New Installation in Russell Gallery Connects Visitors to Cartoons, Oral Histories

The History Lives Showcase Gallery occupies the central portion of the Russell Library’s exhibit space inside the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The gallery features materials drawn from the Russell Library’s collections and highlights six key collecting areas: Politics, Social Relations, Public Good, Environment, Economy, Peace and War. The contents of these cases rotate every six to twelve months and offer visitors a sample of the kind of documents and objects found in the archival collections.

A look at the last installation of the Politics of Peace
and War case in the History Lives Showcase Gallery.

Beginning in August 2014 the cases will showcase a selection of political cartoons drawn from the Clifford H. (Baldy) Baldowski Editorial Cartoon Collection. The cartoons have been matched with the library’s six collecting areas to spotlight stories connected to each of the "politics" areas.

In addition to selecting which cartoons to display, student curator Kaylynn Washnock also sorted through hours of the Russell Library's oral history recordings to find six audio clips that connect with the cartoons on display. The clips were selected from a variety of collections including the Reflections on Georgia Politics Series, The First Person Project, and The Georgia Environmental Oral History Project – all ongoing initiatives of the Russell Library’s Oral History and Media Unit. The clips have been compiled into a playlist on the Russell Library's SoundCloud page.

Signage in the gallery space provides a QR code which, when scanned, will connect a visitor directly to the SoundCloud playlist of audio clips. You blog readers can play these clips directly from the embedded link below! We hope visitors will enjoy this playlist either while they tour the gallery space or from the comfort of their personal computer. Our staff hopes this experiment in the gallery gives visitors a greater sense of the breadth of oral history collections at the library and a quick look into some of the most recent interviews conducted by the Oral History and Media Unit team, Callie Holmes and Christian Lopez.

The Russell Library Gallery is free and open to the public weekday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. For more information on the exhibit, email russlib@uga.edu or call (706) 542-5788.