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Established | 1974 |
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Location | 300 S. Hull St. Athens, GA 30605 |
Director | Sheryl B. Vogt |
Website | www |
The Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies is an archive of political and historical primary documents relating to the modern American political system. The Russell Library is one of three Special Collections Libraries located in the Richard B. Russell Building on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens. The address is 300 S. Hull Street. The Russell Library is a department within the University of Georgia Libraries that reports to the University Librarian.
The Russell Library is a charter member of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. [1]
During the 1960s, representatives of the University of Georgia Libraries corresponded with Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. on several occasions about donating his papers. In 1969, a group of Russell's friends persuaded him that a foundation should be established to document his life and career. In June 1970, the Richard B. Russell Foundation was incorporated under the laws of the state of Georgia.
After the senator's death in 1971, the Russell Foundation and its first chair, U.S. senator Herman E. Talmadge, raised a significant endowment to establish the library and to fund a Russell Chair in American History at the university. [2] Working with the University System Board of Regents and University of Georgia officials, the foundation trustees agreed to locate the Russell Library on the ground floor of the university's main library, with its own entrance. In 1974, the executors of the Russell estate turned over the Russell collection to the foundation, which then transferred it to the university. The Russell Library was dedicated in June 1974.
The library's original mission was to collect and preserve materials that document the life and career of Richard B. Russell, a United States senator from Georgia from 1933 to 1971. Since then, it has expanded to serve as a repository for the papers of individuals and organizations predominantly related to Georgia politics.
The first special collections department at the University of Georgia was established in 1953. In the years since, the original collection - now the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library - has grown, as have the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives, and the Peabody Awards Collection. In January 2010, UGA President Michael Adams, members of the Russell Foundation, the family of the late Senator Richard B. Russell, UGA Library staff, and special donors and friends broke ground for a new 115,000-square-foot (10,700 m2) structure located on the northwest side of the University of Georgia campus. [3]
Dedicated to sharing information about Georgia's modern political life and culture, the Russell Library develops exhibits that engage with the past, present, and future. Visitors can explore interactive kiosks with access to oral history interviews, historical films, videos, and sound recordings. Artist Art Rosenbaum's mural Doors is the centerpiece of the Russell Library exhibit space, featuring a panoramic view of Georgia's past and present.
The exhibit space features a replica of the office of Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. It provides a representation of the senator's Washington office that includes much of his original furniture, photographs, books, and memorabilia. [4]
The curatorial staff at the Russell Library researches, develops, and fabricates exhibits in consultation with scholars and community experts. The Russell Library also develops online exhibits to complement exhibits on physical display in the gallery space. The exhibits are open during normal business hours, and group tours are available every Tuesday at 2 p.m. and upon request.
Library holdings complement course work in history, political science, international affairs, social sciences education, sociology, law, journalism, speech communication, economics, and environmental studies. Research strengths include the U.S. Congress, national defense, foreign policy, civil rights, jurisprudence, agricultural economics and land use, public works, and public policy formation.
Russell Library holdings include the documents of politicians such as Governors Sonny Perdue, Zell Miller, Carl Sanders, Ernest Vandiver, Ellis Arnall, Lester Maddox, and Jimmy Carter, as well as Max Cleland, Mack Mattingly, Buddy Darden, J. Roy Rowland, Bo Callaway, and Don Johnson.
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries. Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form.
The University of Georgia is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia. Chartered in 1785, it is one of the oldest public universities in the United States. It is the flagship school of the University System of Georgia.
The University of Georgia School of Law is the law school of the University of Georgia, a public research university in Athens, Georgia. It was founded in 1859, making it among the oldest American university law schools in continuous operation. Georgia Law accepted 14.83% of applicants for the Class entering in 2022.
Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 66th Governor of Georgia from 1931 to 1933 before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 to 1971. Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate. He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.
Herman Eugene Talmadge was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia in 1947 and from 1948 to 1955 and as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. A Democrat, Talmadge served during a time of political transition, both in Georgia and nationally. He began his career as a staunch segregationist known for his opposition to civil rights, ordering schools to be closed rather than desegregated. But by the later stages of his career, following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, which gave substance to the Fifteenth Amendment enacted nearly one hundred years before, Talmadge, like many other Southern politicians of that period, had modified his views. His life eventually encapsulated the emergence of his native Georgia from entrenched white supremacy into a political culture where white voters regularly elect black members of Congress.
Samuel Ernest Vandiver Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician who was the 73rd governor of Georgia from 1959 to 1963.
David William Brooks was an American farmer and businessman.
Martin Joseph Hillenbrand was an American diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany from 1972 to 1976.
The Southern Oral History Program (SOHP), located in the Love House and Hutchins Forum in the historic district of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a research institution dedicated to collecting and preserving oral histories from across the southern United States.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia, sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.
Gridiron Secret Society is a collegiate secret society at the University of Georgia. Gridiron has been called "the highest honor a male student may receive on the University of Georgia campus.". It has also been recognized as one of the "Top 10 Secret Member's Clubs" in the world.
Oral History of American Music (OHAM), founded in 1969, is an oral history project and archive of audio and video recordings consisting mainly of interviews with American classical and jazz musicians. It is a special collection of the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University and housed within the Sterling Memorial Library building in New Haven, Connecticut. It currently holds approximately 3,000 interviews with more than 900 subjects and is considered the definitive collection of its kind.
The 1946 Georgia gubernatorial election took place on November 5, 1946, in order to elect the Governor of Georgia.
The Richard B. Russell Special Collections Building holds the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives, and the Peabody Collection. The building is named for Richard B. Russell.
The University of Georgia's main campus sits across from the college town of Athens, Georgia, whose dominant architectural themes are Federal—the older buildings—and Classical and Antebellum style. The university is home to the University of Georgia Campus Arboretum.
Harold Paulk Henderson is a retired political science professor at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) in Tifton, Georgia and an author. He wrote books on Georgia governors Ellis Arnall and Ernest Vandiver. Recordings of the interviews he conducted for the books have been collected by the Library of Congress in its Civil Rights Collection and in the University of Georgia's Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies along with eight VHS recordings from a symposium on Georgia governors he directed along with Gary L. Roberts at ABAC in 1985.
Jane Vandiver Kidd is a retired American politician from Georgia.
The Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz is an academic repository located at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. The archive specializes in Dixieland Jazz, gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, Creole songs, and related musical genres. Its collection includes oral histories, audio and video recordings, photos and other images, sheet music, personal papers, and teaching aids.
Roy Vincent Harris was an American politician and newspaper publisher in the U.S. state of Georgia during the mid-1900s. From the 1920s until the 1940s, Harris served several terms in both the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia State Senate, and he served as the speaker of the house from 1937 to 1940 and again from 1943 to 1946. Historian Harold Paulk Henderson has called Harris "one of Georgia's most capable behind-the-scenes politicians".