Gould Memorial Library in the Spotlight!

In 2009, the College of Coastal Georgia became the state’s newest four-year facility. Under the dynamic leadership of President Dr. Valerie Hepburn, the campus seemed to blossom overnight, with new buildings such as a dorm, a nursing center, an education center, and a campus center complete with a cafeteria and state of the art movie theater.

Nowhere was the change more dramatic than in the Gould Library. Although it had always been well used and highly regarded, the new Dean, Debbie Holmes, concentrated on making the library more visible not only on campus but also within the coastal community.  Library staff began working with the Multicultural Committee, the International Association and the Gay Straight Alliance to bring in speakers such as the Latina poet Judith Cofer; Emory Professor Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Want to Holler, Gay Rights speakers  Zachary Wahls and Erin Davies; environmentalist writer Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood; American Indian Chris Eyre, director of the film Smoke Signals; and Bruce Broder, director of the jazz documentary, Chops.
The library also co-sponsored several foreign film series that included movies such as Pans Labyrinth, Let the Right One In, Caramel, Joyeux Noel, Kinky Boots, Saving Grace, City of God, and Beyond Silence. These programs were open to both students and the community and attendance was excellent.
The library partnered with the PTK Honor Society to bring attention to Banned Books Week. Students were encouraged to read The Kite Runner, a book that has been greatly challenged, and there were discussions held around campus as well as film showings. The week culminated in a Censored Book Read-a-Thon, a day long program where faculty, staff and students selected and continuously read passages from books that had been censored at some point in time.

The library also participated in the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War through a grant project that brought in several historians. They included: John Inscoe, editor of The Civil War in Georgia: A New Georgia Encyclopedia Companion and Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds: A Family Divided by War. These lectures were open to the public and very well attended.

In November of 2012 the college library, along with the Brunswick News, the Jekyll Island Authority and the Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau, co-hosted the Georgia Literary Festival on Jekyll Island. Sponsored yearly in different Georgia locales by the Georgia Center for the Book, this event was a weekend long festival,  featuring dinners with authors, tours of Eugene O’Neill’s home and on Sea island and Eugenia Price’s South, and a one-woman show honoring the actress and author Fanny Kemble. Over 33 authors presented programs in the brand new Jekyll Island Convention Center ranging from cookbooks writers such as Hugh Acheson and Nathalie Dupree to top selling thriller writer Steve Berry, and poet Judson Mitcham. The biggest coup, however, was the keynote speaker, Natasha Trethewey. Already a Pulitzer Prize winner, just a few weeks before the festival she was named the U.S. Poet Laureate.

To learn more about the library, visit Gould Library’s website at http://www.ccga.edu/Library/

Carterette Series Webinar - RDA Has Arrived: Essentials of RDA for Public Services - June 19, 2013

RDA Has Arrived: Essentials of RDA for Public Services
Presented by Susan Wynne
Wednesday, June 19, 2013 2:00pm to 3:00pm, Eastern Time

Register

After years of buzz, the Library of Congress implemented the new cataloging standard RDA (Resource Description and Access) on March 31, 2013.  What is RDA and why should I care?  RDA is part of the ongoing transformation of library data with an objective of responsiveness to user needs.  Susan Wynne will discuss the major differences between AACR2 practices and RDA, focusing on how RDA affects user displays and navigation in local catalogs, WorldCat, and elsewhere. 

Susan Wynne has been the Cataloging & Metadata Librarian at Georgia State University since February 2012.  She previously held positions at the University of Wyoming and Columbus State University. Susan has published and/or presented on oral histories, RDA, and the effects of next-generation catalogs on cataloging functions and catalogers.

This event requires registration.

PLEASE NOTE: We have changed to a new host software, and we now have a cap of 200 attendees. If you know you cannot attend the live session but would like to receive notification when the recorded version is available, please email Sarah Steiner at ssteiner@gsu.edu

For more information visit Carterette Series Webinars webpage.

Contact a member of the Carterette Series Planning Team with questions or suggestions.
Kimberly Boyd: kboyd2@brenau.edu
Sarah Steiner: ssteiner@gsu.edu

GLA Awards - deadline for nominations is extended to May 31, 2013

Do you know someone whose contributions to Georgia libraries and/or GLA should be recognized with a GLA award? Take the time to nominate a deserving individual today. 

Each year the Georgia Library Association seeks to honor outstanding librarians, library staff members, and library advocates through the following awards:

Bob Richardson Award
Charles Beard Library Advocacy Award
Honorary Memberships
Library Support Services Award
McJenkin-Rheay Award
Nix Jones Award
Nora Symmers Paraprofessional Award
GLA Team Award

Complete a nomination form and write a letter supporting the nomination.  Feel free to provide additional documentation about the nominee’s contributions to libraries and/or GLA.

Read more about the awards and complete the nomination form at http://gla.georgialibraries.org/comm_awards_nomination.htm


Send the nomination form electronically (if possible) to jcook@westga.edu  or mail to:
Jean Cook, GLA Awards Chair, University of West Georgia, Library 1601 Maple Street, Carrollton, GA 30118.

2013 GLA Awards Nomination DEADLINE is May 31, 2013.

COMO Presentation Proposals are due on June 15!

Reminder:

The website for the annual Georgia Conference of Media Organizations is now available.

COMO 2013 will be held on October 9 – 11, 2013 Macon Marriott City Center in Macon, Georgia.  The conference is jointly sponsored by the Georgia Library Association, Georgia Association for Instruction Technology, and the Georgia Library Media Association.

COMO 2013 invites proposals for pre-conference workshops, concurrent and poster sessions. Please submit your proposals on GA COMO website.  

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2013.

The Georgia Room in the Spotlight!

The Georgia Room is the Cobb County Public Library System’s genealogical and historical collection. Located in the Central Library near the downtown Marietta Square, the Georgia Room serves informational and educational pursuits of a wide range of users.

Demand for the Georgia Room has grown steadily as its holdings and physical space have increased since it opened nearly four decades ago. The Georgia Room draws visitors from Cobb County, Georgia, and beyond. No appointment is required to visit the room and to use its resources.

Major features of the Georgia Room are an extensive collection of Georgia history materials, including books, photos, maps, and newspapers; Georgia and U.S. genealogy resources in print and online; and the Cobb African American Connection, a special collection documenting the cultural life and contributions of people of African descent in Marietta and Cobb County. Items on the Civil War, Native American history, and family histories are also available.  

Although Georgia Room materials are non-circulating, the ease of access of its offerings has improved in recent years with the addition of new space and resources, such as the Gale Genealogy Connect, an advanced online research tool.

Overall, there are about 15,000 items in the Georgia Room, according to Carolyn Crawford, head of the Georgia Room since 1988.

A wide variety of people use the Georgia Room, from causal researchers to professionals, Crawford said. Topics they explore include family histories and the development of Georgia and Cobb County. Milestone events in Cobb such as the Civil War and the economic growth spurred by the rise of aircraft manufacturing during World War II and the post-war era are popular topics, she adds.

All are welcomed to the Georgia Room, anyone from anywhere. “We definitely should be a stop on your path to discovery,” Crawford says.

For her leadership in developing the Georgia Room collection and enhancing public access to its holdings, Carolyn Crawford was the recipient of an annual award by the Cobb Landmarks and Historical Society in January. The organization calls her “a walking encyclopedia of Cobb County’s history.”

Professional genealogist David Brandenburg is a Georgia Room regular. “It’s a destination,” says the Smyrna resident, who has been visiting the Georgia Room since the early 1980s. “A lot of genealogists from around Atlanta come here.”

A major factor in growth of the Georgia Room is support from the Cobb County community. The Georgia Room opened in 1970 after the generous contribution from Miss Virginia Vanstone Crosby of Marietta in memory of her father, Charles Mayo Crosby. In 2007, the Cobb Library Foundation contributed to the Georgia Room expansion to house the growing collection and add more computers and microfilm/fiche readers.

For more information on the Georgia Room, please visit www.cobbcat.org. A panoramic photo tour of the Georgia Room is located at http://www.cobbcat.org/tour/.