IN THIS ISSUE * Regional Writer's Book Selected for "All Georgia Reading" Project * "Baldy" Cartoons Available Online * New Gateway to Current Awareness Service

When the Georgia Center for the Book in Decatur named the Top 25 Georgia Books last year, the Library acquired all of them for our Browsing Collection. (For the entire list, see http://www.dekalb.public.lib.ga.us/gcb/) Now, as promised, the Center has named the book that all Georgians should be reading this year and that book was written by southeastern Georgian Janisse Ray. Her 1999 memoir, The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, recounts her unconventional upbringing in a Baxley junkyard and the growth of her interest in and knowledge of disappearing Southern ecosystems such as old-growth pineywoods. Ms. Ray visited the campus last September for a reception at the Botanical Garden and a lecture in the Russell Union. Two copies of the book are in Browsing, and we plan to soon acquire a few other copies to meet demand; Special Collections has a copy signed by the author. To learn more about Janisse Ray and her upcoming appearances around Georgia, and about participating in the All Georgia Reading the Same Book project, click on this site http://www.dekalb.public.lib.ga.us/gcb/samebook.htm

A collection of editorial cartoons from the most tumultuous decades in American history are now available to everyone from scholars to schoolchildren on the web via the Digital Library of Georgia, an initiative of GALILEO, Georgia's online virtual library. Clifford "Baldy" Baldowski, cartoonist with the Atlanta Constitution for more than 30 years, gave more than 7,000 cartoons to the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia before his death in 1999. The electronic availability of the work, which deals with topics including the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, is the culmination of a collaborative effort between the Russell Library and the Digital Library of Georgia.

"In snapshot form, Baldy's cartoons provide a kaleidoscope view of three eventful decades of post-World War II American history. Baldy produced cartoons in a heyday of newsmaking events, which were promoted by social unrest, nuclear anxiety, antiwar sentiment, and epochal changes in his native South," said Sheryl Vogt, director of the Russell Library. "His thought-provoking approach to news led Time magazine to call him 'one of the South's leading appeals to reason.'"

Known by the pen name "Baldy," Baldowski retired from the Atlanta newspaper in 1982. His cartoons regularly appeared in other publications including the major newsweeklies and leading newspapers across the United States. In his tenure with the Constitution, he drew more than 15,000 cartoons, appearing seven days weekly for more than 30 years. Baldy was a Pulitzer Prize nominee for a cartoon on U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964, and he was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi National Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism for a cartoon reflecting the threat of Southern school closings in the Sixties. He also was awarded four different Freedom Foundation's George Washington Medals for cartoons heralding America's constitutional freedoms and patriotism.

The Clifford H. "Baldy" Baldowski Collection includes his original editorial cartoons from both the Augusta Chronicle (1946-1950) and the Atlanta Constitution (1950-1982). Subject content relates to international, national, state and local (Augusta and Atlanta-Fulton County) politics, and to society in general, and features such topics as individual politicians, world leaders, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam Conflict, and the Cold War.

"Students will find these cartoons not only useful in examining historical events, but entertaining as well," according to Vogt. "Noted for 'getting to the heart of the matter,' Baldy excelled in taking the complex issues of current events to a few visual brush strokes captioned with wit and savvy - leaving the delight of interpretation and judgment to the individual reader."

Not only do students and scholars have access to Baldy's view of the post-war world through the online collection, but they also can discover some of the unique aspects of Baldy's cartooning style.

"For example, during his earliest days at the Augusta Chronicle, Baldy was working part-time and left his cartoons unsigned as he feared reprisals from the ruling Cracker Party whom he criticized in his works. Only after becoming a permanent employee at the paper did he begin to sign his work with the nom-de-plume he used throughout his long career," said Stephen Miller, DLG director.

The cartoons, along with supplementary supporting materials such as a commentary on Baldy's cartooning, a biographical essay, as well as suggested reading links, are available through the Digital Library of Georgia, a GALILEO initiative that provides online access to Georgia's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, audio, video and other materials. The Russell Library was established in 1974 to document the late senator's public service career. The library's holdings now include the papers of more than 100 Georgia politicians, elected officials, federal appointees and political parties, as well as related materials. It has the distinction of being the single repository in Georgia directed solely toward scholarly research in modern political history. It also is the official repository of the Democratic and Republican parties for the state of Georgia.

To access the Baldy collection, go to http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/baldy.html

Good news for faculty ingenta users: we now have a gateway to this service that is tailored for Georgia Southern University, offering links to:

• Henderson Library's catalog so you can easily check our journal holdings,
• the list of journals available full-image from the Library's homepage, and
• a link to the Interlibrary Loan request forms so you can easily request what isn't owned by Henderson Library or available full-image.

These links are on the left side of every ingenta screen.

To use this gateway, just go to the Library's homepage, click on "databases" and then scroll down the alphabetical list and click on ingenta. You will now be in Henderson Library's gateway to ingenta: http://www.gateway.ingenta.com/gasou If you are already an ingenta user, just go to this site, enter your user ID and password, and enter the gateway. You will use it just like you use http://www.ingenta.com now.

If you haven't yet signed up to use ingenta, there are still openings available for the Reveal Research and Table-of-Contents Alerts Services that Henderson Library is sponsoring. After entering a keyword or author search, you will be e-mailed each week the full citations of new articles matching this search published in any of over 20,000 journals. You may enter up to 25 of these Research Alerts. For the TOC Alerts, you are given the capability of having the tables of contents of as many as 50 journals sent to you by e-mail when they are newly published.

Ingenta includes very useful help screens like this one that explains how to set up, delete, and access your Reveal Alerts: http://www.gateway.ingenta.com/popup_help/help_reveal.html

Georgia Southern faculty are encouraged to sign up for this current awareness service. For assistance, please contact either Cynthia Frost at 681-5405 or cjfrost@georgiasouthern.edu or any of the reference librarians at 681-5645.