A little history

The North Metro campus COL101 class was assigned Summer Hill School in Cartersville as their research topic. The Chattahoochee sports team is called the Blue Devils in honor of Summer Hill. When asked, several students happily admitted to using Google for their search. There are good resources online from The Summer Hill Project which has primary sources (newspaper articles) to the Georgia Interscholastic Association. A Living Stories video has been created and shown on PBS with more information.

When I looked in GALILEO I found a few things that could add pizazz to the story of Summer Hill.

In the Digital Library of Georgia I searched for Cartersville. 62 items were retrieved. The items I found most fascinating were the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps - in particular the 1916 map which showed the location of the Negro Public School (on sheet 8 ). Searching the Sanborn maps isn't for the faint of heart. You need to search Digital Library of Georgia then click on the map picture to bring up the map and other search features inside Sanborn (like an address search). As I stood in front of the class I had to quick try to remember how to find that particular section of the map. It's not as easy to navigate as I had hoped. Lots of clicking in and out, left and right arrows to actually see what is on the map.

Comparing the 1916 Sanborn map with the Google map for the current Summer Hill complex made for an interesting compare and contrast.

The other resource I used was NewsBank (provided by the Chattahoochee Technical College Library). I did a search in the Georgia News Sources, limited to Atlanta and Marietta. Several stories came up with Summer Hill in the articles. The obituaries for people who graduated from Summer Hill gave an insight to the people who lived in Cartersville.

A Google search can help get you started but don't forget to check GALILEO for information that cannot be found on the free web.

-kls