Roberts, Edward Graham, Dr., 1999 April 20

This is a living history interview with Edward Graham Roberts, Director of Libraries at Georgia Tech from 1970 to 1984, conducted by Marilyn Somers on April 20, 1999. The subject of this interview is his life and experiences at Tech. Mr. Roberts was born in Atlanta in 1922. His father was a graduate of Georgia Tech, but Roberts went to Swanee's University of the South to obtain his BA in History in 1943. He volunteered for the army in 1942, directly after World War II had begun. He served a short time before receiving a medical discharge. He went to graduate school at the University of Virginia and received his PhD in History, but shortly thereafter he decided to go to Emory University and get his BA in Library Science, which was to truly define his career path. After working as director of the Southeastern Inter-Library Research Facility, he began a project that was to be a guide foe anyone who intended to purchase journals necessary for research. When he completed this (called the Southeastern Supplement for the Union List of Serials), he was one of the top Librarian directors in the country. He was given a job at the Georgia Tech Library by J. Henley Crossland. After spending several years working for Mrs. Crossland, Roberts took over her job upon her retirement. Roberts was instrumental in bringing all the Georgia Tech Records into a machine readable format. He also was key in the early stages of the College of Computing. He retired in 1984 and now lives in Atlanta with his wife, Annajean. The second part of the interview Dr. Roberts talked made some corrections from his previous interview. These corrections included some more information about the computerization of records as well as the creation of the copy center and the microfilm catalogue. He also discussed the creation of the lending program that Tech initiated (LENDS) and the connections that this afforded the Tech Library. He talked about how Tech was very experimental in his days as director of the Library and how contributed to a great deal of loyalty among library staff. Dr. Roberts went into a discussion of Mrs. Crosland’s special rooms including the Welby Music Room and the Frank Freeman Room. He also talked about his meeting with Governor Lester Maddox, the budget difficulties in the 70’s. He also went into a discussion of Lauren Bows, the Library Director for UGA and some of the difficulties he raised for the Georgia Library system as well as the UGA library. He finished up the interview with some stories about The Butterfly Invasion and Snow Jam.