they also use servers. UGA Libraries recently reached a major milestone in its digital preservation of unique materials, eclipsing 1 petabyte of storage in its ARCHive.

Three UGA professors have been named the inaugural recipients of UGA Libraries’ Fairchild-Holcomb Awards for Innovation in the Humanities. The seed grants, totaling $8,600, will kick-start projects aimed at creating educational materials and a podcast or documentary drawing upon archival materials from UGA’s Special Collections Libraries.

The University of Georgia Libraries are pleased to announce the naming of three new leaders who join University Librarian and Associate Provost Toby Graham in providing direction-setting and oversight for the libraries.

Newest to UGA is Sara Wright who started her role as Associate University Librarian for Learning Services and Academic Engagement in January. Wright formerly served as director of Cornell University’s Mann & Science Cluster Libraries, and her career at Cornell included stints as Academic Technology Librarian; Head of User Services and Engagement; and Head of Learning, Spaces, and Technology.

The University of Georgia Libraries and the Center for Teaching and Learning invite full-time UGA faculty from all disciplines to apply to participate in the 2024 Special Collections Libraries Faculty Teaching Fellows program. The deadline to apply is 5 p.m., January 16, 2024.

Now in its tenth year, the program brings together a select group of UGA faculty to explore archives-based learning as a high-impact active learning practice through intensive workshops with specialists from the University’s three special collections units and representatives from the Center for Teaching and Learning. Seventy-five faculty from across campus have completed the program.

Imagine unearthing something strange from a cold basement. In October, that short description might conjure up a spooky image, although archival work at the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries is more enlightening than eerie.

This Halloween season, an event combines the archives with the melodrama during a special screening of a B-horror classic film, along with archival images from the genre preserved within UGA’s Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, the nation’s third largest publicly accessible media library.

Celebrate Georgia writers this fall with a reading from the author of Erasure or with a special Italian dinner with the author of Under the Tuscan Sun.

The University of Georgia Libraries will host the two newest members of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame with special events open to the community later this year. Novelist and cookbook author Frances Mayes will be a featured guest for a plated dinner Saturday, Oct. 28, and poet Percival Everett will read his award-winning work on Thursday, Nov. 2, both at the UGA Special Collections Libraries Building in Athens.