Olympic history on display at Williams Library

Williams Library would like to announce a display of items from the Connie Siewert Collection dealing with the 1996 Olympic Summer Games at Atlanta. The items on display include Olympic-logo apparel, including t-shirts baseball caps, and even an Olympic staff uniform. A variety of publications is on display, including magazines, a cookbook, and a group of books explaining the exact guidelines for publication of the Olympic logo to be used in merchandise and advertising. Items based on the mascot for the 1996 Olympics, a character called Izzy, are included, as are a sampling of the variety of things that are created around the Olympics, such as collectible figurines, coffee mugs, pins, collector cards, even cereal boxes. Also on display are a variety of colorful advertising posters.

The Connie Siewert collection contains items from the years of 1973 – 1996 with the bulk of the material being from the years 1992 -- 1996. Included in the collection are activities related to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, correspondence, news releases, publications, advertisements, official collectible items, and graphics standards material. A large portion of the collection focuses on the activities of various Olympic Committees (mostly the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games--ACOG) leading up to, and including the Olympic Games. Events include previous Olympic Games, licensing workshops, marketing, IZZY Mascot related promotional events, and events related to Official Sponsors.

Connie Siewert has over 25 years experience in the business world that spans finance, marketing and operations. In 1992 she joined Atlanta Centennial Olympic Properties, a joint venture between the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and the United States Olympic Committee, as Director of Marketing where she was initially in charge of Finance, Operations and the Human Resources function for this marketing arm of the 1996 Olympic Games. She was also given the $1B brand program to manage where she authored the brand manual and directed the review and approval of over 40,000 promotional brand uses. Submissions ranged from worldwide sponsor and licensee broadcast, print and product applications, to the international banking community coin programs, the individual government stamp programs and five albums produced by the recording industry. Connie currently works for IBM in Field Marketing.

The collection is on display in the Williams Library Archives and Special Collections offices (the old ITC area) until the end of the fall semester. At present, the area is open from 8 – 12 Monday to Friday, other times by appointment.