Charles Beard Lecture @ University of West Georgia February 9, 2010

Dr. Toby Graham, director of the Digital Library of Georgia, will present The Civil Rights Digital Library: Documenting America’s Struggle for Racial Equality on Tuesday, February 9, at 11:00 a.m., at Ingram Library, University of West Georgia, Carrollton. Dr. Graham’s presentation is the 2010 Charles Beard Lecture. The event is free and open to the public, and will mark the last Beard Lecture to be held in Ingram Library prior to a major renovation scheduled to begin March 1, 2010.

This event is being sponsored by Ingram Library and Ingram Library’s Penelope Melson Society. For further information, contact Catherine Hendricks at chendric@westga.edu or (678) 839-5337.

The Charles Beard Lecture series, created in 2007, honors the late Charles E. Beard, who served as Director of University Libraries at the University of West Georgia from 1978 to 2004. Over the course of his twenty-six year tenure at West Georgia, Beard led Ingram Library through a period of rapid technological change. His influence extended beyond West Georgia, as well, as he was instrumental in creating and extending access to GALILEO to all libraries and educational institutions in Georgia. GALILEO, a web-based initiative that was one of the first of its kind, now includes the Civil Rights Digital Library.

The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) built by the Digital Library of Georgia and its partners, is an online archive of historical news film from the Civil Rights era and a virtual library portal of national scope. It is the most ambitious and comprehensive initiative to date to deliver educational content on the Civil Rights Movement via the Web. The CRDL features thirty hours of news film, along with related archival holdings and instructional materials from 100 institutions across the U.S., including oral histories, letters, diaries, FBI files, and photographs. http://crdl.usg.edu/

The CRDL, a GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online (GALILEO) initiative based at the University of Georgia Libraries, was funded in part by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. This innovative effort to make documentation on the Civil Rights Movement widely available was the subject of a nationally televised documentary produced by Ambassador Andrew Young that aired in January 2009.