HIST 4025/6025 History of Material Culture Spring 2022: Material Culture Sources @ UGA Special Collections

Most special collections or archives like the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies or the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library maintain large online databases of information  about their collections. Each collection has a finding aid or guide that outlines the organization of the materials it contains--think lists of boxes and folder titles organized to keep related materials together.

To find material culture in archives it is helpful to be conversant with the terms used to describe the physical nature of items, from general terms like "object", "artifact", "material" or "textile" to more specific terms like "campaign memorabilia", "uniform" or "tool". 

At UGA special collections, both the Hargrett Library and the Russell Library use the term "artifact"  in their finding aids to group together non-textual records into an organizational grouping called a series.

Therefore "artifact" is a great place to start your search if you want to move beyond the items we have selected for the class. 

To get a feel for the process of keyword searching and browsing this database, enter "artifact" into the search engine and browse the results. See the results for this search here: 

See what a search for "artifact" yields in the Hargrett Library and Russell Library collections here 

If you find something neat from searching and browsing the databases of the special collections departments, you can request the item from the database and come in to the research rooms at the special collections library building and view it.  

• Learn more about how to request materials
• Watch a demo for requesting materials

 What if you don't find what you want?  

• Brainstorm other terms that describe your topic. 
• Remember, to think historically--what words did people use at the time to describe or discuss your topic? 
• Remember think like a file clerk--what are some simple organizational strategies that you might use to organize files--alphabetical by contact's last name, chronological by name, functional arrangement--by the division or team in an office--for example, the public relations office files. 
• All of this brainstorming should give you some more terms to try. 

The Hargrett Library Rare Book unit contains approximately 120,000 rare books on a variety of subjects. Special emphasis is placed on rare books, maps, broadsides and other printed material dealing with the State of Georgia and the Southeast as the state developed from pre-Colonial times to the present. The Hargrett Library also specializes in the History of the Book including an extensive collection of over 10,000 books relating to the small press and fine printing particularly in the United States.

These materials are cataloged in GIL Find.  You can begin searching from the SCL Search Collections page under "Books, Periodicals, and Maps in the Library Catalog."  This applies a filter on your search results to items housed at Special Collections.  If you begin your search on Libraries homepage, it will show you results from all of the Libraries at UGA.

Catalog searching is more forgiving for keyword match-sting searching.  So, you can use phrases like "children's games" and get plenty of search results.

Using the Active Filter feature is another way to modify or refine your search results.  You can limit by format, date range, location, language, etc.

Here is a video walking you through the Rare Book requesting process: Rare Books and Georgiana video guide