Month: November 2019

54th Georgia Archives Institute: June 7-18, 2020 at the Georgia Archives

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Designed for beginning archivists, manuscript curators, and librarians or those whose positions have expanded to include the management and care of their organization’s archives or manuscript/history collection, the Georgia Archives Institute provides general instruction in core concepts and practices of archival administration and the management of traditional and modern documentary materials.  Recipient of the 2016 Society of American Archivists’ Distinguished Service Award, the Institute is a two-week program held at the Georgia Archives in Morrow, Georgia, near metro Atlanta, which includes six days of classroom instruction and a three-day internship. 

Instructional topics include appraisal, accessioning, arrangement and description, reference and outreach, security, copyright, born-digital records; as well as a whole day on the preservation and care of archival materials.  To link archival theory with real-world application, students will also participate in individualized, three-day internships at local archival repositories.  The internship provides an opportunity for students to observe the operations of an archival facility combined with hands-on experience processing archival collections.

Pam Hackbart-Dean is the Head of Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has worked at Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections & Archives at Georgia State University and for the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Study at the University of Georgia. She has conducted a number of workshops on arrangement and description, as well as published articles and books on the subject. The Preservation of Archival Materials day-long session will be taught by Tina Seetoo, Preservation Manager at Delta Flight Museum.  

Tuition is $500 and enrollment is limited to 20 students.  Deadline is midnight on March 15, 2020 for receipt of application and $75 application fee (which is refunded if not admitted to the Institute).  Tuition scholarships are available from the Society of Georgia Archivists (SGA) (http://www.soga.org/scholarships/hart) and the Friends of Georgia Archives and History (http://fogah.org/programs/dunaway-scholarship/).  Successful applicants, who are not members of the Society of Georgia Archivists, will receive a free membership for one year.


For an application to the Institute, detailed schedule and additional information, please visit our website at www.georgiaarchivesinstitute.org or contact us at georgiaarchivesinstitute@gmail.com.
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Columbus State University Archives Open House

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You’re invited to an open house at the newly renovated Columbus State University Archives!

When: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Doors open at 5:00 p.m. and welcoming remarks begin at 6:00 p.m.

Where: Simon Schwob Memorial Library, ground floor (4225 University Ave., Columbus, GA 31907)

One key element of the Schwob Library renovation project involves the CSU Archives. The Archives will move to the ground floor of the library allowing for a number of transformative changes. A new reading room will help archival staff better meet the needs of researchers, including students, local community members, and visiting scholars. A new multipurpose room will expand archival operations in areas of classroom instruction and outreach, accommodating large class groups needing assistance in conducting archival research and hosting programs for the community such as workshops on preserving family history. Most important, however, is the new collections storage vault. New environmental controls will ensure the preservation of the Archives’ priceless collections that include material dating back to the 1590s.

The Columbus State University Archives, established in 1975, serves as a repository for historical and cultural materials documenting Columbus State University, the city of Columbus, and the surrounding Chattahoochee Valley area. Today the Archives contains over 5,000 cubic feet of material in nearly 500 distinct collections. These collections serve a wide range of visitors including university students, faculty, and staff as well as local community members. Scholars from around the world also conduct research in the CSU Archives with recent international researchers from Japan, Singapore, France, Belgium, and Germany. Some of the topics researchers are interested in include the textile mill industry, Creek Indian removal, local author Carson McCullers, the Civil War, the Chattahoochee River, Fort Benning, and local family history and genealogy. 

Congratulations to New SGA Fellow Sheila McAlister

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The Society of Georgia Archivists Fellows Award recognizes outstanding contributions to archives and archivists in Georgia. To read more about the SGA Fellows Award go here. 
Sheila McAlister serves as the Director of the Digital Library of Georgia. She has been an active member of SGA for 21 years. In the words of her nominator, Sheila’s “impact on the Georgia archival community is exhibited in her efforts to build archival capacity among smaller, less resourced institutions in the state. She regularly consults with institutions at no cost to them to help develop and maintain their physical and digital collections.Throughout her career, Ms. McAlister has remained committed to helping develop sustainable archival efforts by working to provide access to services, resources, and training to Georgia cultural heritage organizations. Her dedication to fostering sustainable archival activities in under-resourced institutions and her positive representation of the association on the national scale, are excellent examples of work worthy of a fellowship.” 
Again, congratulations to Sheila for her hard work and dedication to the archival community.

SGA’s President’s Award Presented to Dr. Catherine Oglesby

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President’s Award, Dr. Catherine Oglesby
Nominated and text written by Colleague Deborah S. Davis, Director, Professor, Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections


On behalf of the Society of Georgia Archivists Board, it is my great honor to recognize Dr. Catherine Oglesby, recipient of the 2019 President’s Award as we celebrate fifty years of combining social connection with our social responsibility to preserve the past and the present for the future.

The SGA President’s Award recognizes individuals or organizations from outside the archival profession who make significant contributions to it. These supporters — be they legislators or administrators or researchers or others — are absolutely vital to the archives field and individual archivists. Advocates from other communities, with different perspectives, illuminate our relevance to the wider world and encourage us to question our status quo. 

 Dr. Oglesby is a recently retired professor of history at Valdosta State University. Through her teaching there she created a lot of synergy between history and the Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections. In the early 2000’s Oglesby came up with an idea to do extra credit assignments for her entry level history students. The Volunteer Extra Credit program continued unceasingly since 2004 with other history professors participating as well. Over the years processing 200 boxes of presidential papers, created extensive databases for indexes of our local paper, our college newspaper, and 42 years of news scrapbooks. Over 600 students have participated in the volunteer program. 
Dr. Oglesby has also been instrumental in bringing valuable collections to the archives. She worked to acquire and process the extensive Leona Strickland Hudson collection, She researched the collection and wrote the biography and an extensive timeline of the family from 1870 to 2008. In order to process the collection, Catherine approached the executor of the estate and we received a $25,000 grant to pay for the work. She also donated other important collections for the archives: the Catherine Oglesby Civil Rights Collection– and the Southern Patriot Newspaper: Valdosta State has been actively collecting in African American history and Civil Rights history and Catherine’s gifts got them started. 
It’s rare that a friend of the archives comes along who has shaped teaching and collecting as much as Dr. Oglesby. We are very much richer for her passion for working with archives. According to the description of the award, you are looking for people who are “absolutely vital to the archives field and individual archivists.” Dr. Catherine Oglesby has been a stellar example of that for the Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections.