Rome well represented in special collections vault at the University of Georgia’s library
The network of libraries at the University of Georgia is one of the largest in the nation.
Floyd County is well-represented there, particularly in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Chantel Dunham is director of development for UGA Libraries. She told the Rome Rotary Club the Hargrett facility includes a vault that is three stories tall, with temperature and humidity controls, which houses special collections.
Among those special collections is the Watters collection. The material documents some of the businesses, medical information, geological survey and a wide variety of historical information related to the Watters District that makes up much of the Model community northeast of Rome.
Villa Hizer and Janet Byington, both members of the UGA Libraries Board of Visitors, were instrumental in helping preserve the Watters District information and get it to Athens.
Another special collection features the history of John Paul Cooper. The Cooper family founded the Darlington School more than a century ago. It’s rare, Dunham said, because much of the material is the type of information that gets lost when it is divided up among family members over the years.
“This one all stayed together,” Dunham said.
Another collection is dedicated to native Roman Frankie Welch.
She is well known for designing scarves for presidential inaugurations and also designed a dress worn by First Lady Betty Ford. That dress is on display in the Smithsonian’s First Ladies’ Hall in the National Museum of American History.
“We are going to do a very large (Welch) exhibit that will start in January through June of 2022,” Dunham said.
The library is also home to major collections that highlight “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell and Dr. Gene Odum, the father of modern ecology.