Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

It’s one thing to read and study medieval stories, but it’s another for students to touch, translate and research 600-year-old manuscripts. Thanks to an innovative series of classes called The Hargrett Hours Project hosted at the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries, students had that opportunity, and now their work is on display in the building’s galleries.

An exhibit, “The Hargrett Hours: Exploring Medieval Manuscripts,” presents the insights students gained while investigating medieval manuscripts in the collections of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The display includes original items from the collections, dating back centuries, as well as the findings from the students’ in-depth study of a Book of Hours.

The Pandora, the University of Georgia’s yearbook, has been published nearly every year since 1886, serving as a rich source of institutional and social history that has traced the growth and development of the country’s first state-chartered university. Through a partnership between the Hargrett Library, University Archives, and the Digital Library of Georgia, yearbooks that document campus life, students and faculty, clubs, and other events from 1965 to 1974 have been digitized, allowing free online access to Pandoras that document the years following desegregation and the first social movements for black students, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and campus free speech as they manifested themselves on the UGA campus. These editions are now available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/dlg_pandora.

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of the University of Georgia, the Main Library at UGA is hosting an exhibit that chronicles the historic events of 1961, when Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter (now Hunter-Gault) became the first African American students admitted to the university.

Honored guests, including the Holmes family and members of the UGA Black Alumni Council, were among the first to tour the exhibit, entitled Georgia Trailblazers: Honoring the 60th Anniversary of Desegregation at UGA, on the day it opened, Jan. 9, 2021, the 60^th anniversary of Holmes’ and Hunter’s enrollment.

Students and faculty in the University of Georgia community can continue to take advantage of library services after the Thanksgiving transition to online classes, whether in Athens or at home in another state.

In addition to online resources and virtual consultations with librarians and archivists, library facilities, including the Miller Learning Center, will remain available to students, faculty, staff, and the community through the remainder of the year and into the spring semester.

Terry Kay has had a lot of ideas in his life, and most of those developed into page-turning novels. But in the summer of 1999, one of his ideas wasn’t about creating books — it was about honoring the authors that came before him.

“I thought Georgia needed to be doing more to honor its writers, to honor its rich literary heritage,” said Kay, whose seventh novel was published that year. “Around the same time, I began to be aware that Georgia literature wasn’t being taught in the schools anymore and I thought that establishing an award that focused not just a particular work by a writer but their whole lifetime of work was a good way to honor the remarkable writers who hail from Georgia or who have made Georgia their home and might encourage teachers of English to see what incredible writers we have right here in Georgia.”

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 2021 Special Collections Libraries Faculty Teaching Fellows program.

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

Three UGA Libraries virtual events featuring film makers and writers have been named to the University of Georgia Signature Lectures series this fall.

The events include celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Brown Media Archive and Peabody Awards Collection and the 20th anniversary of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. The third event, sponsored by the Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, introduces the new annual Food, Politics, and Power Lecture series.

In a virtual ceremony, the University of Georgia Libraries, Southern Regional Council, and other partners will honor the top new books exploring social justice on Sept. 6, as part of the AJC Decatur Book Festival, which is set to be held virtually over Labor Day weekend.

On the 100^th anniversary of the certification of the 19^th Amendment granting women in the United States the right to vote, the University of Georgia Libraries will celebrate with a virtual tour of historical artifacts from the women’s suffrage movement.

Yearbooks that chronicle a critical period in the University of Georgia’s history will be available online, thanks to a partnership between UGA Libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia.

A grant project will digitize Pandora yearbooks from 1965 to 1974, a period that includes the transition after UGA’s integration and chronicles increasing diversity at the birthplace of public higher education in America, including movements to increase representation among women and support the LGBTQ+ community.