We are a department of the Georgia State Library. Our mission is to collect and preserve unique historical materials that connect the Georgia State community, scholars and the public to the human experience.
Our collections primarily document people and organizations in the 20th- and 21st-century American South. All of our collections are open to faculty, staff, and students, to outside scholars and to the public.
We have nine different collecting areas:
MARTA Early System Planning Collection, 1967-1979, 1992, consists of around a thousand maps and aerial photographs related to early planning of the Atlanta, Georgia, transit system. These maps and aerial photos show what MARTA could have looked like had the early plans been approved.
The MARTA Operations Records, 1950-2023, provide an overview of how the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) has built, maintains, and continues to grow the rapid transit system for metro Atlanta. The collection includes correspondence, financial records, studies, reports, and other files that document the business operations of MARTA and Atlanta’s predecessor bus transit organization, the Atlanta Transit System.
MARTA personnel records, circa 1905-1973, consist of historical records of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority'a predecessors. The files document primarily the employees of the Atlanta Transit Company (1950-1954) and the Atlanta Transit System (1954-1972), including the period when MARTA operated the latter (1972-73). Additionally, the records include personnel files for workers who began their careers with the Georgia Railway and PowerCompany, later Georgia Power (circa 1905-50). The files document over 1,800 former workers and contain correspondence, legal documents, reports, forms and paperwork, and photographs. Files are labelled with the name, birthdate, badge (identification) number, and work dates of the individuals. They document each employee's work history and may include qualifying examinations, medical information, pay slips, badges, commendations and awards, customer complaints, and disciplinary records. Due to the personal nature of information in the files, access is restricted unless the subject of the file is deceased or was born more than 100 years before the date of the request.
Division 732 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (Atlanta, Georgia) was recognized by the Georgia Railway and Power Company as a union in 1918. The relationship between Division 732 and the Atlanta Transit System, which lasted from 1950 to 1971, was relatively peaceful. After the purchase of the ATS by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) in 1971, the relationship between the union and management gradually deteriorated and led to the six day strike in 1973. The first contract was negotiated in 1919-1920. This bulk of this collection contains the administrative, financial, legal, and membership records of Division 732.
The Maria Helena Dolan Papers, 1931-2018 [bulk 1951-2018], consists of a myriad of materials documenting Dolan's vibrant work, life, and activism. The papers primarily contain subject files created by Dolan, containing printed material from many diverse sources with Dolan's notes and annotations, and her own writings. She served as an Automatic Train Control Foreman and then as a Safety and Quality Assurance Engineer with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
The collection consists of labor relation files of the various companies that have operated Atlanta's public transit system.
Digital collection of material related to city planning and urban development in Atlanta. The collection consists of city planning maps, city planning publications, demographic data, photographs depicting planning activities, oral histories, and aerial photographs.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), formed in 1965, is the principal rapid-transit system in metro Atlanta. This collection includes a selection of historical maps and publications documenting transit station plans and the impact of MARTA on Atlanta communities. These items are owned by MARTA and were digitized by GSU Library.
Add maps from this collection to web mapping applications by copying this WMS link:
http://geo.library.gsu.edu/geoserver/marta/wms?service=wms&version=1.3.1&request=GetCapabilities
digATL, The Digital Atlanta Portal (pronounced didge’-A-T-L) from the Georgia State University Library, provides a single online destination to showcase and share the many projects, collections, and data about the metro area produced by Georgia State University (GSU) students, faculty, and staff working with and within their local communities.
This project visualizes how the city’s public transit system, now a shadow of what it once was, falls short of its far-reaching intentions. By highlighting the routes which have been proposed in the development of these systems, this project aims to contribute to larger discussions taking place around the topic of public transit in Atlanta. The displayed map layers were georeferenced from planning documents available through GSU’s Planning Atlanta collection.
During the 1970s, Georgia State University archaeologists conducted systematic excavations associated with the construction of the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) rail lines. This project recovered the material remains of Atlanta’s past, and these materials represent the single most comprehensive archaeological collection of Atlanta’s history.
The ATLMaps platform, a collaboration between Georgia State University and Emory University, combines archival maps, geospatial data visualization, and user contributed multimedia location pinpoints to promote investigation into any number of issues about Atlanta.
