National History Day

The Archives for Research on Women and Gender documents the experiences of women and men participating in women-centered and LGBTQ activist and advocacy activities in Georgia and the Southeast throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. It also documents the experience of women at Georgia State University.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photograph Collection contains over five million images from the newspaper’s photo morgue. The bulk of these images come from the 1950s-1980s, but the collection also includes images that appeared in the Atlanta Journal, the Atlanta Constitution, and many of the smaller newspapers they absorbed over the years. Over 2,000 images are digitized and available online at the Georgia State University Digital Collections, with new additions every day.

The Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women’s Movement Archives is dedicated to documenting the second wave of the women’s movement in Georgia, and in particular, efforts in the state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Georgia Government Document Project (GGDP) details the state’s political and social history through more than 250 oral histories and manuscript collections. The Georgia Government Documentation Project includes interviews with former governors, legislators, political activists, civil rights leaders, media figures, lawyers, social crusaders, judges, and numerous other public figures. These men and women shaped the history of Georgia during the 20th century, and the GGDP provides researchers with a rare glimpse at their stories in their own words. In addition the GGDP includes 3 manuscript collections that touch on Georgia politics.

The growth and development of Georgia State University from an evening school of commerce to a major urban research university is documented in the records of campus administrative offices, deliberative bodies, and major extracurricular organizations. The University Archives includes the records of GSU presidents and other high-ranking officials, minutes of the University Senate and its committees, annual reports of deans, reaccreditation studies, research reports, theses and dissertations, catalogs, the student newspaper, and a complete set of yearbooks.

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976), a Georgia native, began writing songs at the age of 15 and eventually became one of the foremost figures of 20th century American popular music. For nearly five decades, Mercer had a prolific career as a lyricist, composer, and performer. He is credited with writing 1,400 songs, was nominated for 18 Academy Awards, and was one of the founders of Capitol Records.

The Lucy Hargrett Draper Collections on Women’s Rights, Advocacy and the Law document state and national efforts to achieve equality for women. The collections are supported by the Lucy Hargrett Draper U.S. Equal Rights Amendment (1921-1982) Research Collection Fund.

Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, houses an extensive collection of oral history interviews that compliment its manuscript holdings. Below you will find links to more information about the recordings, plus information about conducting your own oral history interviews.

The Special Collections and Archives houses several significant photographs collections that provide visual documentation of local Atlanta, regional, and national issues from the 1930s through to the end of the 1990s.

The Popular Music and Culture Collection, within the Georgia State University Special Collections and Archives, collects and preserves unique and rare historical materials documenting twentieth-century American Popular Music and Culture.

The Rare Book Collection consists of 1,670 titles (2,645 volumes), including first and limited editions; Confederate imprints; 19th-century Georgia books; significant Southern historical and literary volumes; and books with unusually fine printing, binding, or illustrations.

The Social Change Collections began in 2009 and document select social movements, primarily in Georgia. Included are topics and activities such as community building, education policy, political campaigning, lobbying, strike action, student activism, civil and gender rights, anti-death penalty, homelessness, civil disobedience, social activism, and environmentalism.

Georgia State University’s Southern Labor Archives, established in 1971, is dedicated to collecting, preserving and making available the documentary heritage of Southern workers and their unions, as well as that of workers and unions having an historic relationship to the region.

This research guide will help you to find primary source information to help you with your research project.

Georgia State University Library's Digital Collections provide online access to unique and rare material within the University Library's Special Collections and Archives Department, the general collections and select community partners to support the research interest of scholarly communities and the general public. Material within the collections include manuscripts, photographs, periodicals, newspapers, oral histories, audio/visual, maps, and printed materials.

The materials listed above are either natively digital or digital representatives made available online for greater access. They are just a small representation of the current physical collections held within the library and our community partners.

You can use ArchivesSpace to find out more about our collections. Our finding aids act as inventories that describe and list the contents of collections and contain information about the person, family, or organization that created the collection. Through this site, you can search and browse these finding aids for our many collections available for research.