Ithaca, New York
June 17, 2004
The National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) has awarded $618,857 to the Albert R. Mann
Library at Cornell University to preserve local and state
agricultural literature on microfilm. The library also is
relaunching the Core
Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) Web site to make
agricultural materials of national historical significance
available on the World Wide Web.
The NEH grant and the CHCA contribute to a long-term
preservation project, the National Preservation Program for
Agricultural Literature (NPPAL). The project prevents
historically significant published materials on the history of
state and local agriculture and rural life from being lost to
natural decay.
"Preserving this historical knowledge is critical because, to a
great extent, it captures the national character of Americans
and the American experience," says Mary Ochs, head of collection
development and preservation at Mann Library. "Many documents,
such as memoirs and transactions of early agricultural
societies, seed catalogs, almanacs, extension service
publications, archives, photographs, oral histories and
periodicals for farm families and early agricultural enterprises
are of invaluable historical significance. However, many of
these materials are deteriorating and literally falling apart.
To lose these materials would be an irreparable loss to the
history of American values."
Mann Library will work with university libraries in other states
to microfilm 1,150 titles in 2,707 volumes published between
1820 and 1945 from Georgia, Illinois and Ohio. In addition, the
agricultural literature from Colorado, Maryland, Oklahoma and
Washington will be reviewed and ranked, with the most important
material being slated for microfilming in a later phase of the
project.
The United States Agriculture Information Network and the
National Agriculture Library developed the agricultural
preservation project in 1993. Each state is expected to preserve
its own local agricultural literature. Since 1996 over 30,000
volumes published between 1820 and 1945 have been saved.
Some of the titles to be filmed over the next two years include
the classic Livingston and the Tomato (1893), which contains
descriptions and drawings of the varieties brought to life by
A.W. Livingston, the Reynoldsburg tomato seed grower who was the
best-known developer of tomato varieties in the United States in
the 19th century. A Treatise on the Cultivation of the Grape in
Vineyards (1850) also will be microfilmed. This is a significant
document because it was in the Ohio River Valley where the
Catawba grape was cultivated for making
wine, spearheading an Ohio industry that grew to be a large
producer of wine by 1860. Other titles to be microfilmed
include Agricultural Education of Less than College Grade in
Georgia 1733-1939, Religious Instruction of Slaves in Georgia
(1841) and Cotton: Its History, Cultivation and Manufacture in
the Augusta Area (1940).
The CHLA Web site
will add a significant amount of material, including some
historical journals and improve the user interface, says Ochs.
"We have about 670,000 pages and 1,700 volumes as of today with
300 more to be posted over the summer. By the fall, we should
have more than 2,000 volumes and one million digitized pages in
the collection."
The CHLA is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts
published between the early 19th century and the middle to late
20th century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics,
agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their
protection, food science, forestry, human nutrition, rural
sociology and soil science. Scholars have selected the titles in
this collection for their historical importance.
Related World Wide Web sites
The following sites provide
additional information on this news release. Some might not be
part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no
control over their content or availability.
The National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature:
<http://preserve.nal.usda.gov:8300/npp/presplan.htm>
Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA):
<http://chla.library.cornell.edu>
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