Back in the 1990s, not too long after I started work here, I met a remarkable lady from Danielsville who wanted “to help the library” in our, at that time, new building of 1996. She had devoted her life to books, to students and, of course, to libraries. Occasionally, thereafter, she would stop by to see me whenever she was in Athens for shopping, appointments or one of our educational programs. She always brought me a small amount of money for the library, change she had saved, or as she put it, leftovers from the housekeeping and grocery budget. The coins would be folded into a handkerchief, and like many ladies of the period, she would count out the money to the cent. Sometimes, it would indeed amount to 78 cents, $1.39 or at the most $2.00.
These visits by Miss Ollie Mae Williams went on for several years. I heard the sad news in September 2001 that she had died at age 91 and I took the occasion of her death to reflect on fundraising, in particular and in general, for she seemed to embody the essential nature of philanthropy: selfless giving toward a goal of which she approved and wanted to support. As she would have argued, and did once within my hearing: “A museum needs a library for its volunteers, docents and curators.” In other words Miss Ollie Mae had done her homework and knew that we needed a resource library for our exhibitions and programming.
Upon her death, she left a bequest to the museum for our library of $5,000, and that gift became the endowment we still have for acquiring books or periodicals not available to us through the UGA Main Library. At that time or shortly thereafter, our curator of prints and drawings, Patti Phagan, left us to work at Vassar. Here she had begun a small group of artists’ files where she kept information on the various projects on which she was working and where she could include the career and biographical information on artists for whom such secondary research — as well as primary scholarship — was difficult to find. I thought it a brilliant idea and consequently, since then, we have outgrown our space for the artists’ files. Lucy Rowland, our volunteer librarian, and I are figuring out how to create more space for what has become an important, even essential, resource for our curators, for our docents, for visiting scholars and for the general public.
That now large group of what used to be called vertical files has grown to the extent that we are out of space in the “vertical” filing cabinets that contain them and even space to put new filing cabinets. But we will find a way to have them grow, since our staff as well as other scholars and students use them. No question, however, they make a library in themselves and I think one that should be named as a memorial to Miss Ollie Mae Williams, a lady who loved books, museums, teachers and art.
Authored by:
William U. Eiland
