GALILEO celebrates its 10th anniversary

From USG news

Georgia's electronic library that links the USG, Department of Technical and Adult Education, K-12 schools, private institutions, and public libraries celebrated its 10th anniversary on Sept. 21. GALILEO is a national model program for online research resources.

From a statewide level, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, a reception took place at the James H. Sloppy Floyd Building, across from the state capitol building in Atlanta. Regent Doreen Poitevint and Interim Chancellor Corlis Cummings represented the USG. Governor Sonny Perdue appeared during a video "call in" congratulatory message. Professionals involved in GALILEO, elected officials, and others were invited to the event.

The celebration marked the anniversary of a major collaborative project and service to the citizens of Georgia. All Georgia citizens have universal access to a core level of materials and information resources, regardless of geographic location or local community funding.

GALILEO was the impetus for providing Internet connections to many libraries and media centers, and improving bandwidth for existing connections. GALILEO was very much on the leading edge. Netscape offered its first IPO on Aug. 9, 1995, having released Netscape 1.0 in December 1994. When GALILEO was launched, thanks to special initiative funding, 150 days after funding, GALILEO was only available at the University System of Georgia’s 34 colleges and universities.  Shortly thereafter access was provided to private academic libraries, technical colleges, public libraries and public schools. GALILEO is currently available through 2500 institutions.  

GALILEO is available not only in the libraries throughout the state, but home access is available as well. A password, easily obtained from the public or school library, is required for secured access databases. GALILEO started with a very few databases which were tape loaded. Now GALILEO users have access to over 100 authoritative databases for study and life long learning and there is a Kids Page.

Use has climbed from over 5 million transactions (searches, full text articles displayed, etc.) in FY 1996 to almost 50 million transactions in 2005. This collaborative approach is cost effective and provides access at less cost than would be provided were libraries to purchase these resources individually. 

GALILEO has expanded its offerings by collaborating with the University of Georgia Libraries to establish the Digital Library of Georgia, a gateway to the resources on the history and culture of Georgia.

Through the Digital Library of Georgia, with a single search, visitors can locate items from across 60 different digitized collections from over 40 libraries, archives, museums and 80 agencies of state government, including over 28,000 historical photographs, 500,000 e-text pages, 2,600 art works, This includes the popular New Georgia Encyclopedia, named by Library Journal, as of the “best web reference sources for 2004”, for which GALILEO provides technical support. It also includes the Georgia Government Publications database with over 23,000 publications and winner of the American Association of Law Libraries'  “2003 Public Access to Government Information Award”, and the Vanishing Georgia photograph collection. By clicking on an online map, users can locate historical images, aerial photography, encyclopedia articles, and other resources on each of Georgia’s 159 counties. A clickable timeline allows browsing by historical periods. Visitors may select collections based on material types, such as letters or diaries, or they may view all of the collections from a particular institution.

The Digital Library of Georgia site also categorizes its collections by topics, such as "The Arts," "Government and Politics," and "Peoples and Cultures." Georgia HomePlace, was honored in October by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board for its contributions to providing access to Georgia’s records through the DLG.  HomePlace collections added during FY05 included “Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills”, noted as a “fine digital archive” in the Internet Scout Report, from Lumpkin County, Jenkins Civil War Diary (Troup County), Jim Alexander Photograph Collection (Atlanta-Fulton County), and the Ships for Victory (WWII Liberty Ships) ship building collection from Brunswick. Collections soon to be available include those from Macon’s Douglass Theatre, historic postcards from Augusta, and the Georgia Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.

This page last modified on: Friday, 07 October 2005 18:45:38 -0400 by University Relations    

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