Library Services

Merryll Penson, Executive Director

Library Services supports University System of Georgia libraries and other libraries in Georgia in collaborative efforts to provide high quality services to students, faculty, staff, and residents through the following major initiatives:

• GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library, is a USG initiative that was launched in September 1995. GALILEO is a World Wide Web-based library that provides access to thousands of full-text magazines, journals, encyclopedias, and electronic books for every Georgia resident. It is a collaborative effort serving over 2000 institutions including public and private colleges, and universities, adult and technical schools, public libraries, public K–12 schools, and some private K–12 schools. Services include an extensive virtual collection, functional and technical support, access management, integration of GALILEO resources with local resources, training, and marketing/communication for GALILEO.

• GALILEO Interconnected Libraries (GIL) is the library management system for the 35 libraries of the USG. GIL supports the acquisition, cataloging, access, and circulation of the USG libraries’ over 13 million holdings. GIL operates in a hosted environment. Services also include a central universal catalog, authority control to establish consistency in cataloging that makes resources easier to locate, and courier services.

• The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), which is based at the University of Georgia, is a GALILEO initiative. The DLG is an online gateway to Georgia's history and culture in more than one-half million digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and more that are housed in libraries, museums, government agencies, and allied organizations across the state. The DLG includes the Georgia Government Publications, a full-text database with over 34,000 documents from100 state agencies dated from 1994 to the present.

• Library Services provides the technical support and hosting for the New Georgia Encyclopedia (NGE), the first digital state encyclopedia. The NGE was developed through a partnership with the Georgia Humanities Council, the University of Georgia Press, and GALILEO.

Library Services also helps with ongoing collaboration and consensus-building among various library communities in advancing the vision of one statewide library. Library Services is instrumental in developing mutually beneficial services, such as cost-sharing of databases, and is continuously collecting and analyzing information in order to improve services.