On Friday, April 24th, Georgia literary luminaries Charlie Smith and Alice Friman were formally inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
Alice Friman has spent decades nurturing writers and readers alike with a sustained emphasis on lived experience, and the expressive possibilities of language. While rooted in Georgia, her legacies extend far beyond, inspiring community and uplifting future generations of storytellers.
Charlie Smith is known for his lyrical language and keen descriptions of the Southern landscape and the very people who inhabit it. With wit and compassion, he has chronicled Georgia in ways that honor both its beauty and contradictions. Chalie could not attend the event in person, so his brother Markham accepted the award on his behalf.
Thank you to GWHOF judge Hugh Ruppersburg for reciting poems on Charlie's behalf, and to ATHICA for being such a great host!
Learn more about how Ted Turner's legacy lives on through the UGA Special Collections Libraries through this Atlanta News First interview with our exhibition coordinator Jan Hebbard.
The link is in our linktree.
Our annual "UGA Athletics in Your Town" tour will kick off on May 29th at the Suwanee Branch of the Gwinnett Public Libraries.
Join us for this free display of historic sports artifacts from the @UGAAthletics archive.
Check the dates to see if we'll be coming to your area!
We were saddened to learn about the passing of Ted Turner, a titan of the media industry. Mr. Turner was a generous donor to the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries. Our exhibition hallway is named in his honor and features two cases that continue to focus on major themes tied to his life and legacy: broadcast media and the environment.
In 1970, Turner purchased an independent, ultra-high frequency television station in Atlanta, Georgia. Leveraging communication satellites to expand the reach of this local station, he created the first ever Superstation. By the end of the decade, WTCG-Atlanta boasted an unprecedented 4.8 million subscribers across the country, and Turner had revolutionized cable television. In 1980, he bet on the future again with the launch of the first 24-hour news channel, the Cable News Network (CNN). In the decades that followed, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. built a portfolio of unrivaled cable television news and entertainment brands and businesses, including CNN Headline News, CNN International, TNT, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies. At the helm of his businesses until a 1996 merger with Time Warner, Inc., Turner forever changed the modern media landscape.
He was also an influential philanthropist who directed considerable resources toward the preservation and protection of the natural world. In 1990, he founded the Turner Foundation, which supports efforts for improving air and water quality, developing a sustainable energy future to protect climate, safeguarding environmental health, maintaining wildlife habitat protection, and developing practices and policies to curb population growth rates. Since its creation, the foundation has given more than $400 million to organizations that support its mission and goals. In 1997, he announced a historic pledge of $1 billion to the United Nations. That funding established the United Nations Foundation, an organization that supports UN causes across the globe, including health, gender equality, human rights and humanitarian response.
Image courtesy of Warner Media.
Congratulations to our graduating student workers! Each day leading up to graduation, we will be highlighting grads from across the UGA Libraries network. First up: our workers from Special Collections!
Norah Philipp is a graduating Brown Media Archives Intern and Undergraduate Researcher for the Peabody Awards Collections LibGuide. She hopes to work in a university library before returning to school for her MLIS and considers her time with UGA Libraries her most formative undergraduate experience.
Jacob Griner is a graduating intern in the Brown Media Archives and former Special Collections student assistant and docent. He will attend Syracuse University this fall to pursue an MA in the History of Art and is grateful for the mentorship and hands-on experience that shaped his time at UGA.
Lauren J. Scaffidi is a graduating docent in the Montgomery Reading Room who also helped digitize documents for patrons in the Special Collections Library. She plans to pursue higher education and proudly shares, “I heart the Special Collections Library!”
Shannon Flammer, Lily Sampson, and Carolyn Scenna are graduating Special Collections Library student assistants who retrieve requested materials from the vault using the picker. All three are accounting majors: Shannon will work at a public accounting firm in New York City, while Lily and Carolyn will pursue their Master of Accountancy degrees.
First published in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback, Amazing Stories was the first dedicated science fiction magazine and ushered in the pulp fiction genre that dominated American print popular culture until the 1950s.
"Scientifiction" (as it was known until Gernsback coined the phrase "science fiction" in 1929) grew in popularity at the turn of the 20th century with authors like Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.G. Wells leading the way.
With tales of robots, space travel, underground cities, and the like capturing the public's imagination, Amazing Stories featured the first stories by future genre superstars Isaac Asimov and Ursula K Le Guin. The magazine's striking visual style was defined by the iconic cover paintings of Frank R. Paul.
Despite numerous changes in ownership over the past 100 years, Amazing Stories has continued to be published in one form or another, featuring the works of hundreds of science fiction authors and illustrators and helping to bring the genre into mainstream popular culture.
In 1985, creator Stephen Spielberg licensed the magazine's title to launch the Amazing Stories science fiction anthology television series, which ran for two seasons and was revived for a single season in 2020.
This week, students in Dr. Raad’s “Introduction to Museum Studies” course installed a new exhibit at the Special Collections Libraries!
“Records of the Past: The Making of Music Culture in Georgia” is the product of months of research, planning, writing, and editing with the support of @hargrettlibrary staff.
Come check out the new cases during the 2026 Student Spotlight Reception:
🗓 Tuesday, April 28, 2026
⏰ 3:30–5:00 pm
📍 Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries
#MuseumStudies #StudentCurated #UGAMuseumStudies #SpecialCollections
@ugalibs@hargrettlibrary@russlibuga
Join us this summer as we take the road for our annual "UGA Athletics in Your Town" tour!
This tour brings an exhibit of artifacts from the @ugaathletics archive to communities around Georgia.
Check the dates to see if we'll be visiting your area!
#UGA #GoDawgs
Each Spring semester, we partner with Experience UGA and the Office of Service Learning to see every single 8th grade student in the Clarke County School District. This year, students were able to play our gallery games while also interacting with our rotating exhibits "Fashioning the Classic Bride" and "Beyond the '96 Games"!
Experience UGA is an initiative between UGA and the Clarke County School District that strives to bring every student in the district to campus for an educational field trip every year that connects to the standards being taught in that grade level. We are very proud to be a part of this program, and we look forward to seeing the next wave of students next year!
Join us THIS FRIDAY at 6pm at ATHICA as we induct both Alice Friman and Charlie Smith into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Enjoy a brief poetry reading from Friman and from GWHOF Judge Hugh Ruppersburg on Charlie's behalf, followed by a reception. Copies of both Friman's and Smith's most recent works will be available for purchase! We hope to see you there.
Happy National Library Week! Where are you celebrating…or studying? This year’s theme is “Find Your Joy”, comment below where you find joy at the libraries on campus!
