Preserving the History
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PRESERVING THE HISTORY
OF UNITED STATES AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE:
STATE AND LOCAL LITERATURE, 1820-1945
PHASE VI 2006-2008
A proposal submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access
on behalf of the United States Agriculture Information Network
and
Colorado State University University of Arizona University of Kentucky University of Maryland South Dakota State University University of Washington/Washington State University
Submitted by the Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University
July 2005 Table of Contents
1. Summary ...... 1
2. Significance of the Materials and the Need for Preservation and Access...... 2
3. A National Consortial Preservation Program 6
3.1. The Land-Grant University Mission...... 6
3.2. A National Preservation Plan for Agriculture...... 7
3.3. Preserving State and Local Agriculture and Rural Life Literature...... 12
4. Plan of Work and Project Goals
4.1. Project Goals and Objectives...... 13
4.2. Project Administration...... 14
4.3. Bibliographic Analysis and Evaluation...... 19
4.4. Preservation Microfilming Procedures...... 25
4.5 Digital Imaging Procedures...... 28
5. Preservation Profiles and Project Staff
5.1 University of Arizona...... 33
5.2 Colorado State University...... 38
5.3 University of Kentucky...... 42
5.4 University of Maryland...... 46
5.5 South Dakota State University...... 53
5.6 University of Washington/Washington State University...... 56
6. Descriptions of the Collections
6.1 Colorado...... 61
6.2 Arizona...... 66
6.3 Kentucky...... 69 6.4 Maryland...... 73
6.5 South Dakota...... 76
6.6 Washington...... 80
Appendix A: Vitas of Principle Project Staff
Appendix B: Letters of Support
Appendix C: Letters of Intent SUMMARY
On behalf of the United States Agriculture Information Network (USAIN), Cornell University, in cooperation with six other land-grant university libraries, seeks $670,050 in support from the National Endowment for the Humanities for Phase VI of a project to preserve the most significant published materials on the history of state and local agriculture and rural life. The project utilizes the model developed for the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature and implemented for New York State by Cornell University’s Mann Library, a leader in the preservation of agricultural literature; and refined in Phases I through V of this project. The plan for administration, coordination, and management is based on established models for cooperative preservation projects used by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the Research Libraries Group Great Collection projects. In Phase VI of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature, approximately 2,553 titles in 4,435 volumes published between 1820 and 1945 will be preserved from Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington. In addition, the agricultural literature from Kentucky and South Dakota and will be reviewed and ranked for filming of the most important materials in a later phase of the project.
USAIN and the National Agriculture Library developed the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature in 1993. This national disciplinary preservation plan for agriculture calls for each state in the U .S. to take responsibility for preservation of its own state and local level literature. The work of the project results in the systematic identification of the universe of state and local level published literature in each participating state, not just the titles held in each of the participating libraries. In each state a panel of scholars and librarians evaluates and ranks the resulting lists in terms of the importance of individual titles for research in social, cultural, and economic history. Each state then microfilms those brittle titles judged by the panel to be most important for current and future humanities research. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATERIALS
AND THE NEED FOR PRESERVATION AND ACCESS
We cannot solve the problems with knowledge of the present day alone. Prophecy is conditioned on experience and the longer the experiences, and the keener the appreciation of it, the truer will be our judgments. In all the bewildering opinion and achievement, we must not forget. Liberty Hyde Bailey
United States history cannot fully be understood without studying its rural life and agricultural heritage. Agriculture fueled the social and economic engine, which built our nation, generated our state and local governments, and stimulated and regulated pioneering, farming, land tenure, and the trading of agricultural commodities. Much of what defines the national character of Americans, our cultural values and mores, is rooted in our agrarian past. The farm family was the basic social unit molding American life for nearly 200 years. Agriculture has transformed the American countryside and provided its rural strength. Due to the centrality of agriculture in the American experience, economic, social, and cultural historians, as well as those in science and technology, have been fascinated by the published record of agriculture and rural life, and must utilize it regularly.
Agriculture was the predominant social and economic structure well into the 19th century. In 1800, over 85% of the nation's five million people were involved in agriculture; by 1870, the population had grown to about 40 million, of whom 60% were engaged in agriculture. On the eve of the industrial revolution it took four persons engaged in farming to allow one to engage in non-agricultural pursuits, whereas now one worker in agriculture can sustain sixty or more in other jobs. Prior to World War II, the basic unit of agriculture and of American society was the family farm. Powerful forces such as the abolition of slavery, westward migration, the system of share-cropping, the emergence of state and federal agricultural agencies, the introduction of immigrant populations to rural society, and the use of migrant workers in agriculture -- all of these influences shaped and were shaped by the cultural and economic forces of agriculture, its enterprises, and its communities.
During the 19th century, the farm unit shifted its orientation from the family and the immediate community to the market, and to the expanding urban-industrial society. For nearly 100 years, employment in the American agricultural and food system remained nearly constant at about 35 million while the population soared. With these changing demographics came shifts in attitudes about rural life, community and family values, and the management of the farm enterprise. These shifts had a profound effect on farm families, on rural communities, and on the economy of the nation.
The unprecedented growth in U.S. agricultural productivity during the 19th and early 20th centuries was based in part on the use of agricultural literature as a means of sharing and expanding agricultural knowledge. In 1820, farming was a self-sufficient enterprise with relatively few advances since colonial times. The average farmer was largely ignorant of the principles of animal and plant breeding, often hampered by superstitious beliefs, and typically skeptical of agricultural innovation. Agricultural publications before 1819 were few in number and difficult for the average farmer to obtain. After 1820, American writing on agriculture increased and, most importantly, the medium of the agricultural periodical appeared. By the 1840s the U.S. had developed the largest farm readership in the world. Thus the content of these journals over a hundred-year period in U.S. history is an unparalleled resource for the study of cultural and social attitudes.
The application of the principles of science and engineering to agriculture had its beginnings in the 19th century. Decades of applied research caused an increase in agricultural production that was unparalleled in earlier civilizations. The United States led the world in this remarkable effort. Companies like John Deer, Allis Chalmers, and Pioneer Seed had their roots in the agricultural engineering and plant breeding research of the land-grant university. The introduction of machinery to the farm dramatically changed the work of providing food.
The story of American agriculture is captured in a broad band of documentary resources ranging from the memoirs and transactions of early agriculture societies to newspapers and almanacs; family, community, and corporate archives; and state and county extension service publications. The evolution of farm and rural life and agricultural economy is chronicled in the agriculture periodical press and the numerous local, regional, and national farm journals that exhorted, informed, and shaped the opinions, values, and concerns of early farm families. Journals such as Country Life in America, Cappers' Farmer, and Farm and Family have much to tell historians about the daily activities, issues, and practices of the time.
Early farm journals were clearinghouses of general agricultural information. They borrowed liberally from each other and thus track the movement of information and ideas. As farmers left eastern farms with their dreams or despair and moved west, they brought their agricultural knowledge with them -- knowledge and experience often completely unsuited to the climate and topography they found. The dreams of farmers and the cries of entrepreneurs mingle in the literature and documents of agriculture and rural life to tell the story of success and defeat, exaltation and catastrophe. The fate of the Native Americans swept up and overrun by land-hungry pioneers is part of this story. The clash of Anglo culture with Spanish and Mexican culture in Florida, Texas, and California over land and agricultural tradition is a principal theme. European and Asian immigrants brought their varied agricultural heritages and created the distinctive ethnic communities that influenced and altered the farms and rural communities of America. Before 1834, farm journals presented information without much regard for system or organization. Subsequently, journals began to develop columns such as “Cattle Husbandry,” “Horticulture,” and “Poultry”. These columns reveal the roots of the developing specialization of agriculture -- a trend reflected in a dramatic increase of periodicals and monographs in the late 19th century devoted to a specific type of farm activity. However, in addition to information about technical agriculture, the numerous local, regional, and national farm journals routinely included editorial comment, political and economic reviews, a “ladies’ corner” aimed at the purview and concerns of the farm wife, columns on family and community issues, and extensive advertising. The substantial home, family, and community content distinguishes the literature of pre-1945 agriculture from the literature of the latter part of the 20th century that focuses nearly exclusively on technical and financial information. The changing content of the literature documents the contest between two ways of life: one urban-based and tied to industrial forms of production, the other rural and tied to family, community, and craft-based production.
As rural life changed, so did the content of the literature aimed at the farm family. These materials form a premier scholarly resource to document the experience of the individual farm family, the establishment and evolution of farm communities, the pressures affecting rural culture, and the shifting and evolution in rural culture in response to national and world events. Supplementing the published literature are the diaries, letters, photographs, and farm records that are critical resources to understand rural life, its role and place in American society.
The establishment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1862 and the passage of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 (which founded the present-day system of land-grant universities) further involved the federal government in agriculture and were followed by legislation that established state-level agriculture experiment stations and extension services. The growth of these organizations boosted agricultural research with a constant emphasis on practical applications within farming communities. Local journals tracked the effect -- or lack of effect -- that new research and practices had on farming and rural life. The remarkable history of federal-state cooperation in establishing a national network of experiment stations, land-grant universities, extension services, and 4-H clubs is an example of the impact of agriculture on the reach and methods of government. Government involvement in education, youth programs, and scientific research all stem from early efforts to support and improve the nation's most important industry: agriculture.
An emphasis on higher education and the emergence of agricultural research in the early part of the twentieth century stimulated the production of scholarly treatises and journals that joined a panoply of federal, state, and county documents. These resources now allow scholars to track both the evolution of government policy and attitudes toward the agricultural enterprise, and the response of the individual farmer and farm communities to greater government involvement and intervention. The literature of agriculture and rural life is threatened by the slow but inexorable deterioration of books, documents, photographs, and other paper artifacts in libraries and archives across the country. The condition of these materials -- particularly those created after 1840 on ephemeral, acidic paper -- threatens access to these research resources. The historical literature of agriculture and rural life typically lacks intellectual access in an online bibliographic environment, limiting the ability of the humanities researcher and scholar to identify and locate resources. The sheer bulk of the material and its varied locations demand an approach in which the most important material is selected for immediate preservation and increased access.
Even as agriculture evolved from a home and family craft-based way of life to the market-driven business enterprise we know today, urban and suburban residents have held onto the images of an agrarian past, as depicted in Currier and Ives prints and Grandma Moses paintings, and more recently in the remarkable popularity of home and community gardening. The deeply felt American myth celebrating the pioneer, the self- sufficient farm family, the rural community, and the spirit of the individualistic American, are preserved in the literature of agriculture and rural life. These materials will eventually contribute to further discovery and interpretation in weaving the colorful history of our nation and in understanding our national character.
One fundamental component of this rich record of American agriculture and rural life is state and local level publications of each of the fifty states. Section 6 of this proposal contains descriptions from each of the project participants of their agricultural literature and an overview of the historical trends and issues it documents. Due to its critical importance to the study of state, regional, and national history, this state- and local-level record is among the highest preservation priorities of land-grant institutions.
To guide a nationally coordinated effort to preserve the record of agriculture, the United States Agricultural Information Network has developed and implemented a National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature. This cooperative project to continue the preservation of the agriculture and rural life literature of the states advances one key component of a larger national plan. A NATIONAL CONSORTIAL PRESERVATION PROGRAM
The development of a national program to preserve the history of agriculture and rural life is a logical extension of the work carried out by land-grant universities in cooperation with federal, state, and local agencies. The land-grant universities of the U.S. constitute a remarkable and uniquely American research, education, and extension system with a long tradition of cooperation and a legal mandate to serve the citizens of the nation. The concentrated focus of each of the nation's 72 land-grant universities has resulted, among other things, in a remarkable set of library collections. Documentation of state and local agriculture and rural life has been primary collecting responsibilities of land-grant libraries for over a century. Better than any other resource, these collections document the concerns, needs, interests, aspirations, and resources of the people of their state. While these collections were largely built in the service of then current needs of science, technology, the state, commerce, and the average citizen, they have become prime historical repositories and targets for preservation in the interest of humanities research.
Mindful of this, the land-grant university libraries, working closely with the National Agricultural Library (NAL) through the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), have developed a national preservation plan to preserve this record. Organized state by state, with a history of and structure for national level cooperation, this consortium of libraries is uniquely positioned to systematically preserve one of the most important slices of American history.
THE LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITY MISSION
The best acreage for a farmer to cultivate lies within the ring fence of his skull. --Charles Dickens
The system of land-grant universities was established out of a deep American impulse to democratize education, to consciously direct knowledge and research in the interests of the average citizen, and to improve the productivity of our food system and the quality of rural life.
Existing colleges and seminaries were dedicated to classical studies on the model of their European counterparts. These institutions existed to educate the monied classes, government leaders, and the professions -- not to serve a democratic vision of opportunity for all. In the 1840s, Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Illinois, a Yale-educated farmer, newspaper editor, and college professor, made education for the working classes a cause. His Plan for a State University for the Industrial Classes advanced ideas that are fundamental to the land-grant system, such as experimental research and its dissemination. What began as mild protest grew into widespread agitation by the middle of the nineteenth century, and Congress began to debate the role of the federal government in higher education. Newly formed agricultural societies, in particular, insisted that colleges where agriculture could be studied must be widely available.
Justin Smith Morrill, a representative and later senator from Vermont, introduced legislation to Congress in 1857, and obtained passage in 1862, to establish a system of colleges dedicated to teaching agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanical arts -- as well as classical studies -- so that the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. The addition of military tactics to the original 1857 bill helped obtain its passage during the war-torn years of the Civil War, combined with a president with the same rural-roots point of view.
The Morrill Act of 1862 provided grants, in the form of federal lands, to each state to establish a “land-grant” college. In 1887, the Hatch Act extended the land-grant system by authorizing direct payment of grant funds to each state to establish an agricultural experiment station in conjunction with the land-grant institution. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created a Cooperative Extension Service associated with each land-grant institution. The universities are connected to the citizens of the state by means of Cooperative Extension Service offices and staff in every county of most states. This goes beyond education, to provide research, publications, and the dissemination of information to the average citizen.
Concurrent with the establishment of the land-grant colleges, Congress established the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to promote the interests of farmers, a persistent idea since George Washington’s days as president. The effectiveness of the U.S. agricultural system lies in cooperation among government, the universities, and industry; a system that has produced perhaps the most successful research and development program in history. From the beginning, the interests of the land-grant colleges and universities extended beyond the technology of farming to farm management, rural sociology, agricultural economics, land management, home economics, rural life, and social, family, and community concerns. Within this framework, considerable rural-related, disciplinary social science research was conducted by historians, political scientists, general economists, sociologists, and anthropologists.
A NATIONAL PRESERVATION PLAN FOR AGRICULTURE
Collection and dissemination of information was part of the land-grant mandate, and the close ties among the land-grant institutions, the agricultural experiment stations, and the extension services ensured intensive collection of their publications, as well as those of the agricultural societies, rural organizations, and relevant popular, trade and scholarly literature. Much state and local level agriculture and rural life literature was published in short runs and was not widely disseminated. Adding to the problem of scarcity is the fact that much of this material was considered at the time of its publication to be out of collection scope by many of the nation’s major research libraries. Consequently historians from non-land-grant libraries often have to travel to these libraries to conduct their research. Additionally, the problem of deteriorating and brittle paper affects the historical literature of agriculture as severely as it affects all publications produced before 1950.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Cornell and other leading land-grant universities, in cooperation with the United States Agriculture Information Network (USAIN) and the National Agriculture Library (NAL), discussed the need to initiate a nationally coordinated plan to preserve and improve access to the historical literature of farming, rural life, and the agricultural sciences. NAL had a foundation of past preservation activity upon which to base future efforts, including a cooperative project with the land- grant university libraries conducted from 1974 through 1987 to microfilm agricultural, forestry, and extension publications. USAIN was established in 1988 to provide a forum for discussion of agricultural issues, to take a leadership role in the formation of a national information policy as related to agriculture, to make recommendations to NAL, and to promote cooperation and communication among its members.
In October 1991, USAIN sponsored a program to explore the feasibility of developing a national program to preserve the literature of agriculture and rural life. Organized by Samuel Demas, former Head of Collection Development and Preservation, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, the two-day event drew thirty librarians, preservationists, and representatives of funding agencies. Following a review of the status of preservation programs and cooperative strategies, the group enthusiastically endorsed the idea of a nationally coordinated preservation program to ensure both preservation of, and access to, the historical literature of agriculture and rural life. The attendees outlined recommendations and a planning process and urged USAIN, together with NAL, to prepare a more detailed plan. Subsequently, the USAIN membership unanimously endorsed the recommendations.
USAIN appointed Brice Hobrock, Dean, Kansas State University Libraries, to chair an Advisory Panel on Preservation with eleven members from land grant, government, and commercial organizations. The Advisory Panel hired Nancy E. Gwinn, then Assistant Director, Collections Management, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, to facilitate the planning process and draft a national plan. The result, A National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature (USAIN, 1993) was adopted by the USAIN membership in October 1993 as a guiding document for coordinating and stimulating preservation efforts within the agricultural sciences. Throughout this process USAIN has provided organizational sponsorship for development and implementation of this plan. [See Appendix B for letters of support from the current president of the USAIN and the director of NAL.]
The national preservation plan provides a disciplinary framework within which to divide the preservation challenge among USAIN libraries. Its goals are being accomplished through a series of systematically organized and coordinated projects combined with local initiatives. Preservation projects may be structured around genre, period, region, subject, or combination of these, and will use a variety of preservation strategies including reformatting to microfilm or digital formats, preserving the original, or a combination of these depending on the nature of the material, its condition, and its expected use.
Progress in Implementing the USAIN National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature. Over the past twelve years considerable progress has been made in advancing this unique national cooperative plan for systematic preservation of the literature of a discipline. Table 1 shows the key components of the agricultural literature in the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature and assignments of preservation responsibility for each component.
This proposal addresses the components labeled “State and County Documents”. Phase I of the proposed project enabled nine states to move forward in fulfilling their responsibilities under the plan. Phase II of the project allowed four of those nine states to complete their microfilming of top ranked materials and brought six new states into the project. Phase III provided microfilming funds for three of the states, which finished their bibliographic work in Phase II. Five new states were added in Phase III, three of which completed their bibliographic work and filming in this phase and two, which developed only their bibliographies. Phase IV provided funding for microfilming for two of the states that completed their bibliographic work in Phase III, and for three new states to develop the bibliographic work. Phase V provided funding for the 3 states which developed their bibliographies in Phase IV to undertake the preservation portion of the project and for 4 new states to begin developing their bibliographies. Phase VI will provide finding for the 3 states which developed their bibliographies in Phase V and 1 state which developed its bibliography in Phase II to undertake the preservation portion of the project and for 2 new states to begin developing their bibliographies. This brings the total number of participating states to 29.
In an entirely separate project, a central component of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature, labeled “Core Historical Literature -- Scholarly Monographs and Serials” in Table 1. In the mid-90s the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University received funding for work on the preservation of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. With this funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and support from the Hatch Act and the NAL, Wallace C. Olsen directed a major bibliographic effort to identify the most significant, or core, literature of the agricultural sciences published since 1950. The methodology was adapted to historical literature, principally to assist in developing preservation priorities for materials of national scope and importance. The core historical literature is being preserved in a series of projects with funding from NEH, the Department of Education, a gift from the Cornell Class of 1956, and internal funds. Cornell has completed scanning over 2,200 monographic and serial volumes on agriculture and rural life (http://chla.library.cornell.edu). Prior to the establishment of the NPPAL, NAL had worked to preserve historically significant agricultural literature through several large microfilming projects. For example, from 1974 to 1987, NAL led a cooperative project with the state land-grant university libraries to microfilm the agricultural, forestry, and extension publications of these libraries; several million pages were captured on microfilm. NAL has also worked with non-profit and commercial micropublishers to microfilm federal documents, nursery and seed trade catalogs, and historical or rare agricultural and botanical works. These materials comprise the "National Agriculture Literature Archive" at NAL.
NAL is serving as the permanent national microfilm depository by receiving the master negatives of all film produced by the NEH-funded USAIN microfilm project and placing them in an environmentally controlled off-site vault. To date, NAL has received over 4,000 reels of master negative film from the NEH-funded USAIN microfilming projects. Additionally, NAL is receiving as gifts or purchasing service copies of all film produced and adding this material to its collection for patron use.
As part of its responsibility for federal agricultural publication preservation, NAL has digitized monographs as well as large journal and series runs, such as the Journal of Agricultural Research, the USDA Yearbook of Agriculture and the USDA Home and Garden publication series as well as selected special manuscript and image collections. This fall NAL will start digitizing the USDA Farmers’ Bulletins. NAL also has a charge to preserve pre-1862 imprints and does so predominantly through conservation treatment of these special collection materials. In addition, NAL renovation activities included the establishment of a separate environmentally controlled and secured floor in the NAL building devoted to special collections, which will help extend the life of these important materials.
To supplement the NPPAL, NAL is leading efforts in the United States Department of Agriculture to preserve digitally-born USDA publications (http://www.nal.usda.gov/preserve). Work to date includes: an inventory of USDA digital publications, in which 7,000 digital objects were sampled, identified and analyzed; a national metadata conference; as well guidelines for USDA agencies producing digital publications, which include a metadata template with preservation elements (http://www.nal.usda.gov/cataloging/TEMPLATE2.pdf). These guidelines inform agencies on how to produce digital publications in a manner that makes both their preservation and access possible. To move the digital publication preservation effort forward, NAL is working with a national advisory committee, the USDA e-Gov program and the USDA Office of the Chief Information Officer to: provide education; make recommendations for policy and best practice; seek continued USDA program buy-in and support; and identify funding sources for program/project implementation. A conference on the topic was held and Action Plan for Preserving USDA Digital Publications has been reviewed and augmented. It has been added to the National Preservation Program, with implementation the responsibility of NAL. National Preservation Plan for Agricultural Literature
Manuscripts and Land-Grant Publications Archives Assess status, fill in gaps Local initiatives Core Historical State and County Literature Core Historical Documents (Popular and Trade Literature Journals) State-based, University-based, (Scholarly nationally nationally Monographs and coordinated coordinated Serials) Pre-1862 Imprints Federal Documents Cornell/Mann Library NAL-led project NAL
Unique Collections subject-based geography-based format-based Non-print Local initiatives and Audiovisual Collections
Local initiatives
Table 1. Excerpt from A National Program for Agricultural Literature, May 16, 1993, p. 14. PRESERVING STATE AND LOCAL AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE LITERATURE
A 1991 USAIN survey of the status of and need for preservation of agricultural literature revealed that USAIN members assign highest preservation priority among the published parts of the record to materials on local agriculture, agricultural society transactions, and state level publications. The National Preservation Program calls for each state to preserve its own state and local level publications in a nationally coordinated project.
In light of this priority, the USAIN National Preservation Program Steering Committee selected this component to implement next. They invited land-grant university libraries to send a representative to a meeting at the Midwinter 1995 meeting of the American Library Association to discuss their interest in participating in the development of a cooperative national project to preserve state and local literature of agriculture, modeled on the pilot project for New York State literature conducted by Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University. In addition to significantly advancing the national plan, the project would provide experience in implementing a cooperative effort. Interest in the project was substantial.
Preservation consultant Carolyn Clark Morrow, formerly the Preservation Librarian at Harvard University, was hired by USAIN in spring 1995 to develop the project plan and a proposal for funding in cooperation with nine land-grant university libraries. That proposal (Phase I) was funded and work commenced in the nine states in July 1996.
Phase I: bibliography and microfilming: Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin bibliography: California, Connecticut, Florida, Nebraska, and Texas
Phase II: microfilming: California, Florida, Nebraska, and Texas, bibliography and microfilming: Hawaii and Montana bibliography: Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, and Minnesota
Phase III: microfilming: Arkansas, Iowa, and Minnesota bibliography and microfilming: Kansas, New Mexico, and North Dakota bibliography: Michigan and North Carolina
Phase IV: microfilming: Michigan and North Carolina bibliography: Georgia, Illinois, and Ohio
Phase V: microfilming: Georgia, Illinois, and Ohio bibliography: Colorado, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Washington Phase VI: microfilming: Maryland and Washington digital imaging: Arizona and Colorado bibliography: Kentucky and South Dakota
A workshop will be held in New Orleans in June 2006 to provide training the Phase VI participants, who are developing their bibliographies or undertaking preservation microfilming. Those libraries undertaking digital imaging will come to Cornell University in July for a two day training session on managing digital imaging projects.
The national framework to preserve the history of agriculture and rural life in the United States is firmly in place. The project described in this proposal is an important piece of the national plan. Its purpose is cooperatively to preserve and improve access to a critical mass of state and local publications in a diverse cross-section of states using the proven methodology originally developed at Cornell University’s Mann Library. (See Appendix C for an article describing one project.) The twenty-seven states participating in Phases I through V were selected on the basis of geographic spread, existence of a substantial preservation capability within the land-grant library, willingness to contribute institutional resources and to undertake systematic identification and evaluation of the literature, willingness to commit collection development as well as preservation staff to the project, and ability to undertake cooperation with other libraries in the state as necessary. The same criteria were used in selecting the four new states for Phase VI. Section 5 provides a profile of the preservation capabilities and the project staff for each participating state in Phase VI.
At the completion of this proposed funding, 29 states across the country will have combined their efforts to make a significant contribution to preservation in an important area documenting American social, cultural, and economic history, including the history of farming as a technology and business, the documentation of rural life and communities, the integration of immigrants into American rural institutions and communities, and the impact of farming on the visual landscape and on ecosystems. Section 6 provides an overview of the relevant literature documenting agriculture/rural life for each state in Phase VI.
Additional outcomes will be to: 1) continue the momentum for the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature; 2) complete the national Core Historical Agricultural Literature project underway at Cornell (www.chla.library.cornell.edu); 3) replicate and adapt the Cornell model for preservation of state literature through the experience of other states; 4) serve as inspiration for additional states to follow suit, thereby building a more complete national picture of the history of agriculture and rural life; and 5) prepare the way for other coordinated projects to meet the goals of the national plan, including unique collections of primary resource materials such as manuscripts, archives, and other non-print collections. The development of a national preservation plan for agricultural literature is consistent with the concept of a discipline-based approach to preservation. It emphasizes selection of the most important material from the universe of relevant literature, the involvement of scholars in the selection process, and a cooperative approach that acknowledges that the most important materials will be found in more than one library. The discipline-specific approach to preservation is also based on the fact that society is unlikely to allocate sufficient funds to preserve all of the publications in any given discipline, and that not everything is worthy of preservation. With a well-developed preservation infrastructure in place, the need to develop and implement intellectually viable, cost-effective strategies for preservation, discipline by discipline, begins to take on greater importance and relevance. PLAN OF WORK AND PROJECT GOALS
PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES The goals and objectives of this project are:
To preserve and improve access to a critical mass of the most significant publications documenting the history of agriculture and rural life in a diverse cross-section of states.
To identify systematically the relevant publishing in each state, raising our preservation beyond the holdings of any given library by scrutinizing the total universe of publishing within the subject scope; To involve scholars and librarians in evaluating this universe of publishing, ranking individual titles to set preservation priorities; To reformat the most highly ranked brittle titles in each state ranked as most important for humanities research, about 4,435 volumes; To preserve and catalog target materials.
To continue the momentum of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature by having the states fulfill their responsibility for preserving state and local publications.
To replicate and adapt the Cornell model for preservation of state and local level literature; To create a state-centered bibliographic database of the titles, including both preserved and unpreserved titles, with rankings, to guide any future preservation work on the balance of the universe; To stimulate other coordinated projects to meet the goals of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature.
To provide additional institutions with substantive experience in the practice of systematic, discipline-based preservation; and to advance the concept of discipline-based, cooperative preservation. To continue to adapt and extend this model for cooperative preservation to a discipline-based approach; To ensure that selection, preservation, and access standards for quality and productivity are maintained across the project through proper administration, training, and coordination; To address methodological problems in the evolving disciplinary approach to cooperative preservation, including bibliographical analysis issues and methods of interlibrary cooperation. PROJECT ADMINISTRATION The project will be implemented and administered through the auspices of the Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University. Joy Paulson, Preservation Librarian, will serve as Project Director, and she will work closely with the seven project libraries and their designated institutional project managers or co-managers. The USAIN Preservation Committee will serve as an advisory board for the project. [See Appendix A for the vitas of the principal project staff.]
The administration, coordination, and management plan is based on a successful model that has been well-established and tested through other cooperative preservation and access projects such as those of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (Big-Ten University libraries and the University of Chicago), and projects administered by the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET). The value of this particular project is that it will enable institutions to be linked in a discipline-based preservation and access project for the benefit of humanities scholars, while also insuring that preservation and access standards for quality and productivity are maintained throughout the project.
During Phase I, the cooperative preservation model was successfully adapted to a cooperative project incorporating a discipline-based selection model and using a review panel to rank materials according to their importance as resources for humanities studies. Experience gained during Phases I through V is being shared during meetings held in conjunction with the annual meetings of USAIN or the American Library Association. This dialog improves the methodology of the present program to preserve the history of agriculture and rural life. Based on the experience gained in Phases I through V, the model is a useful one, helping libraries address the additional set of preservation issues faced in identifying and preserving high priority materials within the context of a discipline-based approach to preservation.
Cornell University has long been a leader in the land-grant community and in the agricultural sciences worldwide. The Albert R. Mann Library is a major land-grant library with a proven record of leadership in the trends and issues in agricultural information. Cornell’s commitment to preserving the literature of the agricultural sciences is an outgrowth of its role as a world center for agricultural sciences research. This commitment to excellence and innovation in agricultural information services, and to leadership in preservation, is demonstrated in Cornell’s initiative in the development of a National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature; in identifying the core literature, contemporary and historical, of the agricultural sciences; in preserving the core historical literature; and in developing a methodology for the preservation of state and local literature.
Sam Demas, then head of Collection Development at Mann Library, organized the 1991 USAIN preconference program in which the idea of a national preservation program was developed and an outline and plan of action emerged. Wallace C. Olsen’s work in identifying the core literature and Mann’s work to preserve the core historical literature has contributed immensely to the USAIN preservation program and to stimulating continued action on projects to implement the program. Cornell is committed to the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature. Albert R. Mann Library views the NEH-funded project as a continuing step forward in the evolution of a cooperative, discipline-based preservation program.
Joy Paulson, Preservation Librarian at Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, will serve as Project Director. She has extensive experience with individual and consortium- based preservation projects employing both preservation microfilming and digital imaging as reformatting methods. She has served as either the Deputy Project Director or Project Director for USAIN Phases III through V. As Project Director, she will oversee the continued implementation of the project. She will be responsible for establishing standards for the project, maintaining contact with NEH staff and Cornell’s Office of Sponsored Programs, submitting quarterly and annual reports to NEH, and administering project funds. She will assure progress toward project goals and represent the project in national forums.
Project Coordination
Joy Paulson will oversee the development of quarterly production goals for each project, monitor progress towards meeting the goals, recommend approval of payments to participants, and draft quarterly progress reports to send to NEH for review and approval. She will also coordinate the preservation microfilming digital imaging work of participating libraries, serve as a resource person, and maintain regular contact to resolve problems and issues, and to ensure that the work proceeds in a timely manner. She will conduct the preservation microfilming and digital imaging sessions at the workshop for project participants.
Mary Ochs, Head, Collection Development and Preservation, Mann Library serve as a resource person for those participating libraries that are developing bibliographies. She will also conduct the bibliography session at the workshop for project participants.
Frances Webb, Program/Analyst Specialist, will serve as the programmer for the project. She was the project programmer for the HEARTH project (Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, and History) and the Core Historic Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) redesign. She will be a consultant for the two libraries who have chosen digital imaging as their reformatting technology, plus she will design the search interface for federated searching across Arizona and Colorado State’s digital collections and CHLA. She will also integrate the searchable database of bibliographies developed by Michigan State during Phase III into the project’s website. We will also be adding the essays on the agriculture written by each of the 29 states who have participated in the project to date.
Project Management
Each of the seven participating institutions has appointed an institutional project manager or project co-managers who will be responsible for the implementation of their library’s and state’s participation in this project. Project managers will attend the two project meetings, implement the plan of work, supervise project staff, establish local work flows, oversee contracts with vendors, assure that all procedures and products meet established guidelines and standards, verify that work has been completed, and submit quarterly reports to the Project Director.
During Phase VI, three states and libraries that identified the universe of materials and selected the most important for preservation in Phase V (Colorado, Maryland, and Washington) will complete their work by microfilming or digitally imaging this material in Phase VI. Arizona, which identified their most important materials for preservation in Phase II, will also participate in Phase VI undertaking the digital imaging of their material. In addition, Kentucky and South Dakota will identify the universe of materials and -- with the assistance of a scholarly review panel in each state -- will select the most important materials for preservation. Participating institutions and libraries and their project managers are listed here. Section 5 provides a complete list of project staff and project managers.
Arizona University of Arizona Marianne Stowell Bracke, Assistant Librarian member of the Science-Engineering Team Yan Han, Systems Librarian
Colorado Colorado State University Diane Lunde, Coordinator, Preservation Services
Kentucky University of Kentucky Jo Staggs-Neel, Agriculture Librarian at the University of Kentucky’s Agriculture Information Center Perry Valerie, Head of the Agricultural Information Center
Maryland: University of Maryland Susan Koutsky, Team Leader for Brittle Materials, Reformatting, and Deacidification Ann Hanlon, Project Archivist for the Department of Archives and Manuscripts
South Dakota South Dakota State University Nancy Marshall, Documents Librarian Lisa Lindell, Catalog Librarian
Washington: University of Washington and Washington State University Gary Menges, Preservation Administrator Stephanie Lamson, Assistant Preservation Librarian Project Financial Administration
The Project Director will review progress as outlined in the following project timetable to ensure that the project is conducted in a timely manner and that project goals are met for quality and productivity. She will work with the institutional Project Managers to establish institutional benchmarks during the first six months.
All costs attendant to the identification, selection, and preservation of the target materials are included in the project budget for each participating institution in Section 5, Preservation Profiles and Project Staff. The summary budget in Section 4 provides a Project Overview, for each participant and for the project as a whole, including the total number of titles and volumes to be identified and preserved, the per-volume reimbursed cost, and the total project cost.
According to a formal Memorandum of Agreement, participating libraries that are identifying and selecting only (Kentucky and South Dakota) will be paid 50% of the total project cost in advance, and 50% upon completion of the ranked bibliography. Participating libraries that are preserving materials (Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington) will be paid 33% of their total project costs in advance. Thereafter, they will be reimbursed according to their cost-per-volume rate on a quarterly basis up to the total project cost submitted by each participant. A quarterly report from each institutional project manager to the Project Director (certifying the number of volumes preserved and titles cataloged) will be required with a formal billing.
As project sponsor, Cornell has received from each participating institution letters of intent to collaborate in this project. These letters, included as Appendix C, indicate institutional commitment to participate and to waive indirect cost recovery, considering it as a cost share contribution. Indirect cost recovery rates are shown.
Cornell University will be reimbursed for the partial costs of administering and coordinating the project, including at twenty percent effort, salary and benefits for the Project Director and at five percent effort, salary and benefits for the bibliographic development specialist; travel to the project meetings by the Project Director; travel to the training workshop for the bibliographic specialist; funding for one year for a project programmer to design an interface to allow federated searching of the digital collections created by Arizona and Colorado and CHLA as well to incorporate the searchable database of project bibliographies created in Phase III and all the essays on agriculture and rural life for each of the 29 states who have participated in the project. Funding for a student assistant to assist with website design and updating of the project’s website is also requested for one year. Project Timetable
The project will extend for two years beginning June 15, 2006, and ending June 30, 2008.
Year One
June - September 2006 Workshop at ALA Annual in New Orleans on bibliography development and microfilming Workshop on digital imaging at Cornell (only for libraries choosing digital imaging) Seek initial funds Hiring and training of institutional staff Begin searching and compilation Identification of resources for compiling the bibliography Set filming and digital imaging contracts for libraries participating in preservation phase
October - December 2006 Compilation of the bibliographies for each state Review of bibliography scope documents from each state Start-up of the preservation stage of the project Benchmark approx. 15% of volumes reformatted
January - March 2007 Scholarly review and ranking of the bibliographies Review of ranked bibliographies Continuation of preservation stage by libraries Complete filming or digitizing of 30% of project volumes
April - June 2007
Completed and ranked bibliographies submitted to Project Director Preservation and quality assurance completed for 40% of project volumes Annual reports due Submit report to the USAIN Executive Board on the project’s progress.
Year Two
July - September 2007 Project managers’ meeting at ALA Annual Conference Review progress and compare strategies Report on project’s progress to USAIN Preservation Committee, which serves as the project’s advisory board, at ALA Annual Conference Review progress and compare strategies Quality assurance completed for 60% of project volumes filmed or digitized
October - December 2008 Preservation and quality assurance complete for 80% of volumes Completion of any needed refilming or rescanning
January - March 2008 Preservation and quality assurance completed for 100% of volumes
April - June 2008
Wrap-up of project activities Notification of scholarly journals and societies Completion of institutional and project final reports
GRANTEE BUDGET OVERVIEW, 2006-2008
Participant Titles Volumes $/volume (preservation Year 1 Year 2 Total cost only) Identify only 100% -- 100% Kentucky $ 38,294 $ 38,294 South Dakota 39,994 39,994 Subtotal $ $ 78,288 78,288 Preserve only
40% 60% 100% Arizona 900 1,000 $125 $50,000 $75,000 $125,000 Colorado 1,064 1,125 93.29 56,381 84,571 104,952 Maryland 519 1,060 94.34 40,000 60,000 100,000 70 1,250 105.24 52,622 78,933 131,555 Washington Subtotal 2,253 4,435 $104.06 $184,603 $276,904 $461,507 Project total 2,253 4,435 $539,795
Project Administration Administrative costs and overhead $130,255 Total $670,050
The seven land-grant libraries have devoted $82,207 of staff and other expenses as a cost- sharing portion of their operations. The institutional indirect costs, normally charged by these institutions but not paid by this grant, amount to $210,203. The actual cost-share and indirect cost waived amount to $301,410.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION For more than a decade, research libraries and archives, with funding assistance from federal and private sources, have mounted an impressive national effort to preserve our endangered intellectual heritage. As the program has evolved, so have the strategies for defining and selecting materials for preservation. A number of projects have employed the “great collections” model introduced by the Research Libraries Group, whereby materials on a particular subject are preserved from the great collection of an individual library. The use of the national bibliographic databases has allowed more than one great collection library to work in a subject area without duplication of effort. However, this approach to selection for preservation does not meet the need of scholars for the systematic preservation of the “core literature” of a discipline. Nor does it meet the national program’s need to be selective and cost-effective.
The preservation problem in research libraries is estimated to include over twelve million unique titles requiring preservation. When Congress increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1988, the national program was targeted to preserve a selected three million volumes over a twenty-year period. Thus, at the same time that Congress and research libraries acknowledged the urgency of the preservation problem, they also recognized that it would be impossible, given financial realities, to preserve everything. While the great collections approach is valuable, when considered in the context of limited funding it cannot meet the goal of developing a coordinated and focused strategy to preserve the highest priority literature of individual disciplines.
The limitations of funding from both federal and local sources demand that the national program be highly selective. Some preservation projects, targeting the needs of scholars, have employed a partnership strategy between scholars and librarians to analyze the literature and designate priorities. Such a strategy can be particularly effective when applied to a specific discipline such as the history of agriculture and rural life.
In addition, to further advance the goals of coordination, cost-effectiveness, and selectivity, a powerful strategy has emerged whereby materials are designated for preservation based on a comprehensive national plan for the preservation of the literature of a discipline. Such a plan defines and analyzes the literature of an academic or research discipline, sets priorities for preservation, identifies the major players, and organizes projects around logical topics or genres. Programs are underway in such diverse disciplines as theology, biomedicine, performing arts, anthropology, geology, architecture, art history, and agriculture. Through the experience of these programs national preservation planning, discipline by discipline, is emerging as a rational and cost-efficient model. The value of this model lies not only in its cost-effectiveness, since there will never be enough resources to preserve all materials, but also in its involvement of scholars in the decision process. The ranking of literature in terms of preservation priorities provides the basis for incremental projects. This project employs the model of a discipline-based preservation project and continues the work of Phases I through V. Its purpose is to preserve additional materials and improve access to them, thus approaching a critical mass of the most significant publications documenting the history of U.S. agriculture and rural life between 1820 and 1945 from a diverse cross-section of states. This cooperative project will be conducted with seven land-grant university libraries and state partners. They will use the proven methodology for bibliographic analysis and evaluation developed and implemented at Cornell University, in cooperation with the New York State Library, to preserve New York State’s agriculture and rural life literature, and applied successfully.
This methodology has been tested and refined in Phases I through V. At the second Project managers meeting in San Francisco (in June 1997), we took stock of what was learned through the experience of eight states in compiling their bibliographies and having them reviewed by scholars. Based on similar discussions with Phase II participants, their quarterly reports, and a meeting in June 1998, we know that the methodology has been successfully adapted to the needs of land-grant institutions. We have a growing body of librarians experienced in this methodology of selection for preservation.
The plan of work is organized so that libraries first conduct a systematic bibliographic analysis and evaluation of the materials, with priorities for preservation determined by a team of scholars and librarians. This stage of the project includes the following steps:
Defining the subject and format scope of the literature
Compiling a bibliography of the universe of publications within that scope
Conducting scholarly evaluation of the bibliography with ranking of citations
Setting preservation priorities for the body of literature
Each state plans to preserve the top-ranked titles so identified. At the conclusion of the project, ranked lists of titles that were not preserved in the project (i.e., the balance of the universe of publishing on the subject) are included in a searchable database. These lists will provide guidance on preservation priorities for future efforts to preserve a greater share of the universe of the relevant publishing in any of the states.
This approach focuses limited preservation funds on the most important materials first, provides a method of measuring overall progress in preserving the published record of a discipline, and leaves for posterity a record of what has been preserved and what has not.
A project workshop will be held to provide training and direction in bibliographic analysis, scholarly evaluation, and quality assurance, and to develop consensus about the utility and methodology of the discipline-based approach to preservation and access projects.
Defining the Scope of the Literature
For the purpose of developing an estimate of the materials to be preserved, each state estimated the universe of publications that constitute the published historical record of agriculture and its fundamental relationship to the state’s landscape, natural resources, rural society, and economy between 1820-1945. Earlier imprints were excluded from consideration as nearly all are included in the Evans and the Shaw and Shoemaker bibliographies and because as part of the national plan, the National Agriculture Library has assumed preservation responsibility for early imprints. Later imprints were considered out-of-scope at this time. Land grant and experiment station publications previously filmed as part of the NAL-sponsored cooperative microfilming project are excluded from this project, if the microfilm meets current national standards for preservation microfilming.
The definition of rural society that will be covered by the project can be characterized by Dr. Albert R. Mann’s definition: “the study of associated or group activities of the people who live in the country viewed from the standpoint of the effect of these activities on the character of the farm people themselves.” Also included is the effect of outside influences (e.g., advertising, technology, war, immigration) on the activities and character of rural people and communities. Broad subject areas include the following:
Rural society: family farming; the farm home and family; forestry and its industries; rural communities; standards of living in rural communities; rural organizations (agricultural societies, Grange, Farm and Home bureau, 4-H, church and improvement societies); rural political organizations and movements; farm demographics; rural communications and radio programming; centralization/consolidation of schools; nature study movement; country life movement; rural play and recreation activities; county and local fairs; cooperative extension services; rural people’s attitudes and opinions; rural leadership; selected mail order catalogs of interest to farm families; women in farm life and rural communities; immigrants and immigrant populations in rural societies; employment of migrant workers; Rural Free Delivery; automobiles and rural life; rural architecture; rural health and medical care; rural social services, welfare, and social security; rural art; rural water supply and waste water treatment; rural land use and planning.
Rural economy: agricultural and forestry economics; farm organization and management; production economics; food distribution; state food supply; statistical data; agricultural prices; marketing of agricultural and forestry products; state agricultural and food policies; cooperatives; agricultural finance; land economics and land use; land tenure; marketing of agricultural products; rural economy other than farm economy; food exports. Technical agriculture: farming, food and nonfood agricultural and forestry products; major, minor, and experimental crops; agronomic techniques, including plant breeding; animal science; forestry; crop insects and diseases and their control; food science; agricultural engineering (farm equipment, farm structures, agricultural technology); rural transportation; natural resources pertaining to agriculture (soils, water, meteorology) and their conservation.
Compilation of the Bibliography for each State
During this stage of the project, participating libraries will systematically identify the universe of publications on agriculture and rural life in their respective states. The object is to identify the state and local literature in total -- not just the titles held in each of the library’s collections. Therefore, depending on the state, the lead library will seek the cooperation of one or more other libraries, such as the state library, state historical society library, other research libraries, the state’s historically black land-grant university, and forestry schools in order to identify the universe of relevant materials.
Institutional project managers have received training on the bibliographic process from Sam Demas and Wallace C. Olsen in the first two phases and from Wallace C. Olsen and Mary Ochs in Phase III, and Mary Ochs in Phases IV and V. Instruction and consultation on developing scope statements and the compilation of the bibliographies will continue as an integral part of Phase VI.
Because the program is national in scope, the participants will come to final agreement at their first meeting about those materials to be included and excluded from consideration based on subject and topic, as well as considerations of format, date, provenance, and the likelihood of coverage in other preservation projects. The project will exclude, for example, materials such as reprints, almanacs, daily newspapers, and state legislative documents. In the final analysis, each state will be responsible for identifying its most important material relevant to the history of agriculture and rural life; therefore, some differences in scope and subject matter will result in consultation with Program Director and the bibliographic specialist.
Following the start-up meeting, the participants will begin by: Identifying the sources they will use for compiling the bibliography; and Listing the subject headings to be used based on modifications for their states
By the end of the first three months of the project, they will also have hired or assigned staff and begun the searching and compilation process so that questions about compilation can be fruitfully addressed at this early stage. Libraries will generally employ a team consisting of a librarian and a support staff person to compile the bibliography and prepare it for scholarly evaluation. The amount of time devoted to this will vary from state to state, but typically it will involve a half-time librarian and half- time support staff person for 3 - 5 months, depending on the size of the universe of materials. These personnel costs are included in the project budget for each participant.
With the scope of each state bibliography determined, project participants will compile the bibliographies, a process that will take approximately 2 - 4 months and will involve an extensive review of both print and electronic sources. Participants will work from the list of subject headings derived from the original New York State project and Phase I, but customized to reflect their state’s agricultural history. Selected subject headings and date parameters will be searched in each library’s online catalog as well as the databases of other libraries in the state and, if appropriate, in national bibliographic databases. Lists generated from online sources will be supplemented with citations from a wide variety of printed sources, including scholarly bibliographies, dictionary catalogs, repository shelf- lists, and source bibliographies appended to books, theses, dissertations, and esoteric bibliographies.
Scholarly Evaluation and Ranking
Each library will engage a scholarly review panel of three to four individuals to review and rank the titles in the bibliography for preservation priority according to the rating scheme described below. Reviewers were selected for their knowledge of agriculture and/or state history and chosen to reflect different backgrounds and points of view. Each reviewer will be paid an honorarium ($500 per person; costs are included in the cost for each state) for this consulting service and asked to deliver the completed product within six weeks. Based on the experiences of participants in Phases I-V, each reviewer will spend approximately eight hours reviewing the list, usually over a period of two or three weeks.
Prior to distributing the bibliography, a library may host a meeting for the reviewers to discuss the project as a whole, the scope of the bibliography and the compilation process, and the rating scheme and scholarly review process. This meeting will help insure that reviewers are applying the rating scheme in a similar manner and that questions are addressed up front. Directions and explanations will also go with each list for review.
Monograph citations are best separated into subject categories to help structure the review process and make it easier for the reviewers to consider each title within the context of the subject matter and the time of publication. Likewise, serial titles will be arranged in categories depending upon the type of publication (e.g., serials about state agriculture, land-grant university publications, etc.). Reviewers will also be notified about titles that have already been acceptably preserved.
Reviewers will be asked to determine the relative importance of each title for historical research in the humanities compared to other titles in the lists according to the following scheme:
First Priority: Very important historical title, of critical importance to preserve. Second Priority: Important title definitely worth preserving, funds permitting.
Third Priority: Worth preserving at some time, but of a lower priority.
Fourth Priority: Not worth preserving.
In addition to the scholarly reviewers, the institutional project managers, or another appropriate person in the institution, will also evaluate the list from the point of view of an agriculture bibliographer. A review by a practicing librarian will contribute a broad perspective on how the materials are used by students and scholars in many disciplines and a sense of the relative scarcity of the publications.
Following the rating process, the results for each title will be averaged and ranges assigned in order to sort the titles into logical and manageable priority groups. For example, in New York, titles that fell into the 1.0 - 1.5 range became first priority titles; titles that fell into the 1.6 - 2.0 range were ranked second priority for the project. The experience of the original New York State project and Phases I through V showed remarkable similarity in the way historians viewed the literature. A random sampling of the ratings showed that the four reviewers rated each title either the same or one rating apart about 90% of the time.
Priority Selection for Preservation
Setting preservation priorities by the use of a ranked bibliography is more time- consuming than the more typical model for a preservation project that selects deteriorated materials within a subject and time period from the shelves of a library. The premise of this proposal is that a thorough bibliographic and scholarly evaluation project can objectively and authoritatively set preservation priorities for a discipline, thus setting the stage for the conduct of a systematic preservation program. Such a methodology allows individual projects to be undertaken at cooperating institutions at different times, when funding is available and without losing momentum. Most importantly, use of a rated bibliography as a selection tool for preservation ensures that the most important materials in a discipline will be preserved first. Given the realities of limited funding for preservation, this more time-consuming approach to selection probably is the most effective and appropriate strategy for this program.
Funds requested for preservation in the Phase VI project are based on the actual quantity of material of highest priority selected for preservation by scholars during Phase V in Colorado, Maryland, and Washington and in Phase II in Arizona. Funds requested for identification and selection in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington were established based on the estimates of the universe of materials provided by the project libraries during the development of the proposal, drawing on the experience of prior projects.
While earlier phases of the project provided enough funds each state to preserve those materials that have been or will be ranked priority one and two by the scholarly reviewers, this is currently more difficult to do because of increased reformatting costs and the limits placed on awards by NEH. While the goal of the project is to preserve approximately 25% of the universe of materials, in some states with a large universe of materials, this level of preservation may not be possible. However, project libraries are committed to preserving as many remaining priority one and two materials within their local preservation programs, as funding permits. In addition to preserving the most important materials on the history of agriculture and rural life, this project also establishes priorities for preserving the remaining historical record.
Preservation Microfilming Procedures Standards Throughout the project, participants will adhere to specifications, guidelines, and standards from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), the Research Libraries Group (RLG), and the Library of Congress. These specifications and standards apply to the physical and bibliographic preparation of materials for microfilming; the bibliographic control of microfilm masters for monographs and serials; the preservation microfilming of library materials; processing, duplication, inspection, and quality assurance procedures for preservation microfilm; and the housing and storage of master negative microfilms completed for the project.
The Project Director will work with the institutional project managers to ensure that staff from participating libraries have access to and appropriate knowledge of all standards, specifications, and guidelines to be used in the project. She will conduct a formal workshop on quality assurance procedures for those institutions that have chosen preservation microfilming as their reformatting option in Phase VI at the project workshop in June 2006. If needed and upon the recommendation of the Project Director, USAIN will arrange and finance a follow-up visit by the Project Director to those libraries needing additional assistance with quality assurance procedures. Workforms and guidelines will be distributed to help determine when a microfilm copy is an acceptable preservation replacement.
Searching and Identification
In the course of the bibliographic analysis and selection phase of the project, project staff will search for and identify all relevant titles, using both print and electronic sources. The national bibliographic databases, OCLC and RLIN, will be searched to identify titles, as well as to determine whether titles identified from other sources have already been preserved on archival quality microfilm.
As a result of these and other searching strategies, the project libraries will collect information on which relevant titles have already been microfilmed according to current preservation microfilming standards and guidelines. However, titles microfilmed prior to the development of preservation microfilming guidelines generally do not meet the quality levels necessary to ensure long-term preservation. These titles may be refilmed. A list of titles, both monographic and serial, of those suitably preserved will be provided to the scholarly reviewers in addition to the list that they will be asked to evaluate and rank in order to establish the priorities for the project. This will insure that the reviewers are given an appropriate context in which to judge the importance of material.
Priority one and two materials selected for inclusion in the project will be retrieved from the library’s collection or requested on interlibrary loan from another cooperating library in the state. Because online catalogs may still be inadequate sources for detailed holdings information for serials, project staffs will need to conduct additional searches of manual records as well as shelves.
Physical Preparation for Microfilming
Each of the project libraries microfilming materials in Phase VI will carry out the preparation of materials for microfilming according to guidelines established by the Research Libraries Group for their cooperative projects, and published in the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook (March 1992), pages 20-35.
Physical preparation begins with page-by-page collation of the material to check the order and completeness of individual monographic volumes and serial runs. Every effort will be made to ensure that microfilmed material is complete by obtaining photocopies of missing pages or borrowing missing volumes or issues from other libraries. Items will be identified that need page repair, temporary removal of foldouts, or disbanding (a rare necessity) before they can be successfully microfilmed. Also at this stage, microfilm reel programming for serial titles will take place to prepare the list of volumes and issues being filmed and the reels on which they will appear. This list will appear at the beginning of each microfilm reel for a serial title. Serials will be processed for microfilming in advance of monographs to allow time to locate and obtain any missing issues.
Microfilm targets to be filmed in conjunction with the original materials, including technical targets and bibliographic record targets, will be prepared and assembled by preservation staff, or by the filming agent when so instructed.
Bibliographic Control and Record Distribution
Immediately prior to microfilming, bibliographic records for each title will be entered into the library’s online catalog in conformance with the ARL Guidelines for Bibliographic Control of Microform Masters for both monographs and serials. These documents are based upon existing national cataloging rules and interpretations for creating catalog records, including Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, the CONSER Editing Guide, and the Library of Congress classification schedules and cataloging manuals. If no subject headings are present on existing catalog records, one subject heading will be added. Master negative information will be included in the reproduction note (533) and physical description (007) fields of the MARC record according to national standards. Holdings statements for serial titles will be summarized in the reproduction note (533, subfield M) according to guidelines established by ARL and CONSER. This will ensure that information about the extent of preservation of a particular serial title will be available nationally.
All machine-readable bibliographic records for project materials will be entered into OCLC or RLIN through either direct input or tape loading. Bibliographic records for master negative microforms entered into OCLC and RLIN are exchanged monthly.
Microfilming and Quality Assurance
The institutions microfilming in Phase VI will contract with filming agencies for microfilming services. Each project participant procured at least two bids for services and chose the filming agent most capable of doing preservation quality work at a reasonable cost and within the time of the project. A mention of these procedures for filming is in Section 5, along with names of project staff for each library.
All project participants, or their filming agents, will produce three generations of polyester-based silver-gelatin 35 mm microfilm for each volume in the project, including the camera master negative, a duplicate negative to be used for producing additional copies, and a positive film copy for patron or library use. The microfilm will be produced according to relevant ANSI/AIIM standards and the technical microfilming guidelines published in the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook (pages 36-44).
Joy Paulson will work with the participants to help ensure the quality of the preservation microfilm produced for the project meets national standards. She will conduct a half-day workshop on these issues in June 2006; the focus will be to make certain that project participants have the information they need to develop local QA routines and ensure that the preservation product meets all applicable national standards and relevant guidelines. She will also work with project participants to develop a letter of agreement governing the work of microfilmers. Finally, she may make a site visit to those libraries that need additional help in establishing QA routines.
Project managers will be responsible for ensuring the quality of all film produced for the project. A quality assurance report form will be established for the project to assist libraries in their examination and certification of completed film. In general, the project will follow the quality assurance procedures developed by the Research Libraries Group for their cooperative projects and described in the RLG technical microfilming guidelines. Access to Preserved Materials
Service copies of all microfilms created in the project will be available to users through Interlibrary Loan, as well as on-site in the holding libraries. Copies of the microfilm will be available for purchase at cost by other institutions or individuals, subject to copyright restrictions. The availability of preserved titles will be made known through the distribution of bibliographic records to the national bibliographic databases, OCLC and RLIN.
Storage of Master Negative Microfilms
Duplicate negatives (2Ns) will be maintained by the project libraries in facilities that are appropriate for microfilm storage; they will be used, as needed, to make service copies. All first generation master negative microfilm produced in the project will be sent to the National Library of Agriculture (NAL) as security against any unforeseen damage to the duplicate negative, and for preservation in perpetuity as part of the national preservation program for agriculture and rural life (See Appendix B, letter of support from NAL).
Project materials will be stored according to established temperature and humidity levels set forth in ANSI PH1.43-1985, American National Standard Practice for Storage of Processed Safety Photographic Film. Film enclosures will conform to ANSI IT9.2-1989, Imaging Media- Photographic Processed Films, Plates, and Papers - Filing Enclosures and Storage Containers. The Project Directors have worked with staff at NAL to establish procedures for identifying and labeling master negatives.
Digital Imaging Procedures
Those libraries choosing digital imaging as their reformatting technology will build on the increasingly popular digital conversion approaches articulated by Anne Kenney and others and used in the Making of America I Project at the University of Michigan and Cornell University (Kenney and Chapman, 1996), the Making of America IV Project at the University of Michigan, the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture project at Cornell (Olsen, 1991-1996), and the Core Historical Literature of Home Economics (2000-2002). The procedures used by this project affirm guidelines and best practices that are well established in the preservation community.
Pre-scanning Preparation Most volumes will undergo a simple conversion process. Each volume will be collated page-by-page to ensure that the volume is complete. Pages will be repaired, and replacements for damaged or missing pages provided, as necessary. Pre-conversion treatment will be minimized. Basic bibliographic and descriptive information (total number of pages expected to be scanned; bibliographic data: author, title, publisher, place of publication, and any anomalies, such as missing pages) will be noted and sent to the service vendor with the volumes to be converted.
Scanning The project will incorporate the best practices and standards for digital imaging developed in the NISO Standard for Digital Still Images--Z39.87 (www.niso.org), the Framework for Building Good Digital Collections (www.niso.org/framework/Framework2.html) originally developed by IMLS, and the Digital Library Federation’s Benchmark for the Faithful Reproductions of Monographs and Serials (www.diglib.org/standards/bmarkfin.htm). Text pages will be scanned as true or interpolated 600 dpi bitonal (one-bit) images. Complex illustrations and black and white photographs will be scanned as true or interpolated 300-400 dpi gray-scale (8-bit) images. Color plates will be scanned as true or interpolated 400 dpi color (24-bit) images. At this time the plan calls for all master images be TIFF 6.0, but during the course of the project the feasibility of using JPEG2000 for gray-scale and color images will be examined. Bitonal images will be compressed using ITU Group 4. Gray-scale and color images will be either uncompressed or compressed using lossless compression. The service vendors used by project participants will scan two technical targets, the RIT Alphanumeric Test Object and the AIIM Scanner Test Chart #2, for bitonal and gray- scale images and the Kodak Q-60, IT 8.7 color input target or the GretagMacbeth 24- patch ColorChecker for color images. Because of the age and fragility of the material, the vendor will be required to scan bound volumes with an overhead digital camera.
Scanning will normally begin with the title page, unless specific instructions indicate that endpapers or other materials should be scanned. All tables of contents, prefaces, introductions, indexes, bibliographies, and advertisements will be scanned. Flags will be placed in each volume to indicate where to begin scanning, where to end scanning, and to identify illustrations, maps, and foldouts.
Quality Control of Data Organization
A sampling for inspection and evaluation will be in accordance with the ASQC Z1.9- 1993, Sampling Procedures and Tables for Inspection by Variables for Percent Nonconforming (General Inspection Level II) and ASQC S2-1995, Introduction to Attribute Sampling.
Post-scanning Processing
Page image files will be processed to generate OCR and XML that will enable searching and navigation. The OCR will be uncorrected. The Making of America projects at Michigan (www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp) and Cornell (cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa), the Core Historic Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) project (chla.library.cornell.edu), and the HEARTH (Home Economics Archive: Research Tradition and History) project (hearth.library.cornell.edu) have clearly demonstrated that uncorrected OCR of English language materials provides high levels of accuracy, which allow for full-text searching. Content will be displayed to the user through the page images, which will ensure that the user sees the most accurate representation of the original print material. Digital masters will meet the functionality requirements of the Benchmark for the Faithful Reproductions of Monographs and Serials (www.diglib.org/standards/bmarkfin.htm).
Quality Control and Document Structuring
Preservation project staff will undertake a quality control process for the images. As an ongoing activity, project staff will inspect 100% of the images to evaluate quality. Images will be inspected to ensure completeness, legibility, and placement of the images. (For standards to be employed see Attachment B.) During the quality control process, pagination structure will be noted and document structures will be highlighted using a program developed at Mann Library during the HEARTH project, which will be made available free of charge to the participants undertaking digital imaging. For monographs, the markup will tag structural elements, such as title page, table of contents, indexes, and illustrations, as well as tag bibliographic information, such as title, date of publication, and author. For serial material, the markup will tag for journal title, volume, issue, table of contents, indexes, article title, article author, and abstracts.
Delivery System
Each library will mount their digital images locally. Colorado will use the CONTENTdm system as its repository for digitized material they create for this project. CONTENTdm was developed at the University of Washington by the Center for Information Systems Optimization (CISO), with significant input from librarians. It is an XML database and adheres to the principles of open source file formats, metadata fields, and OAI data provider standards. Its metadata may be exported as XML or ASCII formats for re- import into other database systems. The system has capability for managing compound objects that are represented in this project. There will be search and browse functions provided to the digitized texts. The digitized titles will be made available through the site previously established in phase one of the project, (http://lib.colostate.edu/research/agbib/).
Arizona will adopt a systems analysis process and generate functional and non-functional requirements based on the nature of the digitized materials, access requirements, and interoperability. Several delivery systems will be evaluated and the potential candidates include the library's current content management system using Semantic Web technologies, CONTENTdm, FEDORA, and University of Michigan's DLXS. The system will integrate with other libraries' collections using Open Archives Initiatives (OAI) protocol.
Cornell will develop a federated search infrastructural that will allow both these collections and the CHLA (http://chla.library.cornell.edu) to be search and viewed seamlessly. CHLA currently runs on the DLXS (www.dlxs.org) software maintained by the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services. A website will be designed that will bring together the federated search infrastructure, the searchable database of participating states’ bibliographies designed by Michigan State University, and the essays on agriculture and rural life written by each participating state. Links will be made to the individual collections at Arizona, Colorado State, and Cornell.
Cataloging and Metadata:
Metadata standards and technology continue to evolve, and metadata librarians and information technology staff will need to closely monitor developments. Technical, structural (as described above), descriptive, and administrative metadata will be compiled for each title digitized. Each library will enter records for all reformatted materials into the RLIN and OCLC databases. This project will use the METS (Metadata Encoding Technology Standard) (www.loc.gov/standards/mets) schema and will ensure that all projects are OAI (Open Access Initiative) (www.openarchives.org) compliant. The final version of the PREMIS (www.oclc.org/research/projects/pmwg/premis-final.pdf) has just been released, and Cornell, Arizona, and Colorado will all engage in discussions over the next year about implementation of these standards at their institution. Currently files in the existing CHLA collection use TEILite (Text Encoding Initiative Lite) as the XML mark-up standard.
Original Materials
Volumes digitized in this project will be scanned bound. Material will be disbound only if the text cannot be fully captured due to tight bindings or if the paper is so brittle that the pages break when turned. Conservation staff at each library will provide basic conservation treatment for materials digitized during the project, such as repair of torn pages, replacement of missing or damaged pages, and encasing or boxing of original materials. Past experience leads us to estimate that 25% of the materials will need some treatment. Original material will be retained in the collection as long as the material is usable. When possible the material will be stored in each library’s climatically controlled storage facility to ensure longevity.
Sustainability
Each library undertaking digitization as its reformatting method has made a commitment to the long-term preservation and accessibility of its images. Each of the libraries using this technology in this and future phases will either begin the active development an OAIS compliant repository at their institution that will meet the requirements for certification being developed first by the Digital Repository Certification Task Force led by RLG and the National Archives and Records Administration and now by CRL’s Certification of Digital Archives Project; contract with a third party, such as OCLC, who is in the process of meeting the certification guidelines, or donate copies of their master files to Cornell University, who will undertake this function. Cornell University Library, as one of its highest priorities, has begun a three year project to develop on OAIS compliant system that will meet the certification guidelines being developed by CRL, RLG, and NARA. Cornell has to having such a system built and populated by the end of 2008. As part of it’s commitment to USAIN and the National Preservation Plan for Agriculture, Cornell is willing to donate these services to participants in this project who use digital imaging as their reformatting technology but who will not be able to develop the infrastructure to meet the certification requirements.
Mann Library is eminently qualified to manage this project. An information technology staff of eight full-time programmer/analysts and computer specialists supports digital library projects at Mann Library. The Mann staff is responsible for creating and maintaining a wide array of electronic resources for the Cornell community. Some of these systems are available to researchers throughout the world:
Cornell Library Gateway: (http://www.library.cornell.edu) USDA Economics and Statistics Systems: (http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/usda.html) CUGIR Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository: (http://cugir.mannlib.cornell.edu/)
Mann Library has been a leader in digital imaging projects at CUL. Mann’s early experience in the Chemical Online Retrieval Experiment (CORE) Project included investigating the storage, telecommunications, and interface design issues in delivering the text of journal literature over the campus network. The project resulted in the conversion of 500,000 pages of microfilm text from 22 journals of the American Chemical Society to digital image. An additional 450,000 images were converted to digital images to build the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA). In 1998 Mann also received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to create TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library), a CD-ROM library of over 1.5 million digitized pages from the most important current agricultural journals. The system is being distributed at cost to developing countries as a self-contained library.
Cornell University Library is actively building a world-class digital library, offering access to diverse resources of tremendous depth. Several of these collections clearly demonstrate CUL’s ability to build digital collections of the type that will be developed during this project. Mann Library has created two major electronic collections, HEARTH (Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, and History) (http://hearth.library.cornell.edu), a collection of historic home economics texts and CHLA (http://chla.library.cornell.edu), a collection of historical texts on agriculture and rural life in the United States. The Mathematics Library's digital books project (http://www.math.cornell.edu/~library/reformat.html) has made early mathematics texts available through the Web. The Making of America Project (http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa) was a groundbreaking effort to provide digital access to primary sources in American social history. Cornell has made a commitment to maintain and upgrade these sites as the technology evolves. For instance, CHLA was created during a series of projects undertaken between 1992 and 2001. At the time of these projects there were either no metadata standards of any kind or only evolving ones. In 2004 Mann Library committed the resources necessary update the metadata as much as possible to current standards; move the collection, which was scattered across several websites, into a single site that better met the needs of users; and resolve some long standing copyright issues that had kept some of the texts suppressed. A robust site with almost 2,200 volumes (over 850,000 pages) now exists. We are continuing to digitize more titles to be added to this collection with internal funds and gifts. This work clearly demonstrates Cornell’s ability to manage and care for its digital collections over time, and if fact, our record in this area is excellent. We bring this same commitment to this project. PRESERVATION PROFILES AND PROJECT STAFF
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
The University of Arizona (UA) is a land-grant public institution with an annual budget of over $900 million, serving more 36,000 students with 15,000 faculty and staff. The University, with campuses in Tucson, Phoenix (Heath Sciences) and Sierra Vista, programs in every Arizona county, and a nationally recognized Science and Technology Park, offers more than 300 degree programs through its 14 colleges. It is one of only 16 universities in the US to have colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health, and one of 12 universities with both a college of medicine and a college of agriculture. It is an Association of American Universities member and thus recognized for exceptionally strong research and academic programs. Defining features of UA’s land grant status include explicit statewide responsibilities for agriculture and medicine, with strong outreach services to its many communities.
The University of Arizona Libraries comprise the Fine Arts; Science & Engineering; and Special Collections Libraries and the Center for Creative Photography. Established in 1885, its collections now numbers over 10 million objects, including the nation’s finest examples of primary resource materials on Arizona, the Southwest, and the Borderlands chronicling the region’s growth and economic development, the Native Peoples, the influence and contributions of Spanish and Mexican Peoples, the lives of the pioneers from the late 19th into the 20th century, and the diverse heritage of the region’s languages, arts and religions. The Library maintains a $9.5 million annual budget for purchasing information resources and is ranked 30th among top research academic libraries by the Association of Research Libraries. In 1992 under the leadership of Dean Carla Stoffle, the UA Libraries reorganized its operations into a nationally recognized team-based, learning organization. The Libraries present a biennial conference, “Living the Future,” to share information about this and other working models and to discuss the ever- changing roles and operations of libraries.
Recent Library collaborative achievements to increase information access include: creating the online Arizona Electronic Atlas (http://atlas.library.arizona.edu/), an interdisciplinary interactive web-based resource to customize maps and promote geographic literacy; maintaining and enhancing the Arizona Archives Online database (http://aao.lib.asu.edu/RepositoryList.jsp), which describes the physical collections at three public universities; and providing access to digital images of archival collections relating to Sonora Mexico, located in three Arizona repositories (IMLS and state funds); developing the Rangelands West website (http://rangelandswest.org/) as an important source of information for understanding and managing Western rangelands in 19 states, plus full text articles published in the Journal of Range Management. (Agricultural Research Service funding) (http://jrm.library.arizona.edu); rebuilding the information infrastructure of Afghanistan to reestablish a vital library system beginning with the Library at Kabul University (International Arid Lands Consortium funding); joining 11 academic libraries in eight western states to build a digital library of water resources information for the western US (IMLS funding); and, collaborating with biologists worldwide to create a database-driven Tree of Life online site (http://tolweb.org/) featuring the diversity, history and characteristics of organisms on Earth, for both research and K-12 educational purposes (National Science Foundation funding).
The state of Arizona has yet to develop a comprehensive statewide preservation plan. However, a number of institutions maintain collections of special materials for which standard preservation techniques are employed. These institutions include the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records, the Arizona Historical Society, the Arizona State Museum, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona. Preservation techniques used for special materials include environmental controls (temperature, humidity, and lighting), protective enclosures, and archival repairs to damaged materials. Microfilming, photocopying, and digitization of materials are not routinely employed to preserve materials in these collections but are occasionally used to provide customer access to the content of extremely fragile materials.
Preservation efforts for materials in the general collections of the three university libraries focus on repair, binding and rebinding, and phase boxing. Collections are not systematically examined to identify damaged materials, but items are replaced or microfilmed when damage is identified by customers or library staff in the course of routine use. In 1990, a preservation planning committee at the University of Arizona Library presented a report outlining recommendations including the addition of a preservation officer, allocation of resources and education to support preservation, improvement of environmental conditions, and inter-institutional coordination. A preservation team at Northern Arizona University commissioned a 1993 survey by AMIGOS to assess conditions and environment in their building. Arizona State University appointed a preservation officer in 1996. The Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records is one of very few state participants in the U.S. Newspaper Program having its microfilming recommended by the Library of Congress. In this endeavor, all of the microfilming of Arizona newspapers meets and usually exceeds the high standards established by the Library of Congress.
Staff at Arizona institutions rely on an informal network to communicate with and advise each other on preservation concerns and strategies as currently, no formal statewide plan or structure exists to support preservation activities in Arizona. The Arizona State Library provides preservation support within the state through workshops. Project Staff
The University of Arizona’s contributions to the project will be co-managed by Marianne Stowell Bracke, an assistant librarian on the Science-Engineering Team, and Yan Han, a systems librarian of the Digital Libraries and Information Systems Team. Support will be provided by Doug Jones, a full librarian on the Science-Engineering Team and co-author of the bibliography that originally identified the materials to digitize; Amy Verheide, assistant archivist for digital projects in the UA Library’s Special Collections; and Jan Davis, library specialist in the UA Library’s Special Collection.
Bracke will coordinate the activities of the project participants, manage the budget, create progress reports, assist with the creation of metadata, seek copyright clearance for materials as needed and develop cooperative agreements with other institutions that hold materials identified in the bibliography for digitizing. Han will set the technical specifications for digitizing (in accordance with international standards and best practices), develop metadata creation procedures, create a content management system for the digitized files to provide web-based access, and oversee quality control and system evaluation issues.
Jones is not only the co-author of the bibliography on which this project is based, he has also been an agricultural subject specialist for over 20 years and contributes an in-depth understanding of the UA Library’s collections. Verheide will provide expertise in digitizing archival materials and advise on materials in need of basic conservation. Davis will oversee the retrieval of materials from Special Collections and the preparation of materials (checking the item for completeness, fragility of materials, etc.) to be sent out for scanning, advise on materials in need of basic conservation, and assist in copyright clearance issues.
In addition, a Library Ad Hoc USAIN Project Committee will be formed to provide additional expertise and support for the project. Members will include Bess de Farber, the Grants and Revenue Manager, as well as other staff from the Science-Engineering Team, Special Collections, the Digital Libraries and Information Services Team and the Interlibrary Loan Department. Cataloging will take place under the direction of Marda Johnson, Team Leader for the Technical Services and Archival Processing Team.
Plan of Work
The University of Arizona proposes to preserve materials from its extensive collection and throughout the state of Arizona relating to rural agriculture from 1820 to 1945. UA will convert approximately 1,000 volumes to digitized format using a team approach of 10 internal staff with the digitization process performed by an outside vendor. The team consists of members from Special Collections, Science & Engineering, Digital Library & Information Systems, and Facility Operations utilizing supervised, high-level students whenever appropriate. The bibliography was initially created for Phase II of this grant and completed in 2000. Arizona’s Phase II project team included Doug Jones; Teresa Salazar, Special Collections librarian; Jane Matter, agricultural subject specialist librarian; and Robert Mautner, retired former director of the UA Science-Engineering Library. A scholarly panel of historians and scientists ably assisted the bibliography project team with extensive experience in the study of Arizona agriculture and rural life.
In order to prepare volumes for shipping, a tracking database will be developed and the condition of volumes will be cleared for shipping, or routed to be repaired if necessary. The database will track the library source, whether or not the material has copyright clearance, date item was removed for shipping, expected return date and shipping tracking information. Upon completion of the database, outside libraries holding materials to be digitized will be contacted to gain commitment to participate in the preservation project. These materials will be received by UA and processed along with UA materials. For materials lacking copyright clearance, staff will request clearance. Those with clearance will move through the preparation process of verifying completeness, legibility and condition of each volume; filling in or replacing missing pages; and identifying items for basic conservation. Materials will then be carefully packaged for shipping and the mail clerk will track each package’s route, both to and from the vendor.
The vendor will be required to use an overhead digital camera to scan bound volumes due to their fragility. Volumes will be digitized using standards and best practices such as NISO’s A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections and Western States Digital Imaging Best Practices. Digitized materials will meet the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials
Following receipt of digitized files, UA will carry out quality control for digitized images. As an ongoing activity, project staff will check 100% of the images to evaluate quality and quantity. Images will be inspected for quality, completeness, legibility, and file naming. In addition, a document structuring process will be carried out for ease of future access. Metadata (e.g., title, author, subjects, volume/issue/article title (for serials)) and structural information (e.g., table of contents, indexes) will be prepared. Permanent identifiers will be attached to each digital object and objects will then be loaded to the content management system best suited to the project. At this point, all the data files will be shared with Cornell University in order to be maintained at a mirror site.
UA recognizes that both digital and non-digital preservation are vital to the mission of the library. UA will support the digital preservation practice and infrastructure that meets international standards and best practices to ensure continuous and permanent access to preserved digital resources, including viability, render-ability, and understandability of digital resources over the long-term. More specifically, the library will adopt a digital preservation policy that will govern storage, maintenance and sustainability issues regarding all digital materials. The following describes additional technical specifications required to carry out the project.
Digitization
Text pages will be scanned as 600 dpi one-bit images. Complex illustrations and black and white photos will be scanned as 400 dpi 8-bit images. Color plates will be scanned as 400 dpi 24-bit images. The current plan is to generate lossless TIFF files as all master images, but an ISO new standard, JPEG 2000 will be evaluated for the purpose of preservation and access.
Image files will be OCR’d to generate indexes to enable full-text searching. The OCR will be uncorrected. Similar projects previously managed by UA such as The Making of America and Rangelands demonstrated that uncorrected OCR of English language materials provides high levels of accuracy for full-text searching. Digital images will be displayed to ensure future users see the most accurate representation of the original print materials. A file naming conversion, based on ISO-9660, will be used for consistent file naming.
Delivery System
The project team will adopt a systems analysis process and generate functional and non- functional requirements based on the nature of the digitized materials, access requirements and interoperability. Several delivery systems will be evaluated and the potential candidates include the library's current content management system using Semantic Web technologies, CONTENTdm, FEDORA, and University of Michigan's DLPS. The system will integrate with other libraries' collections using Open Archives Initiatives (OAI) protocol.
Metadata
Bibliographic metadata information will be collected through OCLC MARC records and edited if needed. The MARC records are high quality, cataloged by professional catalogers using controlled vocabularies; and they are already in most libraries' Integrated Library Systems (ILS). The ILS will be interoperable with the delivery system to provide additional access points for digitized materials. A crosswalk of MARC to an appropriate metadata format of the delivery system (e.g., Dublin Core, METS) will be deployed. The project team will evaluate Preservation Metadata Framework (PREMIS) (http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/), and communicate with related organizations. When appropriate, the team will focus on implementing preservation metadata as an important part of digital preservation. Sustainability
As mentioned above, the project team will evaluate preservation metadata based on an ISO archiving standard, Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model. In addition, the project team will evaluate persistent identification technology (e.g., DOI, Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL)), and implement an appropriate solution. The solution will guarantee unique and permanent identifiers and may contain context information for the materials, which enable persistent identification and interoperability for the current and future digital environment.
Budget
Item Sponsor Cost-Share Total Salaries and fringe benefits $72,855 0 $72,855 including Pre and Post Processes for Cataloging Digitizing $31,000 0 $31,000 Computer Server - Setup $11,000 $11,000 Travel $3,810 0 $3,810 Supplies, shipping, $6,335 0 $6,335 insurance, misc. costs Total Direct Costs $125,000 0 $125,000 Total Indirect Costs Waived $61,250 $61,250 (49%) Grand Total $125,000 $61,250 $186,250 COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
Colorado State University was founded in 1870 as the Agricultural College of Colorado. CSU is the land-grant university in the state and enrollment stands at more than 25,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. The University focuses on the interrelated areas of education, research, and outreach. CSU is committed to excellence in advancing the frontiers of knowledge, providing intellectual and cultural leadership, preparing students for life-long roles as productive citizens and thinkers, and striving always to improve the human condition.
The CSU Libraries (CSUL) includes Morgan Library, the main library on campus, and two branch locations (atmospheric sciences and veterinary sciences). Together the libraries collections include over 1,933,280 volumes. The CSUL are members of the Association of Research Libraries, the Greater Western Library Alliance, and the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. The CSUL provide a user-focused, technologically savvy, and barrier-free access/seamless delivery of services. The Libraries are concerned with intellectual integrity, preservation of the institutional scholarly record, promotion of collaboration, and innovation. CSU is a leader in the promotion and implementation of electronic capabilities both in public services and technical services, as exemplified by an array of electronic resources it provides.
CSUL has a strong commitment to the preservation of its collections and preservation outreach activities in the state and region. An early participant in the ARL/OMS Preservation Survey, CSUL has a nearly twenty-five year commitment for preservation activities that built upon its original Binding Section. The department maintains a preservation lab, conducts preservation assessments of collections and environmental monitoring and provides training to staff and community groups. Statewide preservation outreach services include the Wei T’o Book Dryer and Insect Exterminator Service Center. CSU Libraries staff are founding members of the Preservation Roundtable of the Colorado Association of Libraries.
The CSUL are active in local and regional digitization projects and the Libraries possess technical and administrative expertise as well as the hardware and software for digitization. The cooperative digitization experiences include the development of digital collections funded by state and federal agencies and organizations, such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Collaborative Digitization Program. CONTENTdm, digital collection management software developed by DiMeMa, Inc. (http://contentdm.com/), is currently in use for digital image capture, indexing, metadata development, and data storage. Its features include batch import, multiple object views, customizable search functionalities, Dublin Core support, digital rights management, user profiles, web-based interfaces, OAI compatibility, and WorldCat link. The CSUL possess staff with relevant expertise in digitization of materials in a time-efficient manner. Current digital projects include the Water Resources Archive (http://lib.colostate.edu/archives/water/) where content has been contributed for use in the regional Western Waters Digital Library project, and the Germans from Russia Collection (http://lib.colostate.edu/gfr/) which features oral histories documenting the Russian German immigrants and their families’ lives as agricultural laborers in Colorado.
Project Staff
Diane Lunde, has a B.A. and M.A. in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin —Madison. Before coming to Colorado State University in 1984, she was a cataloger at the University of Wisconsin—LaCrosse and South Dakota State University. Diane is currently Coordinator of Preservation Services which includes the Preservation Lab, Binding Section, Marking Section and Preservation Projects. Diane has spearheaded and managed projects to microfilm CSU theses, was co-principal investigator for the Germans from Russia Project funded via the Collaborative Digitization Program from a grant from IMLS, and was lead in the design of preservation recovery procedures when CSUL experienced flooding to more than 500,000 volumes. She is past-president of the Colorado Preservation Alliance and past chair of the Preservation, Archives, and Special Collections Section of the Mountain Plains Library Association. Diane will be PI for the CSUL project. She will be responsible for the overview of the project, vendor relations, monitoring digitization, overseeing budget and web site activities.
Alicia Conrardy, Library Technician III, will create MARC records for materials as needed and will manage the metadata using CONTENTDM.
Plan of Work
All activities will follow the specifications of “Digital Imaging Procedures” as prepared by the Mann Library, Cornell University
Project staff will work with the Project Director, USAIN, and other institutions which are digitizing materials in this phase to ensure that specifications and standards are met. In this regard CSU’s principal investigator with attend a meeting to be held by the Project Director.
Pre-scanning Preparation
The preparation phase for scanning will involve page by page collation for completeness from either CSUL owned materials or via interlibrary loan or arrangement with other owning libraries. Diane Lunde will train project staff, direct and oversee the preparation of materials. Project staff will identify materials that will require additional action because of condition or missing information. If pages repairs are needed these will be referred to the CSUL preservation lab if owned. If pages are missing, photocopies will be obtained by interlibrary loan from other libraries. Basic bibliographic and descriptive information including number of pages to be scanned and any publication or condition anomalies will be noted and sent to the service vendor with the volumes to be converted
Scanning CSUL will outsource scanning to meet the specification requirements. Bids were obtained from three vendors, with the selection determined by the cost for the project and adherence to the digitization specifications. Because of the age and fragility of the materials, the vendor will be required to scan bound volumes with an overhead digital camera.
Quality Control of Data Organization
A sampling for inspection and evaluation will be in accordance with the ASQC Z1.9- 1993, Sampling Procedures and Tables for Inspection by Variables for Percent Nonconforming (General Inspection Level II) and ASQC S2-1995, Introduction to Attribute Sampling.
Post Scanning Process
CSUL will receive materials post scanning and tag images that have particular characteristics users might be interested in, such as title page, table of contents, and illustrations.
Quality Control and Document Structuring
CSUL will follow the quality assurance routines that are advised by the Project Director as well as develop local routines. Project staff will inspect 100% of the images to evaluate quality. The work of the vendor will be examined by project staff with any defects in quality addressed with the vendor for remedy. During the quality control process, pagination structure will be noted and document structures highlighted using a program developed at Mann Library.
Delivery System
CSUL uses the CONTENTDM system for its digitization of local materials. CONTENTdm was developed at the University of Washington by the Center for Information Systems Optimization (CISO), with significant input from librarians. It is an XML database and adheres to the principles of open source file formats, metadata fields, and OAI data provider standards. Its metadata may be exported as XML or ASCII formats for re-import into other database systems. The system has capability for managing compound objects that are represented in this project. There will be search and browse functions provided to the digitized texts.
The digitized titles will be made available through the site previously established in phase one of the project, http://lib.colostate.edu/research/agbib/. CSUL will also create access via the Colorado Agricultural Archive web site (http://lib.colostate.edu/archives/agriculture). Cataloging and metadata
MARC records will be created for materials that have not been cataloged, or previously part of a serial title without analytic access. The records will then be “cross-walked” to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) standard, as embodied in the Western States Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices (WSDCMBP). In terms of metadata structure, CONTENTdm supports the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and Element Refinements recommended by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
Budget
ITEM SPONSOR COST-SHARE TOTAL Salaries Diane Lunde 15% $ 19,492 Alicia Conrardy 3% $ 3,554 Project Ass’t 50% $ 36,000 Total $ 59,046 $ 59,046 Fringe Diane Lunde $ 3,957 Alicia Conrardy $ 724 Project Assistant $ 7,308 Total $ 11,989 $ 11,989 Searching cost @ $ 553 $ 553 $ .52 each Digital Services $ 24,800 $ 24,800 Travel (2 persons) $ 7,064 $ 7,064 Supplies & Mailing $ 1,500 $ 1,500 Total Direct Costs $ 104,952 $104,952 Total Indirect $ 36,313 Costs Waived (34.6%) Grand Total 141,265
Staffing: Salaries and Fringe: Diane Lunde will oversee the two year project at 15% of her time. She will be assisted by a temporary hired half-time project assistant. Alicia Conrardy will assist with providing metadata for digitized titles. More of her time will be expended in the second year of the project.
Searching Costs: There will be search costs to derive MARC records from OCLC to use in creating metadata for electronic titles.
Digital Services: Materials selected fro digitizing will be outsourced. Bids have been received and costs based upon the lower bid. Travel: Travel covers the costs of two staff members to attend the two-day project managers start-up meeting at Cornell. The cost includes airfare, lodging, meals, ground transportation, mileage and parking.
Supplies: Basic supplies and mailing costs for shipping materials to the vendor. THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
During USAIN: The Kentucky Chapter, The University of Kentucky Libraries will develop a comprehensive bibliography of published materials relevant to the study of agriculture and rural life in Kentucky for the period 1820 to 1945. The University of Kentucky Libraries maintains extensive collections of monographs, serials and dissertations focused all aspects of agriculture, forestry, human environmental science and land sciences. One of the unique strengths of the UK Libraries’ collections is the literature on the equine and tobacco industries, both of which were and remain, cultural as well as economic forces shaping the state’s heritage. The University of Kentucky will work with other libraries in the state, such as the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, the Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Ag Extension facilities and other institutions to identify the target collection, approximately 7,000 volumes, from which the bibliography will be compiled. The project will employ a six- person Scholarly Review Panel to rank titles in identifying the most important 25%. The completed bibliography will contain approximately 2,500 to 5,000 titles.
During the first year of The Kentucky Chapter, a Project Assistant will be hired to compile the bibliography, create the database and develop promotional materials. The UK Libraries Co-Managers will provide training, guidance and problem solving. The Project Assistant and the Co-Managers will convene two meetings of the Scholarly Review Panel, one to explain the project and the ranking system and the second to debrief and discuss the final results. In the second year, UK Libraries will continue to promote the project, will resolve any problems encountered and will make plans for the preservation phase of the project. In short, 12 months will be needed to compile the bibliography, and six additional months will be required to review and correct the bibliography as well as to prepare the proposal for the project’s second phase.
Project Staff
Jo Staggs-Neel, Agriculture Librarian at the University of Kentucky’s Agriculture Information Center, will provide overall coordination of USAIN: The Kentucky Chapter. She will train and supervise the Project Assistant. She will assist with the review of materials and will arrange for site visits at other institutions. She will facilitate Scholarly Review Panels and assist with the preparation of the plans for the preservation phase of the project. Ms. Staggs-Neel formerly served as serials librarian for the university’s science and engineering libraries and provided public services in the College of Architecture Library.
Valerie Perry, Head of the Agricultural Information Center, will assist Ms. Staggs-Neel with the coordination of the project. She received a B.S. in English and a M.S. in Library Science from the University of Kentucky. Prior to her current position, she was the Public Services Librarian for the Agricultural Information Center. She has been active in the United States Agricultural Information Network and has served leadership roles in the Special Libraries Association and the Kentucky Library Association. Becky Ryder, Head of Preservation Services at the University of Kentucky Libraries, will assist with promotion of the project, will participate in the Scholarly Review Panels and will prepare plans for the preservation phase of USAIN: The Kentucky Chapter. From 1992 to 2004, Ms. Ryder managed the SOLINET Cooperative Preservation Microfilming Projects at UK. She has served on the UMI Advisory Board for ProQuest, and she is currently a member of SOLINET’s Preservation Advisory Council and the Kentucky State Historical Records Advisory Board. Ms. Ryder currently co-manages The Kentucky Test Bed, a 2-year project funded by NEH and facilitated by the Library of Congress to create keyword searchable digital images of Kentucky newspapers from microfilm.
The Project Assistant will compile and review materials for inclusion in the comprehensive bibliography. The Project Assistant will travel with Ms. Staggs-Neel to repositories throughout the state to evaluate titles and to inventory holdings. The Project Assistant will create and maintain the project database using EndNote software and the MSU AgBib template. The Project Assistant will be a 12-month, full-time temporary appointment.
Scholarly Review Panel
A Panel of six scholars will rank the compiled bibliography according to USAIN ranking system. The Panel will meet two times: once to receive an overview of the project and the ranking methodology and secondly to debrief on the outcome of the rankings and to discuss the process. The Panel includes experts in the fields of human environmental science, rural sociology, agricultural history, animal science, agronomy and veterinary medicine. Brief biographies of the Scholarly Review Panel are included below.
Suzanne Bratton Badenhop received her Ph.D. in Household Economics and Management from Cornell University. She has served for 34 years as an educator, researcher, administrator and Cooperative Extension professional at the University of Georgia, Purdue University, Oregon State University and currently at the University of Kentucky. Her areas of expertise include financial management, estate planning, retirement planning, investing, basic financial planning, and household equipment. She has published approximately 100 articles and extension publications on these subjects and has served as a consultant for industry and state government.
C. Milton Coughenour received his Ph.D. in Rural Sociology from University of Missouri. Since 1953, he has held faculty or administrative positions at the University of Missouri, Ohio State University, the University of Queensland [Australia] and the University of Kentucky. At the University of Kentucky, he has served as Associate Chairman of the Department of Sociology and is currently Emeritus Professor of Sociology. Dr. Coughenour’s areas of specialization include social organization, technological change, farming systems, agriculture structure and international agricultural development. He has authored over eighty professional publications and directed 49 theses and dissertations. Dr. Coughenour’s research has won him recognition from professional societies such as Southern Rural Sociology Association and Rural Sociological Society.
Mary Wilma Massey Hargreaves received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe College. She has held faculty appointments at the University of Kentucky since 1964 including the Hallam Professor of History and currently serves as Emeritus Professor of History. Dr. Hargreaves’ areas of research include the agricultural history of the Northern Great Plains, dry land agriculture and land utilization. Dr. Hargreaves is the author of numerous articles on agriculture and farming and has served as Associate Editor or Co- Editor for six volumes of the Papers of Henry Clay. She has held leadership roles in the Agricultural History Society and the Organization of American Historians.
Virgil Wilford Hays received his Ph.D. in Animal Nutrition from Iowa State University. At Iowa State University, Dr. Hays served as a Research Assistant, Professor and later as the Assistant Director of the Agricultural and Home Economics Experiment Station. Since 1967, he has served the University of Kentucky Animal Sciences Department as Professor, Department Chair, Scovell Distinguished Professor and currently as Emeritus Professor. Dr. Hays has published more than 100 refereed journal papers, 160 scientific abstracts and numerous other popular press articles, symposium papers, trade magazine articles and book chapters.
James R. Rooney received his D.V.M. from Cornell University. He is diplomate emeritus of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists. He has taught and conducted research on horses at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania- New Bolton Center; the Equine Health Trust, Newmarket, England; the Royal Veterinary College-Sweden and as the Director of the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center in Department of Veterinary Science at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Rooney has worked and lectured throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in England, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He is recognized as an authority on equine lameness and biomechanics. He is author of many scientific and popular articles on horses, including eight books on anatomy, pathology, and orthopedic diseases. Currently he serves as Professor Emeritus of Veterinary Science at the University of Kentucky.
Norman L. Taylor received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Dr. Taylor has served as a faculty member in the University of Kentucky Agronomy Department since 1953 and currently holds the title of Emeritus Professor of Plant and Soil Science. His primary research area is the breeding and genetics of forage legumes, especially clovers. Dr. Taylor has authored 2 books, 17 book chapters, 117 journal articles and 36 Extension and public service publications. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Crop Science Society. Budget
Project Budget NEH UK Total Valerie Perry 10% $6,946.00 $6,946.00 Jo Staggs-Neel 20% $12,493.00 $12,493.00 Becky Ryder 2% $1,662.00 $1,662.00 Project Assistant to be Hired $33,000.00 $33,000.00 Total Salaries $33,000.00 $21,101.00 $54,101.00
Total Benefits @faculty rate, 36-38% $7,856.00 $7,856.00
USAIN training at ALA meeting for 2 people at $1000 per person $2,000.00 Mileage across state at $ .42 mile for 700 miles to review collections and to reimburse Scholarly Panel mileage $294.00 Total Travel $2,294.00 $2,294.00
Honoraria (6 @ $500) $3,000.00 $3,000.00
Direct Costs $38,294.00 $28,957.00 $67,251.00
Indirect Costs (waived; but counted as UK Cost Share) $24,882.87 $24,882.87
Total Costs $38,294.00 $53,839.87 $92,133.87
A full-time Project Assistant will be hired. As a temporary employee, the Project Assistant does not receive fringe benefits. Mileage expenses are being requested for the purpose of reimbursing the Scholarly Review Panel members who will travel from out- of-town to attend two meetings in Lexington and for the Project Assistant and Project Co- Manager to visit other repositories across the state as necessary, including locations in Louisville, Frankfort, Princeton, and Quicksand.
The University of Kentucky requests $38,294.00 to support the project. The University of Kentucky will contribute $53,840 as cost share. The University has agreed to waive the indirect costs for this project; however, they are represented in full as part of the University’s cost share. A budget summary is listed below. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
The University of Maryland came into existence in 1856, chartered by a group of local landowners interested in having their sons educated, especially in the ways of agriculture. As the area prospered, the Maryland Agricultural College grew, adding engineering and liberal arts to its curriculum. In 1920, it was joined with the University of Maryland in Baltimore to form the basis of a statewide system of higher education.
In 1988, the University of Maryland, College Park was designated the state’s flagship in a system that included 11 state universities, colleges and several research centers, with a specific mandate to become nationally recognized for its education and research. Since that time, the university has been on a fast track to prominence, building on its traditional strengths in agriculture, engineering, business, the humanities, and education while expanding to meet new demands in the areas of social concerns, information technology, biological sciences, and the arts. Today the University of Maryland has approximately 35,000 students, 3,661 faculty, 300 buildings and 220,000 alumni.
Throughout the years the university has strived to improve undergraduate education. The university offers challenging academic initiatives, such as the University Honors Program, College Park Scholars, First Year Focus, and other courses clustered around student interests. These programs have attracted ever-more academically talented students to the university. Maryland now enrolls about 20 percent of an increasingly talented pool of applicants. Concerted efforts by the university to diversify the student body and faculty and staff, improve the quality of life on campus, and elevate the scholarly climate have achieved a transformation in culture and expectations that permeates every aspect of the university.
The University of Maryland has a strong reputation as a research institution, with excellence in mathematics, physics, history, computer science, economics, engineering, information technology, journalism, business, public affairs and other fields. Funding for sponsored research both from the federal government and private foundations has shown impressive growth over the last 10 years. The university’s proximity to USDA, NASA/Goddard, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Army Research Laboratories, and the National Security Administration, among many others, has driven much of the basic research at the university.
The University of Maryland is recognized as a national public research university. The reach of the university’s research and the reputation of its faculty is known and judged by a broad audience of experts throughout the United States. Its diverse students and faculty are recruited nationwide. The impact of its excellence in teaching and research carries well beyond the borders of Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region.
The University of Maryland’s seven libraries contain more than 3.1 million volumes, more than 5 million microform documents, more than 33,000 current periodical and newspaper subscriptions, two million government documents, 400,000 maps and an extensive collection of records, music compact disks, films and slides. It is the largest university library collection in the Washington metropolitan area. The Libraries’ special collections include the Marylandia Collection, the Katherine Anne Porter Collection, the Gordon W. Prange Collection of artifacts and publications from Occupied Japan, and several archives, including the National Public Broadcasting Archives, the Library of American Broadcasting, and the photograph morgue of Baltimore’s now defunct News American newspaper, which published continuously under several different names from 1796 to 1985. Specialized libraries in architecture, art and art history, engineering, physical sciences, and chemistry have recently been joined by the Performing Arts Library housed in the new Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
The Libraries are focused on the ways information and communication technology are changing traditional library practice, providing online catalogs and databases with links to libraries around the state and around the world. The Libraries’ newly established Digital Collections and Research program investigates new technologies providing UM students, faculty, and staff with enhanced access to information. The Library’s Digital Collections include photographs documenting the early days of broadcasting from the Library of American Broadcasting, World’s Fair materials from the Architecture Library, and sheet music and sound recordings from the holdings of the Performing Arts Library. Electronic access to journals, research data, and primary resources, as well as streamlined search processes and education of students in these new tools are an important part of the libraries’ mission.
The Preservation Production Group manages preservation and conservation for all UM Libraries general and special collections housed in seven buildings. The Preservation Group consists of the following subdivisions: the Conservation Team; the Brittle Materials, Reformatting, and Mass Deacidification Team; and the Bindery and End Processing Team. The Preservation Production Group Leader oversees a staff that includes three professionals who lead the aforementioned teams, four full time staff members of the Bindery and End Processing Team, two half-time graduate assistants, and four FTE student assistants. The Preservation Group has a conservation lab fully equipped for general collections conservation and an ultrasonic welder for polyester film encapsulation. For film inspection, the Preservation Group has a densitometer, a light table, rewinds, a Dukane reader, microscopes, and a clean inspection area for preservation microfilm inspection. The Preservation Group also has responsibility for the Libraries’ disaster preparedness and salvage plan and all supplies required to implement the plan. A program is in place to monitor and react to the climate of library buildings on an ongoing basis. We provide advice related to preservation issues in exhibiting library materials. As part of the responsibility to make preventive preservation a part of the institutional work ethic, the Preservation Group oversees an ongoing program of training and communication about preservation issues.
The annual workflow for the Preservation Group includes 20,000 volumes sent to the commercial bindery; and 18,000 volumes bound or repaired in-house. The Preservation Group also oversees contract conservation projects and a brittle books program that includes the preservation photocopying and microfilm programs for all UM Libraries. The Preservation Group manages the Libraries’ preservation microfilm contracts, including for the following collections: The NEH funded
Djuna Barnes project which has just ended; the Katherine Anne Porter NEH funded project, the Performing Arts Library’s Coopersmith Collection, the Broadcast Pioneer Library’s Gaines Scrapbooks, The National Public Broadcasting Archives Current newspaper, and the McKeldin Scrapbooks.
On an ongoing basis, the Preservation Group prioritizes new initiatives in mass deacidification, reformatting, digitizing, replacement and conservation to solve general collection condition problems identified in our 1989 condition survey. The Preservation Leader chairs the Preservation Committee to incorporative library-wide representation into the formation of these initiatives. The Library Executive Committee has recognized our initiatives by including preservation in the UM Libraries Mission Statement and Strategic Plan.
In 1997, UM Libraries’ first professional conservator set up a state of the art collections conservation lab to manage conservation of all collections to current professional standards. Second only to the Library of Congress, the Preservation Group leads the region with its mass deacidification initiative. From 1996 to 2000, the Preservation Leader managed the National Agricultural Library’s cooperative agreement with UM Libraries to process, preserve and make accessible the USDA History Collection. This agreement has not only accomplished an important project for NAL and created opportunity for partnership with the UM College of Library and Information Services, but funded the two graduate assistantships in the Preservation Group. In recent years, the Preservation Group has hosted a University of Texas Preservation and Conservation Studies field study student, been a star attraction on “Maryland Day” with its “Make a Book” program and exhibits, and gathered faculty and professionals to discuss critical preservation issues in the highly successful “Who Wants Yesterday’s Papers?” symposium. The future for the Preservation Group promises variety, innovation and productivity.
Project Staff
Identification of titles for reformatting
The University of Maryland is currently participating in Phase V. In December 2004, USAIN project staff completed the compilation of a bibliography of Maryland’s agricultural and rural literature published between 1820 and 1945. In January 2005, a panel of four reviewers ranked titles in the bibliography, identifying those titles that would be selected for microfilming in Phase VI. The review panel included Mary Mannix, Director of the Maryland Room at the Frederick County Public Library, Dr. G. Terry Sharrer, Curator of Health Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Mark Varner, Professor of Animal and Avian Sciences and Extension Dairy Scientist at the University of Maryland, and Dr. Edgar Young, Professor Emeritus of Animal Science and former chairman of the Department of Animal Science at the University of Maryland. USAIN project staff will begin working with the highest ranked titles in this list of prioritized items, identified in Phase V.
To avoid duplication of preservation reformatting effort, USAIN project staff will search for existing preservation microfilm copies in the OCLC and RLIN bibliographic utilities, and in other appropriate print and on-line sources. Staff will also confer with principal investigators and other associated staff when selecting titles for inclusion into the project. Titles found that are already available as an acceptable preservation microfilm will not be included in the filming project. Titles for which the search has yielded no preservation microfilm will be designated for inclusion.
Selected titles will be entered into the University of Maryland Brittle Materials database, a relational database built in Microsoft Access used to track preservation decisions made on UM brittle materials. Project staff will maintain bibliographic control and access of each item by updating the processing status code in the University of Maryland’s online catalog.
Preparation for Preservation microfilming
Project staff will collate each title to be filmed and flag potential problems for the microfilm vendor. Staff will also create bibliographic targets for each volume, based on the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook (Mountain View, CA: Research Libraries Group, 1992). Every effort will be made to complete texts prior to filming. Project staff will obtain missing texts through the UM Interlibrary Loan Department or through colleagues at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, the Frederick County Public Library, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Frostburg University, and the National Agricultural Library, who have agreed to lend titles not held by the University of Maryland.
During collation, project staff will note that some titles may not be sturdy enough to undergo microfilming and therefore may require conservation attention. Such volumes will be evaluated by the UM Conservation Team and stabilized via boxing, repairing, or rebinding. The Conservation Team will not undertake such treatments on volumes not owned by UM without prior permission of the owning institution.
Project staff will program each microfilm reel, determining the titles to be filmed, the reduction ratio, and the sequence. Each reel will contain up to ten (10) titles. As the titles are prepared in this reel programming effort, staff will follow the RLG Guidelines and pay particular attention to RLG Guidelines for Microfilming to Support Digitization (Mountain View, CA: Research Library Group, 2003). This will enhance future digital conversion of the microfilm reels, should UM choose to do so. After materials are collated and programmed, staff will create shipping lists, box the items, and send them to the vendor, according to agreed-upon shipping schedules.
Preservation Microfilming
The University of Maryland plans to microfilm the following quantities: #Titles #Pages Monographs 458 80,738 Serials 61 180,800
Microfilming will take place according to the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook and the RLG Guidelines for Microfilming to Support Digitization The contract microfilm vendor will follow the guidelines, procedures, and standards indicated in the volumes, in order to produce a superior product.
Bids have been requested from two (2) reputable preservation microfilming vendors, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), and OCLC Preservation Service Centers. Price estimates for the work are summarized below:
Price quotations from
Material Volumes Pages PresRes NEDCC Monographs 458 80,738 Serials 602 180,800 -
Summary: 261,538 $68,000 $94,000
We will prepare a Request for Proposal (RFP) to microfilm the USAIN grant materials. Based on our initial bids, we anticipate that OCLC will be selected to produce master negative, print master, and service copy generations of microfilm.
The film vendor will perform work according to a contract governing the work of the filmer producing finished preservation microfilm for University of Maryland. The contract specifications cover all relevant technical, bibliographic, and procedural operations that affect the quality of the finished film products. The technical and procedural operations adhere to the specifications, guidelines, and standards of AIIM, ANSI, NISO, and RLG.
After selected volumes are filmed by the vendor, quality assurance will be done by Project staff, following the guidelines in the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook for the three generations of microfilm. The Project will employ standardized quality control report forms, completed one per title by the filmer and Project staff. Project staff will perform a full bibliographic inspection on the microfilm reader (inspect for completeness of targets, order, image quality, and legibility) for all (100%) positive (3P) service copies. Staff will then perform a full technical inspection on all generations of microfilm in the first shipment. The technical inspection will involve a visual inspection for defects of the film, reel, string tie, box, and label. It will also involve taking density and resolution readings. All film must conform to the RLG Guidelines. If film is found defective, it will be returned to the vendor for correction. If all the film is found to be technically satisfactory, project staff may elect to inspect a percentage of future shipments for technical conformity.
Bibliographic Control
After microfilm has been deemed bibliographically and technically acceptable, the University of Maryland will create catalog records. Bibliographic records already exist for many of the titles; therefore the project will be adding microfilm item records only for those titles. Other titles may require original cataloging.
Staffing
The Maryland project team will be led by Susan Koutsky, Team Leader for Brittle Materials, Reformatting, and Deacidification. Ms. Koutsky has extensive experience in the preparation and quality control aspects of preservation microfilming. She has managed previous microfilm projects at the University of Maryland including the NEH- funded Barnes/Freytag-Loringhoven papers, the Library of American Broadcasting scrapbook collections, and the Washington Business Journal and Baltimore Business Journal newspaper collections. She supervises a team of library technicians, a graduate assistant, and student assistant employees in preparation and inspection procedures. She will confer with Ann Hanlon and Doug McElrath regarding titles selected for filming and for disposition decisions related to originals. Koutsky will supervise the preparation of all materials for filming, work with the filmer, and oversee all post-filming inspection and processing. She will train a 20-hour per week student assistant on preparation and inspection procedures.
Ann Hanlon, Project Archivist for the Department of Archives and Manuscripts, will co- manage the project. Ms. Hanlon coordinated the compilation and review of the Maryland bibliography in Phase V.
Gordana Ruth, Original Cataloging Production Group Leader, will oversee the cataloging and train and supervise a 20-hour per week student assistant.
The contributions of the project staff for this two-year project will include the following: Principal Investigator: 15% of FTE Co-Investigator: 10% of FTE Selector / collection managers: 5% of FTE; and 5% of FTE Cataloging supervisor: 5% of FTE Student Assistant: 20 hours per week (1 year) Student Assistant: 20 hours per week (2 years) Availability of microfilm
University of Maryland will make available all microfilm created in this project through the University Libraries’ Interlibrary Loan Division, and will sell at cost all filmed titles, following current copyright statutes. Films will be available on-site at the University of Maryland campus.
Storage of microfilm
Master microfilms will be sent to the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, following the standard procedures for this USAIN preservation effort. Printing masters (2N) will be stored at OCLC Preservation Service Centers in Bethlehem, PA. Service copies (3P) will be available for public use in the Periodicals Division in McKeldin Library on campus at the University of Maryland.
Disposition of original materials
It is expected that all original materials microfilmed will be retained in the collections. Budget
USAIN USAIN / / NEH NEH UMD UMD Name/title of position Year 1 Year 2 Year 1 Year 2 Total Principal Investigator (Susan Koutsky) 15%@$50,000; 2 YR $7,500 $7,500 $15,000 Co-Investigator (Ann Hanlon) 10%@$42,000; 2 YR $4,200 $4,200 $8,400 Selector (Doug McElrath) 5%@$64,000; 2 YR $3,200 $3,200 $6,400 Preservation Manager (Yvonne Carignan) 5%@$69,000; 2 YR $3,450 $3,450 $6,900 Cataloging Supervisor (Gordana Ruth) 5%@$54,000; 1 YR $2,700 $2,700 Student Assistant (graduate hourly) (.5 FTE); 2 YR $10,000 $10,000 $20,000 Student Assistant (graduate hourly) (.5 FTE); 1 YR $10,000 $10,000
Fringe Benefits (25%) $5,263 $4,587 $9,850
TOTAL SALARIES AND FRINGE BENEFITS, Year 1 and Year $26,31 $22,93 2 $20,000 $10,000 3 7 TOTAL SALARIES AND FRINGE BENEFITS $30,000 $49,250 $ 79,250 DIRECT COSTS Microfilming by OCLC $34,000 $34,000 $93,000 Access Fees OCLC Cataloging $4,000 $0 $4,000 Travel $1,000 $1,000 $2,000 Total Direct Costs, Year 1 and Year 2 $35,000 $35,000 $4,000 $0 Total Direct Costs $70,000 $4,000 $74,000 INDIRECT COSTS Indirect Costs* (37%), Year 1 and Year 2 $9,852 $9,851 Total Indirect Costs $19,703 $19,703
$40,16 $32,78 Totals, Year 1 and Year 2 $55,000 $45,000 5 8 $172,95 TOTALS $100,000 $72,953 3
* Indirect costs waived by the University of Maryland, College Park are 37% of the funds requested or $37,000
SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY South Dakota State University was established in 1881 as the land grant university for South Dakota and has a longstanding history of support for agriculture and agricultural education.
The collections of the South Dakota State University’s Hilton M. Briggs Library are strong in the agricultural sciences and rural life of South Dakota. Areas of study supported by the library’s collections include agribusiness and agricultural resource economics, agricultural systems technology, agronomy, animal science, dairy manufacturing and production, environmental management, family and consumer sciences, horticulture, human development and family studies, landscape design, nutrition and food science, range science, veterinary science, and wildlife and fisheries sciences.
The library’s South Dakota collection is one of the state’s most important centers for studies about all aspects of the state of South Dakota. In addition, the library holds in its collections large runs of publications from the university’s Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service. Many of these materials have already been microfilmed, including circulars, special reports, leaflets, bulletins, and annual reports.
Project Staff
This preservation project will be co-managed by Nancy Marshall and Lisa Lindell. Nancy Marshall is an Associate Professor and Documents Librarian at South Dakota State University's Hilton M. Briggs Library. She has degrees in Library Science, Communication Studies & Journalism, and Organizational Communication & Public Relations. She is responsible for organizing, maintaining, and providing access to the library's collections of U.S. government documents, microforms, maps, and curriculum materials and for providing specialized reference services for these collections. In addition, Ms. Marshall is the library's subject bibliographer in the areas of Animal & Range Sciences, Dairy Science, and Plant Science.
Lisa Lindell is Catalog Librarian and Professor at South Dakota State University. Ms. Lindell received M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and South Dakota State University and a B.A. degree from Augustana College. She is responsible for providing bibliographic access to the library’s resources, both print and online. Her research interests include library history and regional, local, and family history. She has contributed articles to several history journals.
Support staff will assist in the verification and location of titles and the compilation of selected citations. The project team will also be assisted by a scholarly panel of historians and scientists.
Scholarly Review Panel A Panel of six scholars will rank the compiled bibliography according to USAIN ranking system. The Panel will meet two times: once to receive an overview of the project and the ranking methodology and secondly to debrief on the outcome of the rankings and to discuss the process. The Panel includes experts in the fields of human environmental science, rural sociology, agricultural history, animal science, agronomy and veterinary medicine. Brief biographies of the Scholarly Review Panel are included below.
Dr. Charles R. Berry is an Adjunct Professor, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at South Dakota State University and Leader, South Dakota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, U.S. Geological Survey. He holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, an M.S. from Fordham University, and a B.S. from Randolph-Macon College. His teaching responsibilities involve graduate-level courses Fish Structure and Function and Stream Ecology and Management. Dr. Berry’s current research and publishing includes extensive work on fish communities in South Dakota streams and rivers. He has been instrumental in developing an aquatic Gap project in South Dakota. Under his leadership the South Dakota Cooperative Unit received the 1994 Division of Cooperative Research Award for Outstanding Science and the 2003 South Dakota Conservation Educator of the Year Award from the South Dakota Wildlife Federation. Dr. Berry was also named as a 1998 Berg Fellow by the Soil and Water Conservation Society.
Dr. Kevin D. Kephart is Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences at South Dakota State University and is Director of the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station. He received a Ph.D. in crop production and physiology from Iowa State University in 1987. He earned an M.S. degree from the University of Wyoming in 1982 and a B.S. degree from Montana State University in 1979. He served on the faculty of South Dakota State University from 1986 to 1998 as a forage crops research agronomist. He has been active in national efforts during the past four years to broaden the role of land-grant colleges and universities to include development of renewable energy technologies and biobased products. He has provided national leadership on implementation of the Sun Grant Initiative, an initiative authorized by Congress in January 2004 to enable land-grant institutions to conduct research, Extension, and educational programs on ag-based renewable energy.
Dr. John E. Miller is Professor Emeritus of History at South Dakota State University, where he joined the faculty in 1974. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.A. degree from the University of Missouri. He has published extensively in the areas of U.S. cultural and political history, small town history, and Midwest and South Dakota history. His books include Governor Philip F. La Follette, the Wisconsin Progressives, and the New Deal (1982); Looking for History on
Highway 14 (1993); Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town (1994); and Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend (1998). In 2003, he was the recipient of the Robinson Memorial Award, the highest and most prestigious award given for history in South Dakota.
Dr. Meredith M. Redlin is an Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at South Dakota State University. She holds her Ph.D from the University of Kentucky, M.A.L.S. from Hamline University, and a B.A. from Macalaster College. Dr. Redlin has been published in disClosure, The Southern Quarterly, Liberal Studies, and Tempest Magazine. Her area of interest is rural and environmental sociology with specific focus on local food systems and agricultural development, race and ethnic diversity in rural communities and rural society, rural community planning and development, and theories of environmental constructions of the Great Plains region of the United States.
Plan of Work
Project managers Nancy Marshall and Lisa Lindell will compile a bibliography of published materials relevant to the study of agriculture and rural life in South Dakota and coordinate the scholarly review of the titles. A library technician at South Dakota State University will assist with the searching of OCLC WorldCat and the compilation of citations.
The South Dakota State University library will solicit cooperation from the South Dakota State Library, South Dakota State Archives, and other institutions in South Dakota to supplement the bibliography.
Four scholarly reviewers will work with the project directors to rank the titles according to their priority for preservation. Compilation of the results and the ranked lists of titles will be completed in one year. The top 25% of the estimated universe of titles will be microfilmed and cataloged in the next phase of the project.
Ms. Marshall will supervise the support staff and coordinate work with the scholarly reviewers and Ms. Lindell will oversee the bibliographic and technical services aspects of the project. Ms. Marshall and Ms. Lindell will devote 10% of their time to the project and the library technician will contribute 40% time.
Budget
NEH SDSU TOTAL Salaries $20,634 Nancy Marshall $ 5,920 10% 5,878 Lisa Lendelll 10% 8,836 Library Tech 40% Fringes $ 3,645 $ 3,645 Travel $ 3,046 $ 3,046 Honoraria $ 2,000 $ 2,000 (4@$500) Services/Supplies $ 1,497 Software 3 @$299 $ 897 OCLC $ 600 Indirect Costs $ 9,172 $ 9,172 TOTAL $30,822 $ 9,172 $39,994 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON/WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
The effort to preserve Washington state’s agricultural literature will be a partnership between the University of Washington and Washington State University. The University of Washington (UW), founded in 1861, is the oldest state-supported institution of higher education on the Pacific coast. Washington State University (WSU) was founded in 1890 as the State Agricultural College and School of Science. The climates and soils of Washington vary greatly and these geographical differences are reflected in the divergent industries in each region and in the collections of the UW and WSU Libraries. Both the University of Washington and the Washington State University Libraries are committed to identifying and preserving the agricultural, forestry, and fisheries literature of Washington state.
The University of Washington Libraries serves more than 3,000 faculty and 35,000 students in addition to the larger communities of Washington state and the Pacific Northwest. It ranks among the top 15 research libraries in North America, with a collection of over 6 million cataloged volumes and as many microforms. A number of area studies collections rank in the top tier nationally including Canada, East Asia, Russia/East Europe, Scandinavia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The holdings of the Special Collections division are unsurpassed in documenting the history of the Pacific Northwest. Strong forestry and fisheries collections at the University of Washington demonstrate the importance of these industries to western Washington.
The College of Forestry was established in 1907 and the Forest Resources Collection grew with the college and the industry. The School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science was founded in 1919 and was the first school of its kind in the United States. The Fisheries- Oceanography Library collects literature in oceanography and marine biology, as well as marine and fresh water fisheries biology, fish culture, and conservation. For this project, the University of Washington Libraries will rely heavily on its Forest Resources, Fisheries-Oceanography, and Special Collections in addition to the agricultural collections at Washington State University.
As the land-grant institution, Washington State University has emphasized agriculture as a central part of its mission. The collections of the Washington State University Libraries therefore are particularly strong in the agricultural sciences and rural life of Washington state. Primarily housed in the Fisher Agricultural Sciences Library and Owen Science and Engineering Library, these collections contain much unique information. Besides rare agricultural journals, the Libraries hold hundreds of important theses and dissertations, and the papers of early agriculturalists and Extension scientists. The Libraries has successfully digitized various smaller collections and is beginning to mount Extension publications, but has not been able to preserve the great body of early agricultural information this project would cover.
The University of Washington Libraries served as one of three test libraries for the Association of Research Libraries Preservation Study Project in 1981. The Libraries has long-standing programs in book repair and commercial binding and has created microfilm since the 1960s. A preservation replacement program was established in 1991 and a full- time preservation administrator was appointed in 1998. In 2002-03, total preservation staff was 17.24 FTE with expenditures of $965,826 primarily in staff costs and binding. A pilot mass deacidification project also began in 2002. For more information about preservation at the University of Washington Libraries, see the Preservation website at http://www.lib.washington.edu/Preservation/.
The Libraries has been involved in several grant-funded microfilm projects. In 1982-83 the Libraries filmed 337 newspaper titles as part of a U.S. Department of Education Title II-C grant. From 1987 to 1991 the Libraries also participated in the NEH-funded United States Newspaper Program that was coordinated by the Washington State Library. The Libraries continues to microfilm approximately 90 Washington state newspapers.
Cooperative preservation has been furthered through regional activities, including a regional preservation listserv and a regional preservation conference in 2000, both hosted by the University of Washington Libraries. The Washington Preservation Initiative, proposed by the University of Washington Libraries and funded by the Library Services and Technology Act, began in fiscal year 2003 and provides continuing education, a statewide preservation needs survey, and a preservation grant program. In 2004-05, the Libraries hosted the IMLS-funded Pacific Northwest Preservation Management Institute which provided preservation training to 22 archivists, curators and librarians from cultural institutions in the region. grant program.
Project Staff
Washington’s project manager will be Stephanie Lamson, Assistant Preservation Librarian at the University of Washington. The project team will include: Cindy Stewart Kaag, Interim Assistant Director for Public Services and Outreach at Washington State University; Gary Menges, Preservation Administrator at University of Washington; Carol Green, Forest Resources Librarian; and Louise Richards, Head of Fisheries- Oceanography Library.
As a former employee of the Albert R. Mann Library, Stephanie Lamson has worked on several grant-funded reformatting projects, including two digital imaging projects to preserve and make more accessible the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. She also has experience with the methodology of bibliographic analysis and scholarly evaluation to be used for this project.
Cindy Stewart Kaag, Interim Assistant Director for Public Services and Outreach at Washington State University, will coordinate the grant for her institution. She is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Science and Technology at WSU. She contributed to Cornell's Core Literature of the Agricultural Sciences project and has written on collection development and evaluation issues. Most recently she has published two articles on journal preservation techniques. She represents WSU on the National Agriculture Library's AgNIC information network effort. Gary Menges is Preservation Administrator for the University of Washington Libraries and teaches the Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials course at the University of Washington's Information School. He will assist with grant administration. He has served as director for several grants projects, including the "American Indians of the Pacific Northwest" digital project (http://contentdev.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/index.html) and is former Head of Special Collections at the UW Libraries. He initiated the Washington Preservation Initiative, chairs its Advisory Committee, and moderates PreserveNW, the regional preservation listserv.
Carol Green, Forest Resources Librarian, will serve as a consultant for the project. Working with faculty and students, she has been responsible for the collection and maintenance of the forestry collection since 1986. She is Coordinator for the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) Unit 6.03, Information Services and Knowledge Organization and serves on the IUFRO Task Force on Information Technology and the Forest Sector. She has consulted on several projects including a World Bank project in Indonesia in the early 1990s.
Louise M. Richards, Head of the Fisheries-Oceanography Library at the University of Washington, will also serve as a consultant for the project. As a Science reference librarian, she has extensive experience with the collections at the UW, especially the historical literature in fisheries. Ms. Richards has taught information literacy courses to students in fisheries and other natural resource areas and recently published an article on the course development and evaluation process. She also serves on the UW Libraries Preservation Program Advisory Committee.
Plan of Work
Identification of Titles to be Filmed
The completed bibliographies contain 2,317 titles distributed among the three subject areas as follows: 231 titles for Fisheries; 604 titles for Forestry; and 1,482 titles for Agriculture. If a title covered more than one subject area, it is included on the agriculture bibliography. Of the 2,317 total titles, about half (1,142 book and serial titles) will be eligible for microfilming in the next phase of this grant since 482 (21%) were pamphlets, 641 (28%) were theses and 52 (2%) were preservation microfilmed. The University of Washington Libraries hopes to obtain funding from another source to microfilm pamphlets and theses in the future.
In order to microfilm 5% of the literature ranked most important for preservation by the scholarly review panel, the University of Washington Libraries is requesting funding to film 20 serials and 50 books (an estimated total of 250,000 pages). Due to the monetary constraints of the grant during this phase, the University of Washington Libraries is unable to request the estimated 400,000 pages (100 serials and 185 books) required to microfilm the top 25% of the literature. We expect that the University of Washington Libraries will hold many of the titles to be microfilmed; however, we also anticipate gathering materials from Washington State University Library, the Washington State Library and others as needed.
Staffing and Travel
Stephanie Lamson, Assistant Preservation Librarian, will contribute her time to manage the project. She will attend project meetings organized by Cornell University at American Library Association Conferences. As project manager, she will confer with the project team and other subject librarians as needed when selecting titles for microfilming and when arranging interlibrary loans for significant amounts of material. She will also train and oversee project staff preparing materials for filming and performing quality control on the resulting microfilm. A Library Technician II (.5 FTE) will be hired to work on the project part time as well as two student assistants (.5 FTE).
Microfilming Process
Titles identified as priorities for preservation by the scholarly review panel will be tracked throughout the microfilming process using a Microsoft Access database. A search form will be created for each title and the Library Technician II will search OCLC, RLIN, and other appropriate sources for existing preservation microfilm in order to avoid duplication of effort. If no acceptable preservation microfilm exists, project staff will retrieve the volumes and update circulation records. Staff will carefully collate the volumes and note any missing text or legibility problems. Staff will also flag volumes when needed to provide the camera technician with targets or other instructions.
Every effort will be made to film titles complete. Washington State University and the Washington State Library have agreed to loan materials to University of Washington as needed for this project. We have already identified them as the other primary holders of these titles. If WSU and WSL do not own the missing materials, project staff will obtain missing materials from other Orbis Cascade Alliance libraries, Seattle Public Library, or through interlibrary loan. We will make special arrangements with other institutions as needed. Project staff will consult with subject librarians whenever they are unable to compile a complete run of a serial title.
Staff will adhere to the microfilming guidelines provided in Fox’s Preservation Microfilming, RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook, and RLG Guidelines for Microfilming to Support Digitization. Targeting and reel programming will be completed by project staff. All targets will be provided in envelopes labeled with the master negative number and accompany the volumes for the reel in the order to be filmed. Once filming is completed project staff will perform a frame-by-frame quality control of the service copy. Any problems with targeting, filming order, or image quality will be returned to the filmer for reshoots. Bids were requested from two preservation microfilmers: Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) and OCLC Preservation Service Centers. Price estimates for filming 100 serials and 185 books (an estimated total of 400,000 pages) were $129,150 for NEDCC and $106,093 for OCLC Preservation Service Centers not including tax and shipping. OCLC Preservation Service Centers will be our microfilm vendor. Their Western Service Center microfilming facility located in Lacey, Washington will work with us closely. We have experience working with them since 2003 and they will pick-up and return materials to UW via van as part of their contract.
The microfilm vendor will perform work according to the preservation microfilming standards, guidelines and specifications of AIIM, ANSI, NISO, and RLG. OCLC Preservation Service Centers have completed work for several other NEH-USAIN grant- funded projects in earlier phases of this grant.
Cataloging
Staff in the UW Libraries’ Serials and Monographic Services Divisions will prospectively catalog all titles to be filmed. Preservation project staff will use the updated catalog records for microfilm targeting. Given the age of these materials and their cataloging records, cataloging staff estimate that they will contribute $35-$50 of their time per title to upgrade old print records and provide new microfilm records.
Conservation
Project staff will note any volumes in need of repair or stabilization prior to microfilming and this work will be contributed by conservation staff in the UW Libraries at no cost to the project. Similarly, project staff will also note volumes needing repair after filming and forward these to conservation for appropriate treatment. We expect that a number of volumes will need protective enclosures to protect them from further damage once filming is completed.
Availability of Materials and Publicity
The UW Libraries will make all microfilms created in this project available in the Microforms and Newspapers Collections as well as through interlibrary loan. We will also provide duplicate service copies at cost. Master negatives will be sent to the National Agricultural Library according to the procedures established for this project. Print negatives will be stored at the OCLC Preservation Service Center in Bethlehem, PA, in their secure and environmentally controlled vault. The UW Libraries will contribute the costs for shipping master negatives to NAL and the ongoing cost for storing print negatives at the OCLC Preservation Service Center.
All original materials microfilmed will be retained in the collection. Some titles may be moved to Special Collections or off-site shelving after filming. At the conclusion of the project we plan to broadly announce the availability of both the bibliographies and the completed microfilm to institutions and organizations in the region, including: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, Pacific Northwest Historians Guild, Museum of History & Industry, Washington State Historical Society, Washington State Grange, and the Center for Columbia River History.
Budget
MICROFILMING: TOTALS 250,000 pages by OCLC Preservation Service Centers plus tax $72,722
STAFFING: Library Technician II (.5FTE) salary $28,976 Fringe Benefits for Library Technician II (30.8%) $8,925 Student Assistant (.5FTE) salary $16,640 Fringe Benefits for Student Assistant (11.1%) $1,847
Total Staffing $56,388
TRAVEL: Transportation, hotel, and meals for ALA Annual Conference meetings $2,445 TOTAL COSTS $131,555 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLLECTIONS
ARIZONA
“Oh yes, said Senator Wade of Ohio. I have heard of that country (Arizona)—it is just like hell.”
This quote from Lawrence Clark Powell’s Arizona: a History (1990) describes the typical attitude of 19th century politicians. It was an attitude formed, in part, by the agricultural troubles of many of Arizona’s early settlers—from the Spaniards to the Mormons. And even though Spanish explorers crossed Arizona almost 70 years before the English landed in Jamestown, the region was so remote and inhospitable, that it remained a virtual frontier until it attained statehood in 1912.
For 3,000 years before Mormons came to Arizona, Native Americans successfully planted and harvested crops. In the 1200’s, the Hohokam developed sophisticated irrigation systems, allowing them to harvest what was native to the desert: mesquite pods, agave, saguaro fruit, cholla buds and the greens of wild plants as described in Arizona: A History (1995) by Thomas E. Sheridan. The Upper Piman Indians who called themselves “Oodham” or “the people,” were another agricultural success story. They strategically planted along the mudflats of the Gila and Lower Colorado Rivers. Perhaps the area’s most ingenious farmers were the Hopi Indians, situated in northern Arizona, who successfully grew crops in the mantle of sand along their mesas. The sand trapped rainfall and snowmelt, allowing the Hopis to thrive in a land that averaged a mere ten to thirteen inches of rain per year.
The flavor and texture of Arizona agriculture and society changed with the arrival of Spanish explorers and missionaries who traveled north from Mexico in the early 1500’s. Settlements created by the Spanish missionaries in the Pimeria Alta (encompassing what is now southern Arizona and northern Sonora) in the late 1600s were the most lasting to date. The Jesuits wanted to settle Native Americans in villages, where conversion could take place more easily. Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino and his fellow missionaries knew that in order to convert the Indians, they had to change the way they lived. Thomas E. Sheridan explains that the Pimas appreciated the material gifts that Kino gave them: grain seeds, vegetables, fruit trees and small herds of livestock. These small, yet non-native gifts would play a significant role in Arizona’s agricultural and socio-economic history. Many of Arizona’s agricultural struggles center around the introduction of European plants and the quantity of water needed to sustain them.
The discovery of silver by a Yaqui Indian in 1736 initiated a long struggle between European entrepreneurs and Jesuit missionaries. The miners and ranchers, interested in using Native American labor and resources, argued for removal of Native peoples from villages. The miners and ranchers persevered. Franciscan missionaries replaced the Jesuits after their expulsion from the area in 1767. The University of Arizona Library holds two outstanding 20th century archives of these Franciscan missionaries, which provide insight into Native American culture and society. Berard Haile (Papers, 1893-1961) worked extensively with the Navajos and his papers deal with their religion and mythology. Francis J. Upleggar (Papers, 1867-1964) describes the Catholic missions and the lifestyles of Arizona’s Apache Indians.
Many miners led a nomadic life, and most pioneers who came to Arizona to get rich in the mines actually had to eke out a living by farming and ranching. Native Americans had to fight to preserve their agricultural lifestyle. Land became the symbol and the battleground between the budding capitalists from the eastern states, immigrants from Europe, and aboriginal Americans. The literature of the day reveals that the end of the 18th century in Arizona was a time of struggles between Spanish and other European settlers, Mexicans, and Native Americans. Variations and manifestations of this struggle continue today.
Mormons arrived in Arizona in 1877 and, like the Native Americans before them, saw their relationship with the land and agriculture as a spiritual quest. Agriculture represented the Mormon values of hard work, order, cooperation and companionship. The first Mormon missions were located around the Colorado Plateau. In order to survive in a harsh desert environment, characterized by isolation and drudgery, settlers adopted a cooperative lifestyle. Labor, food, and property were shared. Isolation was difficult because the communities consisted mostly of the young and the poor. Though cooperation was reflected in the literature of the community, the community was not without hierarchy. A board of directors distributed work tasks, albeit often unevenly. Mormon settlements saw both rebellion and desertion, and successful farming was often just a vision.
Away from the Colorado Plateau, Mormon settlements were more successful. In northeastern Arizona, Mormon farming and society thrived. Families like the Udalls and the Flakes prospered, but many other Mormon pioneers wandered without ever finding their oasis on the desert. Mormon farming successes also brought problems, especially as Mormons bought and successfully farmed land around Mesa, Arizona. They became social and political targets in a landscape radically changing because of railroads, immigration, and the Mexican wars. An effort to legally disempower the Mormons began in 1885 with the passing of a state law forcing Mormons to take a loyalty oath against polygamy. For many years, Mormons would remain targets of politicians and newspaper editors.
The University of Arizona Library has vast documentation of Mormon settlements in Arizona. In addition to published resources such as Mormon Settlement in Arizona (1921) by James H. McClintock, Arizona’s official historian from 1919-1928, the collections include the primary research resources such as the papers of David King Udall and Eliza Luella Steward (grandparents of Congressman Morris K. Udall) and the autobiography and diary of James Pace (a Mormon frontier settler). The papers of Congressman Morris K. Udall also provide insight into Mormon settlements in the state. In the late 19th century the railroads inextricably changed Arizona landscape and society. The railroads blurred the lines between the frontier west and urban east. Prior to the railroads, cattle played a small part in Arizona’s agricultural life. In the late 1860’s, however, ranchers and the railroading entrepreneurs became one. This was the result of a Congressional act that gave the Atlantic and Pacific Railway the land for the track they laid. This meant that influential interests could purchase large tracts of land in the railroad corridors. As this squeezed the Anglo and Mexican farmers and ranchers, it made room for cattle conglomerates in Arizona. The literature of the day reflects the conflicts that arose and festered between independent farmers and ranchers who were forced out by the conglomerates. The boom in cattle did not last long. Drought and over-stocking brought disease and death to thousands of cattle, and the destruction of rangeland. New products had to supplement cattle for the business interests, now fully entrenched in the Arizona landscape.
Copper and cotton took the place of cattle. The expansion of copper mining occurred in the 1870’s. Powerful corporations and ambitious tycoons bustled in the expansion of mining. Between 1872 and 1921, 870 million pounds of copper was mined in Clifton, the oldest copper town in Arizona. The railroads had a profound effect on the production of copper. With the excavation of more and more copper veins, copper companies realized that they needed to get into the railway business in order to deliver copper to market. Rail companies and copper mines struggled over who owned and laid tracks, while agricultural land diminished even more.
The railroads brought new immigrants into Arizona, among them the Chinese, beginning in 1878. The harshness of the sun-scorched desert was the reason given for using Chinese to lay railroad tracks. Chinese workers, hired for a dollar a day, laid a mile of track per day. When the railroads moved on, the Chinese stayed and built small but successful farming communities along the river beds of southern and eastern Arizona. They also worked in Arizona’s new boom business: mining. In the first half of the 20th century, drought, racism and the changing ownership of real estate forced them to leave Arizona or to change to a more independent livelihood such as truck farming, grocery or restaurants.
In 1885 the territorial legislature established the University of Arizona in Tucson as the state’s land-grant college. The 1887 Hatch Act provided for the establishment of agricultural experimental stations, and subsequent federal direction established the Cooperative Extension Service. The publications of these agencies reveal an active role in helping Arizona families in the areas of agricultural and natural resources, home economics, community development and youth development—especially through the 4H program. The climate of southern Arizona became a drawing point in the early 1900’s for people suffering from lung ailments such as asthma and tuberculosis. The hot, dry climate of the Sonoran Desert was just what the doctor ordered for respiratory ailments due to the lack of any other effective treatments at the time. The railroads helped spur the appearance of resorts and entire communities to cater to wealthy invalids; the poor settled for suffering in tent cities.
The railroads also made it possible for readers inspired by works such as John Wesley Powell’s diary and writings of his explorations of the Grand Canyon, and Clarence Dutton’s geologic history of the region, to experience and view one of the natural wonders of the world. The Santa Fe Railroad reduced the cost and time to travel to the Grand Canyon and triggered a tourist influx that made Arizona the Grand Canyon State. Tourism in the 1920’s became an industry, and the family-owned car in turn led to an even greater proliferation of all that goes along with it: gas stations, restaurants, curio shops, campgrounds, highways, etc. A mobile population was targeted by Arizona’s largest cities, Phoenix and Tucson, as resorts for wealthy visitors, and havens for retirees wanting to escape the northern winters. With extreme ranges in elevation and temperature, the varied landscape of Arizona also proved to be a magnet for the scientific community, attracting anthropologists, botanists, archaeologists, and climatologists to study its natural and human history.
The University of Arizona Library’s holdings of published materials and primary resources provide both historical and intimate views of the effect of the railways on agricultural and rural life in Arizona. For example, the Library holds the letters and legal papers of Semmes Ives, a lawyer who represented many of the railroad businesses. The Library also owns a colorful history of the railways, entitled The Planning of a Transcontinental Railroad through Southern Arizona 1832-1870, a thesis written in 1948.
The exploitation of Arizona’s natural resources met with resistance from individuals of varied backgrounds, notably art critic John C. Van Dyke, entrepreneur and miner Ralph Cameron, botanist Forrest Shreve, and agronomist Robert Forbes—all of whom published their views. With an increasing number of people moving to Arizona, there was an increasing awareness of a need to protect and preserve the natural beauty and cultural heritage of the state. At the turn of the century, Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in establishing national forests, monuments, parks, and land management areas. Today, almost 44% of Arizona’s land is under federal ownership.
An abundance of water brought on by the completion of Roosevelt Dam in 1911, and the demand for cotton for the war effort, ushered in the Arizona cotton explosion. In 1916 less than 7,500 acres of cotton were cultivated in the state; by 1919 this had grown to 82,000 acres. As with railroads, mining, and cattle, large businesses held most of the cotton land. Tire companies, in particular, who needed the fiber for their products settled in the state. Mexican laborers, who had been called on for mining and railroad work, provided the large number of workers needed in the cotton fields. With the end of World War I, the cotton market fell and the cotton explosion turned into bankruptcy. Farmers and business alike were affected, and Arizona’s farm population declined by 20 percent between 1920 and 1925. Labor strikes and the environmental degradation which had turned the Southern Plains into the “Dust Bowl,” diminished the American cotton industry in the 1920’s though cotton remained an important crop in Arizona. Migrant laborers who worked the fields became the targets of Federal quota acts and the newly formed Border Patrol. Overworked and destitute farm workers from Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas passed through Arizona on their way to California, many staying a season or two to work in the fields. The literature of the day reveals that dust, drought, and their effects left an indelible mark on Arizona’s agricultural, rural, ecological, social, and political landscape.
Arizona’s economy was severely affected during the Depression. But with the advent of World War II it experienced a revival that lasted for decades. Copper was needed for munitions and machinery, and there was a demand for beef, hides, and cotton. Air bases were built to train pilots year round in the clean desert air. After the end of the War, the state saw a phenomenal amount of growth in population and new industry. With the advent of refrigerated railway cars, much of the acreage that had once been planted in cotton was converted to crops, such as lettuce, alfalfa, vegetables, and citrus. This in turn increased the demand for water—the wild card in Arizona’s landscape.
The history of Arizona and its agriculture revolve around water control. The Hohokam tried to control water with their sophisticated canals and so did the Mormons. However, it was not until the 1900’s that Arizonans adopted a philosophy of domesticating water. This philosophy ushered in a profound new relationship between Arizonans and the federal government. The literature surrounding the construction of the Salt River Project, Roosevelt Dam, and the Central Arizona Project—all huge waterworks programs— document the solidification of an uneasy relationship between the federal government, Arizona agriculture businesses, and the ever-growing multi-national corporations. The history of these projects is key to understanding Arizona agricultural and rural history.
Real estate replaced cattle and cotton as the new speculative project in the last part of the 20th century. Subdivisions displaced ranches, orchards, and fields. Undaunted by desert temperatures and shaky foundations, developers have moved into rural areas to plant golf courses and build air conditioned homes Land fraud, always a problem in Arizona, became epidemic in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
The expansion of urban centers into rural land has been accompanied by air pollution, traffic congestion, and competing water demands to meet residential, industrial and agricultural needs. Arizona’s economic base changed from the Four C’s (cattle, cotton, citrus, copper) to service industries and high tech manufacturing in the electronics and aerospace fields. Farmers continue to fight to protect their land and water rights as Arizona becomes more and more urban. Agriculture, however, continues to play a key role in the state’s economy and even as Arizona once again transforms itself. The history of cattle and cotton in Arizona is well represented in the collections of University of Arizona Library. Candidates for preservation include state and federal documents concerning Arizona water and agriculture issues. Descriptions of Arizona found in publications such as the Journal of Arizona History (1960--) include overviews of Arizona’s agricultural and rural history. The literature that makes up the history of Arizona’s agricultural and rural life reflects the forces and activities that helped to forge Arizona’s path to its present status. Since printing did not begin in Arizona until 1860, written accounts by explorers, missionaries, settlers, entrepreneurs, and businesses were sent out of the territory to be printed. Many accounts by ranchers and merchants are still in their original handwriting. Publications of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads make up part of the literature, as do agencies such as the Commission of Agriculture and Horticulture, the Colorado River Commission, the Crop Improvement Association, the Farm Bureau Federation, and the Pima Cotton Growers Association. The University of Arizona and the Agricultural Extension Commission produced, and still produce, a vast number of publications.
COLORADO
Colorado has the distinction of being the highest state in the country with an average altitude of 6,800 feet. This seems like an unlikely stronghold for agriculture, but there is far more to the land than stately snow-capped peaks and deep mine shafts. The landscape of Colorado includes majestic mountain ranges along most of the western side of the state. The east is characterized by rolling plains and farmlands. Water is a precious resource throughout the state. “The Colorado System,” instituted during the late nineteenth century provides a legal guarantee of priority water use to the first person or agency productively diverting it from a natural stream.
Early travelers to the region had little thought of staying here. They planned to return to their home as soon as they made a "stake" or found the bodily vigor the climate was expected to give. For many though, the lure of the west that had drawn them across the plains held them fast to this land. Over the years, the miner, the soldier of fortune, the hunter and trapper, the stockman, the farmer, the professional woman, and the health seeker became community builders and in due time qualified Pike's Peak country as the state of Colorado.
The valleys of Colorado have been critical to the development of agriculture. The first valley below the northern state line is the Cache-la-Poudre. It was one of the earliest settled and best faming valleys in the state. Here you found the Union Colony at Greeley and the Agricultural Colony at Fort Collins. About seventeen miles south is the Big Thompson Valley. Early in history trappers inhabited the St. Vrain Valley. It was the first area of the state said to have fenced and "properly improved" farms. Boulder Valley was a famous wheat-growing section. Ralston, Bear, and Clear Creek Valleys are in the area near the city of Denver. The South Platte Valley and the Arkansas Valley include vast stretches of arable land reaching from the foothills to the eastern most limit of the State. West of the Arkansas tributaries, and past the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is San Luis Park, watered by the Rio Grande and its feeders, the Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, and others.
In 1540 Vasquez Coronado, a Spanish adventurer set out for an expedition whose passage along the base of the Rocky Mountains is the first upon record. He came up from the south, passing to the Rio Grande del Norte, following this stream until he entered san Luis Park and then through the pass of the Sangre de Cristo. He came up until he reached what is now Long's Peak, in the northern part of the state.
Major Zebulon N. Pike led the first major expedition to the area later known as Colorado. His main objective was the find the source of the Arkansas. On November 15 of 1805 he came to what had been called Mexican Mountain, now known as Pike's Peak. He tried unsuccessfully to ascend it. Returning to the plains, he crossed the Divide between the Arkansas and South Platte and ended up along the Grand, in the western part of the State.
In 1819 Col. Long's expedition set out from Pittsburgh and striking the mountains near Fort St. Vrain, on the stream of the same name, he saw for the first time the peak named in his honor. Long traversed the base of the mountains through the entire length of the territory. During this exploration Dr. James ascended the Mexican Mountain, or Grand Peak. Long tried to name it after James, but found that Pike's name has been fastened to it by the settlers in a way it could not be changed. Col. Freemont’s expedition in 1842 passed through the South Platte, Big Thompson, Cache-la-Poudre, and Crow creeks up to Fort Laramie and then across the range to the Pacific. Up to this time there were few white settlers in the country. The Pawnee, Cheyenne, Ute and Arapahoe roamed the country.
In 1857 gold was discovered in the sands of Ralston Creek, an affluent of the South Platte River. By 1859 Pike's Peak was the objective point of the multitude of gold seekers of the territory. Colorado City, Denver, Black Hawk, Golden, and Georgetown were founded soon after. In 1861 Congress organized the Territory of Colorado. A Constitution was formed and submitted to the people and was passed. It took several years and two bills for admission, but in 1876 Colorado joined the United States as the Centennial State. The state comprises the portion of the area within the thirty-seventh and forty-first parallels of north latitude, and the one hundred and second and one hundred and north meridian of west longitude. It comprises one hundred and six thousand four hundred and seventy fives square miles or nearly sixty eight million acres. Two thirds of this region is mountain ranges. Professor Hayden in his survey, completed in 1873 stated this as, "one of the most interesting areas on the content, both in a geological and geographical point of view, forming as it does, the center of the greatest elevation in the Rocky Mountain chain." The first impressions of the West came from the stories and writings of the early explorers including Lewis and Clark 1804-05, Zebulon Pike in 1806-07, Long in 1819- 20, and the Fremont expeditions of 1842 and 1843-44. Colorado is at the top of the western part of the United States with mountain parks and valleys, and broad plains country sloping down to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The rivers marked the earliest travel routes, except where river canons were too difficult. The first explores looked for ways to get beyond the mountains. Lewis and Clark went up the Missouri in 1804 to find a way to Oregon, Pike traveled up the Arkansas in 1806 until the mountains turned him south, and Freemont in 1842 followed up the Platte to Fort St. Vrain, then to Fort Laramie.
Railroad building took the same routes. The Union Pacific survey touched Colorado at Julesburg, but then turned northward and crossed the land by way of southern Wyoming. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe route was fixed, it led up the Arkansas into Colorado to turn southwest at La Junta and then across the Raton Mountains to pass over the Continental Divide in western New Mexico.
The men who were later known as the pioneer farmers and stockmen of Colorado had come to the country with the fever of adventure in their blood. Many came for gold, but some found they knew more about farming and gardening and stock raising than they did about mining, so they took up the way of living and making a living that they had learned on old and new farms in other states and countries. Pike seems to have said nothing of agricultural promise. Later Long and Fremont did make observations of real agricultural value. Many hunters and trappers passed though the mountains and along the river valleys in the years from 1820-1845.
In 1861 a group of men prominent in the community called a meeting for the discussion of forming an agricultural society. Nothing came from that meeting, but in 1863 a meeting was held in Denver and a committee was appointed to draft a constitution and by-laws for the Colorado Agricultural Society. The society focus, "shall be to promote the interests of stock raising and husbandry in all its branches, and every means and measure which will conduce to the benefits of its members…” The society didn't draw much support from farmers, since it became an organization for the backing of the territorial fair. The first fair was held in 1866. It was claimed a success. The Rocky Mountain Weekly News, September 26, 1866 reported: “The size and quality of our vegetables are wonderful to recent arrivals in Colorado. Turnips as big as pumpkins and weighing over fifteen pounds…Of potatoes we noted very fine lots from various quarters. Corn raised on the highlands eleven feet in height and ripe enough already to defy the attack of grasshoppers is there."
The Colorado Agricultural Society formed in Denver had little direct influence on the practice of farming. The Union Colony at Greeley started a different type of organization. That was an association of actual farmers for the purpose of discussing the technical side of farming and to exchange ideas that might be helpful to the membership. It was the beginning of farmers' institutes in the form already familiar to the eastern states but then new to rural Colorado.
The town of Greeley, in Weld country, was settled in April 1870 under what was called the “Union Colony”. It was said of the settlement, "Locations were chosen by those who, having ventured so far had sufficient foresight to see that the experiment was but at its beginning, and that success lay in the near future. The top of the ladder was not to be reached by one bound, even in Colorado. One by one the rungs were to be trodden, and by feet made weary on the upward way. But soon an irrigating canal was completed and the water came dancing through the flumes like a ministering angel, scattering blessings along its path. It ran over the parched land, and blade and blossom awoke to a new beauty. The birds sang their welcome, and early and late, to the new comers, whom destiny had brought to these so lately desolate but now blooming prairie lands."
Eighteen seventy-six was an eventful year for Colorado. It was the centennial for the United States and Colorado's arrival as a state. It was also the year after the great plague of locusts, so the "grasshopper appropriation" helped provide food and clothing for farmers whose crops and been eaten. The grasshoppers came back in 1876 and one account says, "At noon they looked like snowflakes in sunshine, filling the air thickly as far as the eye could reach. In the evening they literally covered walls, fences, and pavements. Corn was stripped to the bare stalk."
There was danger from the Indians and hardships due to weather and fortune, but the rank and file of those who came early to Colorado was the average type of rural and urban citizens from the east. Few were newly arrived European immigrants, mainly German. According to the 1860 census, the population of the state was 34, 277. During the early settlement, the only staple food besides meat that was produced and manufactured in Colorado in sufficient quantity was flour. Produce was coming from both east and west. Butter and eggs came from Kansas and Nebraska, onions, cabbage and barley from California and Utah.
Over the years where water could be brought to the land, agriculture took hold. The Western plateau is finely suited to fruit growing. The irrigated lands east of the Rocky Mountains yield a plethora of crops including beans, barley, potatoes, corn, wheat, and forage crops. In the Arkansas River Valley melons are plentiful.
There is a wealth of agricultural and rural life material for the “Centennial State”. Alvin T. Steinel’s History of Colorado Agriculture (1926) emphasizes early farming and ranching, from contributions by faculty, USDA publications, newspaper articles and letters from pioneer agriculturalists. Cooperative Extension Director F. A. Anderson’s 1947 report comprehensively reviews Colorado agricultural developments from 1880. This report and others are used in Dr. James Hansen’s, Beyond the Ivory Tower: a history of Colorado State University Cooperative Extension (1991), which expertly details agricultural extension work in Colorado. Dr. Hansen’s book will also provide important resources for developing the bibliography of agriculture and rural life for the state. There are gems hidden in the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin such as the Meteorological Data from the experiment station from 1887-1947. Colorado’s rich agricultural history began out of a gold rush in 1858-59. With the rush of water in irrigation ditches and the rush of new people seeking out a life “in the west” Colorado has continued to make a vibrant and expansive contribution to agriculture. Colorado is in the top ranks of production of dry beans, barley, alfalfa, potatoes, sunflowers, wheat, and carrots, just to name a few crops. There are approximately 10.5 million acres of cropland including 3.4 million acres irrigated. There are over 30,000 farms and ranches in the state. The participation of Colorado State University in the USAIN-NEH grant would allow for an important documentation of the agricultural history of the Centennial State.
KENTUCKY
Agriculture has been at the center of Kentucky’s history, both economically and culturally. As the soil became depleted in the Eastern seaboard and Piedmont regions, Anglo-American settlers crossed the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky at the closing of the 18th century. Kentucky was pastoral and agrarian from the onset, with the family farm being the backbone of Kentucky agriculture. The Jeffersonian ideal that agriculture should be the fundamental employment of mankind came west with the settlers of the region, and from east to west, agriculture became the industry of the state. Food and fiber were grown in abundant amounts, with corn being the mother crop. Hemp and flax were cultivated to spin into coarse cloths known as Kentucky jeans and linsey-woolsey. Agriculture permeated all regions, even the mountains of the eastern part of the state.
Family farms varied in size, geography, and crops. Additional important variables in the makeup of the farm included the cultural background of the family, and the stage in development of the particular farms. German-American families tended to settle in the hills along the Ohio River and had fifteen- to thirty-acre farms that used every part of the land to produce a variety of vegetables and fruits for the urban markets. The farms in the eastern mountains were small because of the rocky geography, and inadequate roads made trading difficult but not impossible. Surpluses of corn and pork were moved in ingenious ways: corn as distilled spirits and hogs in large hog drives driven through the mountains. The Bluegrass region attracted the aristocratic second and third sons of Virginia family plantations. Men who had no prospect of inheriting their family’s land settled in the rolling pastures of the central part of the state, yet the predominant farmer was the yeoman farmer owning from 50 to 200 acres of land, stocked with a team of mules or horses, a few low-grade milk cows, pigs, sheep and some fowl.
The family farm was the keystone of Kentucky culture. Work gatherings were social occasions, and regional traditions encouraged sharing events such as barn raisings, quilting bees and brush burning. Early farmers depended on their family members, neighbors and community for help and guidance. The noun “neighboring” is still used by farmers to refer to sharing of equipment and jobs as well as social visits. The small farm still dominates Kentucky agriculture, with 75% of Kentucky’s farms covering fewer than 180 acres of land, but more than 90% being individual or family owned. Nearly 41% of Kentucky’s farmers spend more than 100 days a year working off the farm in other full time jobs.
By 1850, Kentucky was the second highest corn producer in the country, second only to Ohio. Small grains such as wheat, rye and oats were milled on the many streams to produce grains for market down river. Cultivation of crops along navigable streams, coupled with the use of the steam boat, expanded Kentucky markets for hemp and other crops, including the lucrative cash crop of tobacco.
Tobacco production in Kentucky grew steadily for over 140 years. It has influenced the economic, cultural and political history of Kentucky more than any other agricultural product. Tobacco cultivation and use has had a long history in the area and was used by the Shawnee when the first settlers arrived. Many of the farmers had moved west from Virginia to grow tobacco in Kentucky which was particularly well suited to the crop. The seeds were portable, and enough could be carried in a pocket for a sizable crop (approximately 300,000 seeds to the ounce). With the many navigable streams and steam boat traffic, the difficulty of transporting tobacco to market diminished. During the war of 1812, foreign trade for tobacco was cut off, but the domestic supply held steady. During the Civil War, Kentucky topped Virginia in tobacco production, a position it held until the 1920s when North Carolina began to dominate the market. At the turn of the century, Kentucky began shifting from dark fire-cured tobacco to light air-cured tobacco. As this transition progressed, the American Tobacco Company dominated the tobacco business. Farmers responded by organizing into associations and cooperatives to raise prices. The “Black Patch War” brought violence in central and eastern Kentucky with the burning of warehouses, and in western Kentucky when vigilante-style “Night Riders” took over the town of Princeton on December 1, 1906. The tobacco wars came to an end with the government break-up of the monopolistic American Tobacco Company in 1911. Tobacco prices continued to rise until the “bust” of the late 1920s. In 1933 the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Act’s, legislation controlling production and pricing of tobacco (commonly known as the tobacco program), breathed new life into the tobacco industry. Tobacco became Kentucky’s major cash crop and was steadily lucrative until the health scare of the 1970s. That, combined with competition, saw the decline of the crop beginning in the 1980s.
Livestock have also dominated the Kentucky agricultural scene from the very beginning: cows and horses came with the settlers, and domestic animals were brought to Harrodsburg and Boonesborough in the mid 1770s. Hogs thrived, and pork became a staple meat. Cured pork (ham) became a staple of commerce from 1787 on. Cattle thrived in the mild winters, enjoyed ample forage and water and grazed freely on the savannahs. The transition from subsistence to commercial livestock production began in the 1780s, and by 1785 purebred cattle had arrived to launch the blooded cattle industry. By 1787, Milking Short Horn cows had been introduced to central Kentucky, an area well suited for diary production with rolling land, agreeable climate and forages, along with cities that provided markets for milk, butter, and cheese. By 1830, the Bluegrass region became the center of the Short Horn industry, and by the mid-1830s the transition from a grain to livestock economy was complete.
Moving the livestock to market was a daunting task. During the 18th century hogs were delivered to market in livestock drives along the Wilderness Road. Cattle, horses, mules and even turkeys followed, and from 1815 to 1820, 10,000 head of livestock were driven to market each year. During the 19th century southern planters began to rely on Kentucky for livestock and supplies, so steam boats became the primary method of moving livestock to the South. By the 1860s railroads began replacing the overland drive, but during at the same time, the Civil War was devastating the livestock economy in Kentucky. Also in the 1860s, Texas cattle drives brought ticks, parasites and diseases which were deadly to the native stock in Kentucky. From 1886 to 1926 livestock values rose only marginally, and Herefords overtook the popular Short Horn. Improved breeding introduced by the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, and government funds to provide premiums both helped the Kentucky slaughtering and meatpacking industries to flourish and make dramatic gains in the late 20th century.
Early settlers also brought in horses, or floated them down the stream and rivers on flatbeds. These animals were vital for transportation, work and sport. The Bluegrass region’s favorable climate, gently rolling hills and well drained underlying limestone formations provided the ideal conditions for the breeding of horses. The first blood stock arrived in Kentucky around the same time as the blood stock cattle, and Kentucky was nationally recognized for the quality of its horses as early as 1800. By 1840 Kentucky had attained the top position in horse breeding in America, a position it still holds. Although thoroughbred horse farms predominate, standard breeds and saddle breeds are very much a part of the Bluegrass equine picture.
Fairs and agricultural societies also played a strong role in the formation of Kentucky agriculture. On July 25, 1816, the first of scores of cattle shows, stock shows and fairs was held just north of Lexington. A second livestock show was held in 1817, and from it stemmed numerous shows and fairs, including the Kentucky State Fair. In 1838 the Kentucky Agricultural Society was formed, which led to the formation of 27 additional societies by the state legislature. The Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical Association was formed in Lexington by some of Kentucky’s top farmers and livestock breeders. In 1856 the State Agricultural Society was chartered by the Kentucky General Assembly as a quasi-official body that reported directly to the legislature. This Society’s annual reports contained essays on improved methods of farming and livestock management, descriptions of the activities of local fairs, lists of prize winners and brief reports from the county societies. All across the United States, agricultural societies began publishing local farm journals, most of them patterned on the American Farmer, and Kentucky was no different, initiating the publication of its Franklin Farmer in 1837. Other agricultural societies active in Kentucky in the 19th century included the Patrons of Husbandry, which was strong in western Kentucky; the Farmer’s Alliance, a political action group that was founded by the merging of the Agricultural Wheel with the Farmer’s Alliance and Industrial Union; and the Burley Tobacco Grower’s Cooperative Association, which was formed in 1920 to withhold tobacco from markets until satisfactory prices were offered. This organization was reformed in 1941 when the price support system was introduced.
The later half of the 19th century saw the rise of public institutions devoted to the improvement of agriculture. On March 20, 1876 the Kentucky General Assembly enacted an all-embracing law creating a Bureau of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Statistics, an agency to be directed by a commissioner appointed by the governor. This bureau was charged with the gathering of statistics on field crops, orchards, gardens, dairies and mines, with special attention to roads, railroads, streams, towns, villages and schoolhouses. Not included in this charge was livestock. In 1891 the Commissioner of Agriculture was made an elected, constitutional officer, thus making it a political office.
During the same period, the land grant system began developing in Kentucky. On February 22, 1865, the Agricultural and Mechanical College was founded as a department of Kentucky University, a denominational (Christian Church) university, which merged with Transylvania University. Money was raised from several sources, including the sale of land granted to the state by the Morrill Act. Although part of a denomination institution, the A & M College was by law a secular school. In 1878, the Kentucky General Assembly severed all connections with Kentucky University, when a doctrinal dispute arose within the Christian Church, and moved the A & M College renaming it the State College. In 1916 it became known as the University of Kentucky.
In 1887, the Hatch Act provided partial support for state agricultural experiment stations, and by 1890 Kentucky had an Agricultural Experiment Station on the State College campus. The same year, the State Normal School for Colored Persons set up departments for instruction in agriculture and mechanics to qualify for federal funds. In 1902 the school’s name was changed to Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute (now Kentucky State University). By 1910 an Extension Department was formed at the State College to disseminate agricultural information to Kentucky farmers. This Department became the Extension Division in 1914 with the passing of the Smith-Lever Act. Thus began the integration of higher education into Kentucky agriculture.
Kentucky remains essentially an agrarian state. The country stores, the rural post offices, schools and churches are all steadily disappearing from the rural landscape but approximately 54% of the total land area remains in farms. Over 60% of Kentucky’s farmland is in crops. The majority of Kentucky’s farms are small in area, with over 57% being less than 99 acres and over 90% being individual or family owned. Kentucky’s top commodity is horses/mules (mostly horses) which provides over 23% of the state’s total farm receipts. Tobacco has dropped to fourth in total state farm receipts with cattle/calves second, and broilers third in total sales. Tobacco does remain Kentucky’s top export, and Kentucky ranks second in tobacco exports among the states. Sources: Kentucky Agricultural Statistics. U.S. Department of Agricultural. National Agricultural Statistics Service. Kentucky Field Office. http://www.nass.usda.gov/ky/. Accessed July 2, 2005.
Kentucky Encyclopedia. Morehead, KY: Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy; Camden-Carroll Library. http://www.kyenc.org/. Accessed July 8, 2005.
MARYLAND
One of the thirteen original states, Maryland has a rich and complex agricultural history well documented in the holdings of several major state institutions, including the University of Maryland. Bordered by Pennsylvania to the north and Virginia to the south, Maryland encompasses a diverse geography within her relatively small 12,193 square miles: from the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay through the industrialized Baltimore City to the mountains of western Maryland. As a neighbor to the nation’s capital and a pivot, or border, state between the North and the South, Maryland occupies an important political space, too. The Mason Dixon Line divides Maryland from Pennsylvania, and more famously, North from South. Nicknamed “The Old Line State,” Maryland’s agricultural history, rural life, and culture reflect and combine trends found in both the North and the South. Maryland’s close proximity to the nation’s capital has meant that the state’s agricultural history is closely tied to national institutions and events. The headquarters, for example, of the National Agricultural Research Center and the National Agricultural Library are located in Beltsville, Maryland.
Maryland is divided into five distinct provinces with progressively higher altitudes from east to west. The Atlantic Coastal Plain extends from the Atlantic Ocean south and west to the northern border of Washington, D. C. This province includes the Chesapeake Bay, a 195 mile long estuary (the largest in the United States), which divides the state into “two shores,” the Eastern Shore and the Western Shore. Native Americans were living around the Bay when Captain John Smith, founder of the Jamestown, Virginia settlement, explored it from 1607-09. The Bay yields oysters, clams, blue crabs, the American eel, and striped bass. Agriculture has had a significant impact on the Bay over time and agriculture’s effects on the Bay are an important focus of research today. The variety of research conducted is represented in the Contribution series of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, which includes titles such as The Fishes of Maryland. The Piedmont Province is about fifty miles wide as it cuts across the state from the northeast through central Maryland. To the west of the Piedmont is the Blue Ridge Province, situated in north Maryland near the Pennsylvania border. The Maryland section of the Appalachian Ridge and Valley is the northern strip of land that separates West Virginia from Pennsylvania. The Allegheny Mountains cover most of the fifth province, Appalachian Plateau Province; Backbone Mountain, the highest point in Maryland, is located in this region.
In 1634, approximately 130 men and women settled in St. Mary’s City in southern Maryland and almost immediately began to build housing and to plant crops. With Virginia, Maryland quickly became known for its tobacco production, a crop that would have a significant impact on the state’s agricultural, social, and political history. Despite tobacco’s dominance in the historical record, other produce and wheat and dairy products, in particular, were significant agricultural products in Maryland as early as the first decade of the eighteenth century. The Continental Congress relied heavily on Marylanders to provide food for troops fighting in the American Revolution, gaining Maryland her reputation as the “breadbasket of the revolution.”
Marylanders were leaders in advocating a scientific approach to analyzing agricultural issues in the new nation. The published works of John Beale Bordley (1727 – 1804) are noteworthy in this regard. Marylanders, including George Calvert of Riversdale, were prominent members of the Columbia Agricultural Society, the nation’s first agricultural society founded in 1810 in Georgetown. His son, Charles Benedict Calvert, led agricultural reform movements in the state and the nation. C.B. Calvert was notable both for his central role in the founding of the Maryland Agricultural College and his introduction, as a member of Congress, of legislation resulting in the formation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Two of the first American agricultural periodicals were published in the Washington D.C.-Maryland area. The Reverend David Wiley of the Columbian Agricultural Society, based in Georgetown, Washington, D. C., began the Agricultural Museum in 1810. This publication, which ran for two years, is widely known as the first periodical in the United States devoted primarily to agriculture. A few years later in 1819, John Stuart Skinner published the American Farmer (1819-1897) in Baltimore. This was the first American agricultural journal with a large circulation. When Skinner became aware that the quality of soil was declining in Maryland, he established this pioneering farm journal to promulgate best methods for farming practice.
After the war of 1812, other crops became more important, as did the raising of livestock. Demand grew for dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Infestations of insects, especially the Hessian fly, affected wheat crops. Baltimore was an important manufacturing, transportation, and trade center. Entrepreneurs there milled and exported grain and later imported and manufactured fertilizer. Baltimore was a major port for the importation of guano from South America. Manufactured fertilizer, or “manipulated guano,” was first produced in Baltimore in 1849, which became increasingly important as the soil became depleted of nutrients due to intensive cultivation. Maryland played a leading role in applying innovations in transportation to the distribution of agricultural products. The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the nation’s first rail carrier, were both founded to bring western products eastward. Baltimore was a major trans-shipping port with ties to South America that led its dominant position as the entry point for guano from the islands off the west coast of Chile. Steamboats on the Chesapeake were a key means of fostering truck farming and moving farm and fisheries products to the large canning industries located in Baltimore. By the time of the post-Civil War era, the advent of railroad lines on Maryland’s Eastern Shore opened new markets in Philadelphia leading to the intensive agriculture still practiced in this part of the state.
The Civil War affected agriculture in Maryland profoundly. Many livestock diseases appeared in Maryland as animals were transported across the state for military uses. After the Civil War, the westward movement of agriculture reduced the agricultural importance of Maryland to the nation. Up until 1900 agriculture was the prevalent economic activity in Maryland, after which time a manufacturing economy predominated. Wheat declined as the major crop. As wheat production declined, Maryland’s Eastern Shore became a center of vegetable production; the dairy industry occupied central Maryland, and tobacco continued to be produced in southern Maryland.
An important development in Maryland agriculture was the formation of agricultural societies, farmer’s clubs, and the Grange. These groups provided farmers with support as they faced the problems and stresses of rural life. The early groups were literary planters’ organizations, followed by the formation of state and county societies and organizations that sponsored fairs and agricultural education. The Board of Trustees of the Maryland Agricultural Society of the Eastern Shore was formed to coordinate the improvement of the agricultural production system there. Specialized agricultural societies become more prevalent, including societies for horticulture, silk, marketing, and livestock. The first grange in was founded in 1873.
The Maryland State Agricultural Society formed in 1848. The American Farmer served as its record. It sponsored fairs and supported an experimental farm and agricultural college. Under the leadership and encouragement of Charles Benedict Calvert, a small group of investors founded the Maryland Agricultural College in 1856. In 1862, the Morrill Land-Grant College Act further supported the development of the Maryland Agricultural College, which became the state’s first land-grant institution in 1865. Today, the Maryland Agricultural College is the University of Maryland, College Park, the state of Maryland’s flagship university. In 1886, the Delaware Conference Academy was established as a state land-grant program for African Americans. It still exists in the present day as the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The 1856 charter of the Maryland Agricultural College was the first to authorize the “conduct of experimentation” in addition to the teaching of agricultural subjects. The 1887 Hatch Act furthered the conduct of experimentation, creating the State Agricultural Experiment Station (SAES) system, and the General Assembly of Maryland approved the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) in 1888. In 1892, the Station separated from the Maryland Agricultural College when an independent director to the Experiment Station was appointed. The Station’s records and publications document over 100 years of agricultural research in Maryland. Some of the highlights include work on control of San Jose scale, an orchard pest, and the isolation of vitamin B-12 as the result of poultry research by Mary Shaw Shorb. In 1951, Wendell Arbuckle, “Mr. Ice Cream,” organized the first national ice cream conference at the University of Maryland. The University of Maryland Dairy is still operational today. In 1967, MAES started the first formal research program in aquaculture in the nation. As recently as 1987, the Chesapeake Bay Agreement charges the MAES to investigate the impact of soil management practices and use of agricultural chemicals on surface and ground-water quality.
The Maryland Cooperative Extension Service (MCES) is another institution that has played an important role in agricultural research and education throughout the state. The Smith-Lever Act led to the creation of MCES at the Maryland Agricultural College in 1916. The system expanded to county governments shortly thereafter. The Service has published numerous publications on all types of agricultural topics for the benefit of Marylanders. For example, a book by M.C. Joelle Fignole Lofton, Bittersweet Perspectives on Maryland’s Extension Service (1990), documents the history of black agricultural extension agents in Maryland.
The breeding and training of thoroughbred horses has been an important industry throughout Maryland’s history and continues today. Horse racing has been part of life in Maryland since colonial times. Races took place at crossroads, taverns, and in the vicinity of tobacco-loading points. Soon horses began to be imported and bred in Maryland and Virginia. The first thoroughbred arrived in Virginia in 1730 and horse breeding became an important activity in Maryland soon thereafter. The famous Preakness, well over 100 years old and the second jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown, is held at the Pimlico race track in Baltimore, America’s second oldest race track, according to the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. Established in 1929, the Maryland Horse Breeders Association has published the periodical The Maryland Horse since 1934.
Today, agriculture is the state’s largest commercial industry, and fourteen percent of the state’s workforce is engaged in Maryland’s food and fiber sector. Over time, poultry, nursery and turf sod production, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the horse breeding industry have joined traditional dairy, grain, and livestock production as important commodities. On a national scale, Maryland’s poultry and tobacco industries rank among the country’s top volume producers. In terms of cash sales, the vertically integrated poultry industry (producers and processors of broilers) on the Delmarva Peninsula is the largest in Maryland. Dairy is the second largest industry, and swine and livestock are raised as well. Today, Maryland’s major crops are corn, soybeans, wheat, tomatoes, green vegetables (cabbage, green peas, lima beans, and spinach), pumpkins, squash, turnips, apples, strawberries, melons, and other fruits. Agriculture has been an integral part of Maryland’s history, and it continues to be a main component of Maryland’s diversified economy.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Agriculture is fundamental to the history of South Dakota. Farming and ranching form the bedrock of the state’s economy, and the land and climate are integral to its experience.
The Missouri River splits South Dakota geographically, with the central lowlands or east river region suited to crop production and the Missouri plateau or west river region, with a shorter growing season and less rainfall, acclimated to ranching. The Black Hills define the western edge of South Dakota.
South Dakota’s history is characterized by cultural diversity, environmental challenges, and periods of agricultural prosperity and depression. Prior to European American settlement, the agrarian Arikara and the itinerant Sioux (Dakota) inhabited the land that is now South Dakota. White westward expansion brought dispossession and exploitation of the native peoples, irrevocably disrupting their cultures and livelihood.
In 1803, the land was acquired by the United States government as part of the Louisiana Purchase, and in 1861, it was organized into Dakota Territory. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 consigned native populations to the Great Sioux Reservation, which comprised the western half of present-day South Dakota. Even with the Homestead Act of 1862, the settlement of eastern Dakota at first progressed slowly and was essentially confined to the southeast corner of the territory. Then the arrival of the railroads, aggressive advertising, and favorable weather patterns gave rise to the Great Dakota Boom. From 1878 to 1887, the rush for land spurred phenomenal growth in the eastern half of Dakota Territory. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the opening of the hills to white settlement also stimulated development. The boom brought Scandinavian, German, German-Russian, Bohemian, Irish, and Dutch immigrants. The 1900 census identified over 60% of South Dakota’s total population as foreign born or of foreign stock, primarily of northwest European origins.
In 1889, the year of South Dakota’s statehood, the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up into six smaller reservations, and in February 1890, some nine million acres of land were opened to settlement. The lack of railroads west of the river, and the availability of good land in eastern South Dakota limited western agricultural settlement, however. Until the turn of the twentieth century, the cattle industry reigned supreme in western South Dakota. Then from 1902 to 1915, with the expansion of the railroads, the state sustained a second agricultural boom, which tripled South Dakota’s population in the west. Over four million acres of Indian land went on sale, allocated by lottery. Many of the new settlers were of American stock, recruited from Southern Plains states and eastern cities.
Boom times in South Dakota alternated with periods of drought, crop failure, and economic depression, as experienced in the 1890s, 1920s, and, most profoundly, in the 1930s. The Great Depression inflicted extreme agricultural devastation on South Dakota, forcing farm foreclosures and mass migration from the state. Many families were able to remain on their land only with the help of federal relief programs and payments.
The 1940s and World War II brought increased agricultural production and better economic times. Heightened demand due to war needs, clement weather conditions, and improved farming methods were all contributing factors. Subsequent years saw accelerated mechanization, a steady decline in farm population, and increases in farm size. Despite changing practices and diversifying industry, agriculture remained central to South Dakota’s economy.
During the second half of the twentieth century, trends already visible began to accelerate. Mechanization of farm production was carried to new levels and average farm size greatly expanded. Increased use of herbicides and fertilizers helped stimulate crop yields. As involvement in global markets expanded, the drive for new export markets became more intense.
Agricultural subsidies, introduced under the New Deal in the 1930s, became a progressively more important part of farm income. Efforts by the Eisenhower administration, under Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, to cut back on support payments were so unpopular that George McGovern parleyed the issue into a seat in the House of Representatives in 1956 and used the situation to build up the Democratic party in the state into a competitive position. Since then, South Dakota and other farm state politicians have successfully fought efforts to eliminate or substantially reduce farm subsidies, but urban spokesmen and representatives increasingly see the farm program as an unnecessary expense to support a special interest group that does not really need or deserve such aid.
In recent years, the introduction of hog and cattle confinement facilities and large dairies has raised the specter of concentrated agriculture and made it a hot issue in the state. New methods of genetic engineering and other advanced scientific approaches to production likewise have interjected controversial issues into the political arena. The whole field of agriculture is closely tied to the economic health of the towns that provide services for farmers, and questions about town survival, economic development, and rural revitalization are all of great concern.
South Dakota boasts a rich body of literature recording its agricultural heritage. Since territorial times, farm journals and newspapers were vital in examining the issues of importance to farmers and ranchers. The Dakota Farmer and other local and regional publications regularly discussed the subjects of drought and depression, crops, farming methods, and politics. Popular topics of debate in the early years of the twentieth century included artesian wells, the Belle Fourche Irrigation project (a government effort to promote permanent agriculture based settlement in western South Dakota) and dry farming techniques, as widely promoted by South Dakota farmer, author, and lecturer Hardy Webster Campbell.
Promotion played a major role in South Dakota’s agricultural story. Among the prime boosters of the region were newspapers, railroads, and the territorial government. The papers were enthusiastic promulgators for the region, often printing weekly columns and special advertising editions. The railroads were at the forefront of promotional activity, widely publicizing the region’s agricultural productivity and abundance of free and cheap land. With the establishment of the territorial Bureau of Immigration in 1871, the railroads and the Bureau forged a cooperative relationship, sharing and disseminating large quantities of advertising literature.
Representative promotional titles published by the Bureau (later the Department) of Immigration included Behold, I Show You a Delightsome Land, published in 1885 as a souvenir for visitors to the Dakota exhibit at the New Orleans World’s Fair, South Dakota, the Empire of Opportunity, and Corn is King in South Dakota. In a later version of the latter title, alfalfa attained the status of queen.
During the 1910s and 1920s, promotional trains with agricultural exhibits toured the state extolling the benefits of alfalfa and other legumes and of diversified farming. Supplementing the exhibits were promotional publications such as the Dakota Farmer’s “Alfalfa-Sweet Clover News.” Despite the optimistic message of boosters, agricultural success was never guaranteed. Environment, geography, and politics all factored into the mix.
South Dakota’s sense of its vulnerable economic status led to a tradition of political activism and the creation of agricultural political organizations. Incentives for protest included low crop and livestock prices and resentment against the railroads and industrial monopolies. The Farmers Alliance formed in the late 1880s, evolving into the Populist Party in the 1890s. The politically opposite Farmers Union and Farm Bureau each organized in the 1910s, and the South Dakota Stock Growers Association was first established in 1892. These groups generated a variety of publications, including the Dakota Ruralist and the South Dakota Union Farmer.
Also providing a published record of its activities was the state’s Department of Agriculture, established in 1885. Among its initial responsibilities were territorial fairs, livestock shows, and farmers’ institutes in conjunction with the agricultural college.
The founding of Dakota Agricultural College, later South Dakota State University, as the region’s land-grant institution in 1881 and the establishment of the Agricultural Experiment Station in 1887 were instrumental in furthering agricultural education and research. Aiming to add something of value to the knowledge of the state’s resources and possibilities, the station produced a rich assortment of bulletins and reports, describing the results of agricultural experiments adapted to local climate and soil conditions. The 1894 report estimated that more than 200,000 copies of the bulletins had been distributed. In 1896, the college established the nation’s first dry-land farming experiment site at Highmore, testing and developing grasses and forage crops.
A notable figure at the Experiment Station was horticulture professor Niels Ebbesen Hansen. Commissioned as the nation’s first plant explorer by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he undertook eight trips to Europe and Asia seeking hardy plant strains that would flourish in the rigorous climate of the Northern Great Plains. Hansen is credited with introducing over three hundred new varieties of plants to the region, including Cossack alfalfa from Siberia, crested wheat grass, and brome grass.
The passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914 and the consequent establishment of the Cooperative Extension Service greatly boosted agricultural education opportunities at the land-grant college, allowing agents to make direct contact with the men and women on South Dakota farms. The extension service’s numerous circulars, written in popular style, contained information of practical value to the state’s rural families, focusing on crops, livestock, home economics, and 4-H topics.
The wealth of information contained in South Dakota’s agricultural literature and its essential role in documenting the social, political, and economic history of the state speak to the critical importance of its preservation. Allowing the deterioration of these resources which define South Dakota’s character and rural way of life would constitute an immense cultural loss.
WASHINGTON
Washington is divided into two distinct climates and regions separated by the Cascade Mountains. Western Washington’s mild climate was dominated by the temperate forests of the Olympic peninsula and the Puget Sound basin. In contrast, the more extreme climate of eastern Washington was defined by grassland. Only the semi-navigable Columbia River connected east and west.
The different cultures of early inhabitants reflected these distinct regional climates. American Indians west of the Cascades—where fish, game, and other food sources were readily available—lived in coastal villages made up of large cedar buildings. Indians east of the Cascades, on the other hand, resided in circular dwellings made of woven mats and brush attached to a pole framework, mobile structures that enabled them to move between seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering places. Despite these and other cultural differences, both groups relied on salmon. Salmon was central to Indian diet and culture on both sides of the Cascades, at once serving as food, currency, and icon. Demographic shifts in the Northwest caused rapid environmental change in the late nineteenth century. Forced removal and deaths through disease led to a 95 percent decline in the number of Indians in the Pacific Northwest, while the number of white settlers skyrocketed to more than 1.1 million by 1900. In 1889 Washington became a state in part because of increased migrations and economic development brought on by the completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883. Trapping, fishing, farming, logging, mining, irrigation, and industrialization, in turn, reshaped salmon habitat and the environment.
Commercial agriculture in Washington state can be traced back to the Hudson Bay Company’s establishment of Fort Vancouver in 1824. To meet the North American director’s insistence that the company be self-sufficient, Fort Vancouver raised livestock, cultivated land, and planted orchards to supply food for the fort and for other HBC fur- trading posts. In 1839 the HBC created an agricultural subsidiary, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), to produce food and supplies for the HBC's Northwestern trading posts on two large farms in the south Puget Sound region.
As Washington’s white settler population increased, so did the number of farms. In 1860 there were 1,330 farms, almost all in western Washington. By 1870 the number of farms more than doubled, with most farms less than 50 acres. Leading crops were potatoes, oats, and wheat; livestock was predominantly sheep and cattle. Although most of the farms were in western Washington, 653 were now concentrated in Walla Walla County, east of the Cascades.
By 1880 the number of farms doubled again to 6,529. In western Washington, some small farms were established on cut-over timberlands but, in general, farming had begun moving eastward. Farms were now evenly split between western and eastern Washington and agriculture shifted from livestock to crops. By 1890 the number of farms tripled to 18,056, 60 percent of them in eastern Washington. Most families earned their primary income outside of the farm by logging, mining, or other work but some agricultural specialization occurred. Western Washington farms averaged 120 to 150 acres and focused on potatoes, hops, market garden produce, and milk. In contrast, eastern Washington farms were larger, averaging almost 300 acres. Cattle and sheep grazed on open ranges but wheat emerged as the dominant crop. Conspicuously absent from both sides of the Cascades were the cornfields and swine typical of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.
With the construction of railroads, agriculture expanded beyond the Walla Walla region in eastern Washington as farmers were able to transport their grain to market. By the mid-1880s, the Palouse and Walla Walla Valley produced 7.5 million bushels of wheat per year. By 1910, wheat represented 44.5 percent of the value of all Washington crops and flour milling ranked second only to lumbering among Washington’s industrial enterprises. Wheat cultivation in Washington differed significantly from that of the Great Plains. Varied rainfall and topography led farmers to experiment with more crop varieties to match their microclimates. The establishment of the State Agricultural College in Pullman in 1892 aided the search for the best regional varieties. The hilly terrain also affected the pace of mechanization, since neither steam engines nor horse-drawn combines proved easily adaptable to hillside work. It was only in the twentieth century that gas-powered tractors replaced the use of horses. Another major difference between Washington and the Midwest was the method of storage and shipping. Instead of grain elevators for bulk storage, eastern Washington farmers stored grain in sacks, partly because they believed that sack storage decreased the spread of smut. Bulk storage also threatened the sea-worthiness of vessels bound for Europe.
In addition to railroads, the expansion of wheat regions depended on expensive and difficult irrigation. Early irrigation efforts focused on tributaries such as the Yakima River, areas where residents concentrated on stock raising. Beginning with modest canals in 1868, over 40,000 acres were irrigated in Yakima and Kittitas counties within two decades. In 1890, the Northern Pacific Railway created a subsidiary to develop the Sunnyside district along the river below Yakima, aiming to sell reclaimed land at much higher prices. The subsidiary, after an initial failure, reorganized as the Washington Irrigation Company. By 1904 the Sunnyside project had irrigated 36,000 acres, the largest reclamation system in the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, the Great Northern Railway promoted the development and irrigation of the Wenatchee valley, which was second only to Yakima in irrigated acreage by the early twentieth century.
Irrigation transformed, expanded, and diversified Washington agriculture. The federal government greatly improved irrigation farming by providing technical, financial, and educational assistance. The United States Reclamation Service launched the Okanogan, Wapato, and Tieton irrigation projects and expanded the private Sunnydale initiative through the National Reclamation Act of 1902. The resulting irrigated land was the most expensive farmland in Washington and farmers could only afford to buy and cultivate small tracts of land. Farmers near Yakima, Wenatchee, Chelan and Okanogan, thus, turned to apples over wheat, a crop that enabled substantial profits from small orchards. During a period known as “apple fever” in 1908, Washington planted at least one million apple trees, quickly becoming the leading producer of apples in the nation by 1917. In the Kittitas and lower Yakima valleys, where the cost of water was cheaper, farmers grew alfalfa, hay, potatoes, and sugar beets. With improved transportation, including highway travel, these new agricultural areas gained prominence.
A growing urban population in Washington also diversified the state’s agriculture. Truck gardeners in the Puyallup and White River valleys, for example, raised vegetables for neighboring cities. In Seattle, commission houses acted as middlemen between the 3,000 King County farmers and their customers. Both farmers and consumers soon tired of the middlemen, whom they blamed for artificially high prices and other unfair practices, and began circumventing the commission houses by meeting informally along Western Avenue. Seattle’s City Council, in turn, authorized a public market at Pike Place, an instant success that led to the construction of the first farmer’s market building in 1907. More than 120 farmers, 70-80 percent Japanese and the remainder mostly Italian, sold their produce directly to customers in covered stalls.
In addition to producing for local urban markets, Washington developed other specialty crops that could compete in outside markets, despite relatively high transportation costs. The La Conner flats grew such perfect cabbages and vegetables that they were sold for seed throughout the country. Berries and fruits were the other major high-yield, high- quality crops.
Dairy farming also expanded to serve both local and regional markets. Milk, cream, and butter were sold to nearby cities. In 1899, the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company produced the first cases of evaporated milk, called “Carnation Sterilized Cream.” Within two years, the company changed its name to the Carnation Milk Company and produced 40,000 pounds of condensed milk per day. Carnation’s advertising agency soon immortalized the “contented cows” of Washington state.
World War I brought prosperity to Washington farmers, many of whom expanded their acreage and purchased equipment. The war also encouraged agricultural cultivation on less-productive farmlands, particularly of wheat because of its inflated prices. Peace, however, reduced agricultural prices, farm incomes, and ultimately, land values. Fruit growers encountered shrinking markets, as did dairy farmers with the curtailment of condensed milk production. In response, farmers increasingly turned to specialty crops and cooperative organizations to market their products. Producer organizations were established for wheat, fruit, poultry, and dairy products that provided storage, standard grades and varieties, packaging and processing techniques, and wider distribution systems. Agricultural experiment stations also lent guidance through education and technical programs and publications. Despite all these fluctuations and changes, more than two thirds of agricultural income still came from wheat and apples in 1930. The production of peas, spinach, soft fruits and berries, eggs, and poultry contributed to some diversification of crops.
Postwar economic changes deeply affected irrigation projects as well. The total acreage of irrigated land declined by 30,000 acres during the 1920s. Although the total acreage decreased, the number of irrigated farms actually increased by an additional 2,678 farms between 1919 and 1929. Since the cost of preparing land for irrigation was the highest in the United States, intensive rather than extensive irrigation came to define Washington agriculture.
In a decade marked by declining markets and irrigated lands, the Columbia Basin irrigation project ironically captured the imagination of state and local organizations in the 1920s. Farmers, however, expressed little interest in the project. The main boosters were contractors, bankers and politicians, who hoped to generate work for unemployed residents as well as for themselves. With unexpected public funding, both the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dam projects began construction in 1933-34 as part of the New Deal. The Columbia River and Columbia River Basin would change radically as a result, with the dams enabling the irrigation of more than a million acres of arid land.
What agriculture was to eastern Washington, timber was to western Washington. Several California-owned sawmills were built on the Puget Sound in 1853. Most Washington lumber was sold in California by the end of the 1850s. The San Francisco market, however, proved unpredictable, leading to increased trade with other Pacific ports in Hawaii, Peru, and Australia.
As railroads effectively connected the Puget Sound to the East Coast and Midwest as well as interior Washington, the national timber industry underwent several changes. Over- cutting of forests in the Great Lakes caused Midwestern lumbermen to migrate westward. The San Francisco-based lumbermen—whose mills were near the ports of Gamble, Ludlow, Madison, and Blakely—consequently faced competition from the newer lumbermen from the Midwest, who centered their operations near Tacoma. The Tacoma mills had the distinct advantage of being able to ship lumber east via railroad whereas the older mills still had to rely on waterborne trade alone.
On top of westward migration and increasing competition, the lumber industry also became mechanized. Until 1881, oxen dragged logs over greased skid roads and out of the forests, an increasingly inefficient method as logging moved inland. The invention of the steam-powered donkey engine allowed logs to be moved farther, faster, and cheaper by cables. Washington had three times as many steam donkeys as Oregon and California combined by 1900. Since neither oxen nor donkey engine could haul logs over long distance, many mills invested in railroad projects to deliver logs efficiently from the interior to mills.
Though Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a Midwesterner, had contemplated moving to the Pacific Northwest as early as the mid-1880s, he did not actively investigate opportunities in the region until 1898. Weyerhaeuser’s desire for timber converged with the Northern Pacific Railway’s need for capital in late 1899. Weyerhaeuser’s syndicate, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, eventually agreed to purchase a million acres of land at six dollars per acre in 1900. By the early twentieth century, Weyerhaeuser and his companies owned 26 percent of all Washington timberlands.
Weyerhaeuser, primarily interested in land and timber acquisition at the time, was not a major lumbering enterprise until after World War I. In the meantime, the sale of the California-owned Port Blakely Mill Company and the North Western Lumber Company to Midwest investors in 1903 completed the transformation of Washington lumbering from a San Francisco-based industry to an expansion of the Great Lakes lumber industry. Weyerhaeuser subsequently built the world’s largest sawmill in Everett, Washington in 1914. More lumber, however, was manufactured than could be sold profitably, a circumstance that encouraged Washington lumbermen to form trade associations. Puget Sound and Grays Harbor mill owners established the Pacific Coast Lumber Manufacturers Association in 1901, which later evolved into the regional West Coast Lumberman’s Association. The Association succeeded in establishing improved grading practices, but its attempts to control railroad rates and fix prices failed. Beginning in 1905, Washington ranked first among the states in lumber production for nearly three decades. In 1910, almost two thirds of Washington’s wage earners depended on the lumber industry for their livelihood.
The expansion of the industry came at great environmental expense. Nineteenth-century logging was exceptionally wasteful, especially since the donkey engine could only be used on cleared terrain. Only prime timber was harvested; the remainder was left on the forest floor to decay and inadvertently nourish forest fires. By 1905, more timber west of the Cascades was destroyed by fire than removed by logging. The potential loss of timber by fires, in turn, promoted rapid cutting regardless of the market conditions to preserve lumber profits. In addition to the grave fire hazards, annual property taxes also encouraged lumbermen to log rather than pay an additional year of taxes.
Conservation, therefore, was generally seen as antagonistic to the lumber industry. Some progress was made with the creation of forest reserves. The establishment of reserves combined with extensive purchases by Weyerhaeuser and others made timberlands more scarce and expensive. A major natural disaster, the Yacolt Burn of 1902, introduced some forest management measures. The massive burn between Mount St. Helens and the Columbia River, covering 25,000 acres, led lumbermen to lobby governments to cooperate with private landholders to reduce forest fires. In 1908, lumbermen organized the Washington Forest Fire Association. In 1909, the Western Forestry and Conservation Association was established to publicize the cause and to campaign for property tax relief to encourage more limited cutting. Lumbermen also supported the creation of the University of Washington forestry school in 1907. They embraced conservation reforms in the form of fire protection and tax relief, measures that aided their industry and profits.
Washington’s pulp and paper industry took root in the Olympic peninsula soon after World War I, though the earliest mills had opened before then. The once undesirable hemlock—unsuitable for lumber, but quite suitable for pulp and paper—formed the basis of the new industry. Loggers on the Olympic Peninsula, seeing an opportunity to exploit their tracts of hemlock, quickly invested in the industry. The Washington Pulp and Paper Company began operating in 1919 and by 1928 two-dozen pulp and paper plants were operating in Washington. The waste from the plants unfortunately contributed to the deterioration of both water quality and shellfish health in the Puget Sound.
A struggle soon ensued between Port Angeles and Grays Harbor pulp and paper manufacturers—backed by state government officials and foresters from the University of Washington—and the Environment Conservation Committee, created by northeastern environmentalists, over the proposed Olympic National Park. The former charged that the park would sacrifice the peninsula residents’ jobs and investments. After several years of debate, the park was established in 1938, an initial effort in limiting the expansion of the forest industries for the sake of the preservation of forests.
Agriculture, irrigation, logging, and industrialization in general profoundly affected both salmon habitat and local fisheries. Before 1850, Indians were the sole suppliers of salmon. Early trade placed Indians as producers and whites as consumers but, as diseases killed Indians, this relationship changed. Fearing that Americans might seize the salmon trade, the Hudson Bay Company took an early interest in fishing to maintain its control over natural resources.
Industrial fishery moved into the region, as immigration made the fish trade more lucrative. Many fishermen, like lumbermen, moved to the Northwest in search of resources that they had depleted in California and on the Atlantic coast. In 1866, Hapgood, Hume and Company established the first fish cannery on the Columbia River and packed 272,000 pounds of salmon. By 1881 there were some thirty canneries in the Northwest. Canned salmon—popular in eastern U.S., Great Britain, and other areas as an inexpensive but nourishing food—generated healthy profits. The expansion from a local to a global market further accelerated production. To gain an edge over their competition, fishermen added more layers to their gillnets and also introduced traps, poundnets, and fishwheels in the 1870s.
Increased competition and mechanization led to consolidation. Excluded from other jobs in the fisheries by organizations such as the Columbia River Fishermen’s Protective Union, Chinese laborers primarily worked in the canneries until 1903. The development of the “iron chink” and other machines made Chinese and other laborers less indispensable to cannery work. Though mechanization increased production, it relied on a large supply of both capital and fish. Between 1900 and 1919, the salmon industry produced more than a million cases of sockeye and pink salmon per year. Consolidation, overproduction, and marketing problems led to the establishment of several packing associations, such as the Columbia River Packers Association.
Besides salmon, the Northwest had two other fishing specialties: halibut and shellfish. The decline of Atlantic fish banks, increased transportation, and improved refrigeration all led to a rapid increase in Northwest halibut fishery. By 1915 the annual catch of halibut reached 66 million pounds. Though smaller in scale, shellfish was also an important commodity. Willapa Bay had exported its famous oysters to San Francisco since the early 1850s. By 1915 shell fishery was a million-dollar industry, though harvests had also begun declining.
The depletion of fisheries brought about measures to preserve the region’s resources. The International Fisheries Commission began studying halibut fisheries in 1924 and imposed closed seasons, catch limits, and nursery maintenance beginning in 1932. To protect salmon in the Columbia River and Puget Sound, Washington state began outlawing certain types of gear (fish wheels, for example, in 1935), but restrictions on one kind of gear simply led to the use of others. The construction of Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams further complicated preservation efforts. After pressure from fishing interests, elaborate fish ladders and screens were installed at Bonneville. Salmon migrating upstream, however, still suffered a 15 percent mortality rate. Too tall for ladders, the Grand Coulee eliminated thousands of miles of salmon habitat. Artificial propagation and hatcheries were established to restock depleted areas. Experiments in breeding and hybridization were conducted at the University of Washington to bolster these efforts.
Declining natural resources and the depression of the 1930s led to both conservation measures and economic planning. The Washington State Planning Council completed studies of important areas of the regional economy and published reports on forestry, fisheries, minerals, and land reclamation. Other organizations undertook similar studies of the region’s natural resources, particularly with further development and exploitation in mind. Always dependent on harvesting or extracting natural resources for a larger market, Washington’s economy would remain so with the explosion of economic activity related to government contracts and wartime production in the 1940s.
Today fisheries, forestry, and agriculture continue to play an important role in Washington state’s economy. Aquaculture, primarily Atlantic salmon and oysters, was a $37 million business in Washington state in 2001. From research to hatcheries and dam modifications, considerable money is spent on saving wild salmon, the icon of the Pacific Northwest. Washington’s forest industry is among the largest in the nation, second only to Oregon. Today forest products companies manage more than half of Washington’s privately owned forests (36 percent are privately owned). Employing 91,700 people in 1998, agriculture remains a major industry in the state. Washington ranks second (behind California) in the diversity of its crops and fifth in wheat production; it is the leading producer of several crops, including apples, pears, red raspberries, hops, lentils, Concord grapes, and sweet cherries.
The development of Washington state agriculture, forestry, and fisheries between 1850 and 1945 is documented in many publications held by the University of Washington Libraries, Washington State University Libraries, Washington State Library and other libraries in the region. Below is a sample of titles ranked most important for preservation by the Washington State scholarly review panel.
Serial Titles: For agriculture, Northwest Science; several WSU publications including Research Studies and the Agricultural Extension Bulletin; Ranch (later known as Ranch and Range and the Washington Farmer); Washington State Farm Bureau News; Northwest Fruit Grower (also known as Wenatchee Fruit); and Appleland News. For forestry, The Timberman; West Coast Lumberman; the University of Washington Forest Club Annual; and several Washington State government forestry publications including Report of the State Fire Warden. For fisheries, Pacific Fisherman; several UW publications including Publications in Fisheries and Puget Sound Marine Station Publications; several publications for sportsmen including Washington Sportsman; and state publications including the Washington State Fish Commission Annual Report of the State Fish Commissioner. Book Titles: Several early accounts describing the area including Denny’s Pioneer Days on Puget Sound and Meeker’s Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound, Hop Culture in the United States, and Prospectus of the Puyallup Hop Company. Titles both about and promoting migration including Pacific Northwest Regional Planning Commission publications such as Recent Migration into the Pacific Northwest, railroad publications such as Northern Pacific Railroad Company’s The Fertile and Beautiful Palouse Country, and Washington State government publications on logged-off and irrigated lands. Also, Bryan’s Historical Sketch of the State College of Washington, 1890-1925 and Crawford’s The Washington State Grange, 1889-1924.
Other popular titles specifically addressed irrigation in the Columbia Basin including Pacific Northwest Regional Planning Commission’s Columbia Basin Study, the Spokane Chamber of Commerce’s Columbia Basin Grand Coulee Project. Others addressing the affect of irrigation and dams on fish, such as Save the Columbia River Salmon and Report of the Preliminary Investigations into the Possible Methods of Preserving the Columbia River Salmon and Steelhead at the Grand Coulee Dam. Other highly ranked fisheries books were Schultz’s Fishes of the American Northwest and Salmonoid Game Fishes in the National Forests of Northwestern United States, and Hume’s Salmon of the Pacific Coast.
For forestry books, several titles by Winkenwerder including Forestry in the Pacific Northwest, Manual of Exercises in Forest Mensuration and Report on the Reforestation of the Cedar River Watershed. Other popular titles were Williams’ Logger-talk: Some Notes on the Jargon of the Pacific Northwest Woods, Holbrook’s Holy Old Mackinaw and several titles by Archie Binns including The Roaring Land and The Timber Beast.