Enhanced description of Georgia town films and home movies digitized by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection now available

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is pleased to announce the availability of Georgia town films and home movies digitized by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection (BMA). The Georgia Town Films Collection is available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_bmatf and the Georgia Home and Amateur Movies collection is available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_bmahm.

DLG staff provided enhanced description of these moving image resources that enables users to locate segments of the moving image footage without having to view the footage in its entirety.

The BMA digitized 126 home movies and 5 town films from Georgia, but did not have the cataloging staff available to create fuller, richer representations of this content unique to Georgia and Georgians. Providing the broadest access for this content demanded more robust description. DLG staff provided shot lists, and, through the use of the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), have provided users with word-level search capability and a time-correlated description that connects the text search term to the corresponding moment in the moving image footage. DLG staff also assigned Library of Congress subject headings to each of the films so that librarians and researchers can locate relevant information without having to refer to various versions of names or keywords.

Items in the Georgia Town Films Collection include films covering the towns of Fitzgerald, Bowman, and Athens. Items in the Georgia Home and Amateur Movies digital collection include a film from the Pebble Hill Plantation film collection that contains footage of African Americans playing baseball in Thomasville, Georgia in their plantation uniforms; a film from the Kaliska-Greenblatt home movie collection that includes a parade honoring Bobby Jones in 1930 on Peachtree Street in Atlanta; a film from the Joseph and Marion Rossiter home movie collection that shows a 1950 St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah; and a film from the Newman Family home movie collection that shows congressman John F. Kennedy at the airport in LaGrange campaigning to become President of the United States.

Ruta Abolins, director of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection notes: “Georgia home movies and town films document everyday rituals, ceremonies, and behavior, and demonstrate how people really lived.  Home movies and town films have been used by history, art, drama, and storytelling classes at the University of Georgia, and they have been viewed and used by documentary filmmakers and writers. Describing these films marking local history can be challenging but making them more widely available via the Digital Library of Georgia  and DPLA will make them even more accessible to the people of Georgia and beyond who will have access to the regular everyday life of people who made their own movies.”


About the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

The Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection was started in 1995 and currently preserves over 300,000 titles in film, video, audiotape, transcription disks, and other recording formats dating from the 1920s to the present. Our mission is to preserve, protect, and provide access to the moving image and sound materials that reflect the collective memory of broadcasting and the history of the state of Georgia and its people.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia https://dlg.usg.edu is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished through the ongoing development, maintenance, and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources.  DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.

 

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Digital Library of Georgia launches new web site

The newly redesigned web site of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) is now available at https://dlg.usg.edu. The site connects users to a half a million digital objects in more than 700 collections from over 130 institutions and 100 government agencies. The new site is designed to provide quick and direct access to these resources for all audiences and was developed by incorporating input from end users, librarians, and other stakeholders. The redesign incorporates a new logo design for the DLG and improved navigational tools.

Online visitors to the site will now be able to:

  • Conduct full-text searching of DLG-hosted collections along with item-level metadata searches.
  • Perform textual and visual browsing of DLG databases and other web-based collections and sites. Items can be searched by subject, time period (timeline), geographic location (map browsing), genre, and repository.
  • Expect seamless, responsive access to an accessible virtual library on Georgia history and culture that combines DLG databases with resources freely available through other repositories, organizations, and vendors.
  • Carry out self-sufficient information seeking that meets the needs of Georgians across a broad range of ages and educational backgrounds and for a variety of uses, including structured learning in schools and higher education, lifelong learning, scholarship, and personal interest.
  • Find information for librarians and archivists on digital library standards and best practices and services that DLG provides.
  • Locate materials that promote new resources and partners.

“We’re excited about this fresh new design, and think that it will improve the search experience for Georgians and other researchers seeking out the unique and valuable resources within the Digital Library of Georgia,” says Lucy Harrison, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Library Services and Executive Director of GALILEO:

Julie Walker, State Librarian of Georgia notes: “Georgia’s public libraries are excited to support the DLG’s new interface, and will enjoy how simple it is to discover freely available and reusable historical images. Students of all ages will be able to integrate these primary sources into their websites, research, and homework assignments.”

Public libraries around the state are being provided with printed materials, including rack cards and stickers, as well as a freely downloadable digital press kit to encourage use of the new site.

The online press kit, available at

https://sites.google.com/view/dlg-docs/dlg-documentation/promotional-materials/dlg-press-kit,

will include:

  • A press release
  • A library reference staff training slide deck and webinar
  • A one-page handout of new features available on the DLG’s new web site
  • A DLG “Quick Facts” document with information about the DLG, its public library partners, communication channels, and our historic newspaper milestones
  • A badge graphic to share within posts on social media
  • A link to DLG educator resources
  • The new Digital Library of Georgia logo

We hope you come and visit our new site!

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