Special Collections News

Celebrate the Olympic glory of University of Georgia Athletics this fall by visiting a new exhibit on display at the UGA Special Collections Libraries.

The exhibit Bulldog Olympians takes viewers through decades of the international competition, which has hosted more than 200 UGA athletes competing for Team USA or their home countries. The display includes original Olympic artifacts and rarely seen photographs of Georgia's Olympians, including a look behind the scenes from retired swimming and diving coach Jack Bauerle, who served as an Olympic coach for the 2020 Tokyo Games.

A trailblazing newspaper founder, an influential teacher and poet, and an inspirational author/priest have been selected as the newest members of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

The 2024 class of honorees include Robert Sengstacke Abbott, publisher and editor of one of the most influential Black-owned newspapers of the early 20^th century; Wyatt Prunty, founding director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Tennessee Williams Fellowship Program; and Barbara Brown Taylor, an author and Episcopal priest.

Prunty and Taylor will inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, administered by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, at separate events this fall. The celebration of Abbott’s posthumous induction is slated for early 2025.

The community is invited to submit their home movies for free digitization, offered by the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards, one three special collections units at the University of Georgia Libraries.

Online registration is now open for the second edition of “Free the Tapes,” where audiovisual techs from the archives will digitize up to three old videos in any format — from Super 8 and Betamax to VHS and more — at no cost. 

Participants can drop off their materials at one of four dropoff days:

A Q&A scrawled in marker onto a white record sleeve as well as on the vinyl, a hand-painted message on the back of a shovel, a battered straw hat with fraying pink trim, and photographs of pets. These items and dozens more add to the character of the Athens’ music community on display this fall at the UGA Special Collections Libraries along with colorful portraits of the artists taken at their homes.

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.

Due to an ongoing construction project, there will be limited access to the exhibition galleries on the second floor of the UGA Special Collections Building between Monday, July 29 and Friday, August 3, 2024. Please keep this in mind if you are planning a visit to the building during this time. 

Books about past and present racial injustices in the Southern cities of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Charleston, South Carolina are the winners of the 2024 Lillian Smith Book Awards, a University of Georgia Libraries-based award recognizing the best writing on social justice topics in the United States.

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.

"UGA Athletics in Your Town," a traveling exhibit of materials from the University of Georgia Athletic Association archives, will be coming to cities and counties around the state of Georgia this summer. The exhibit will begin on May 20 in Cedartown and continue through Aug. 2 along the way visiting Whitfield County (Dalton), Columbia County (Evans), Johns Creek, Pickens County (Jasper), Rabun County (Clayton), Screven County (Sylvania) and Glynn County (Brunswick).

Jason Hasty, Athletics History Specialist for the UGA Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, will bring a collection of historic Georgia Bulldogs athletics artifacts to the Cedartown Library as part of a statewide summer tour of public libraries across Georgia.