NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 23 number 2 - Winter 2003

By Melissa D. McConnell, Preservation

The NCSU Libraries has received a $124,000 grant from the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to microfilm rural agricultural material printed between 1820 and 1945. This grant will allow the Libraries to microfilm resources selected from a 1,200-item bibliography of significant material related to the agricultural history of North Carolina. The bibliography, developed by NCSU Libraries' staff early in 2002 as part of USAIN's National Preservation Project, is an NEH-funded effort to identify and preserve state and local literature relating to agriculture and rural life in America between 1820 and 1945. It is currently available on the Web at http://jacob.lib.ncsu.edu/preservation/usain/Search.cfm. Over the course of the current two-year grant, the NCSU Libraries will microfilm approximately 600 volumes and will work to develop the Web site to include additional information on the history of North Carolina agriculture.

The diverse publications represented in the bibliography serve an important role in documenting North Carolina's rich agricultural heritage. Information was obtained from major university collections in North Carolina, the State Library of North Carolina, the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, and various special collections throughout the state. The books and documents identified in the bibliography are in many ways typical of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century materials: most are printed on acidic paper that is rapidly deteriorating, thereby limiting access to the materials. Preserving the material on microfilm will provide the opportunity for more people to read and use these influential texts.

The bibliography's creation represented a collaborative effort between several library departments. A panel of three North Carolina historians who specialize in agricultural history reviewed the bibliography as well. Panel member Peter A. Coclanis, a professor in the Department of History at UNC-Chapel Hill, has been involved in the Agriculture Historical Society of North Carolina and has written a book on the history of southern agriculture, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country. Panel member Lu Ann Jones, an assistant professor in East Carolina University's Department of History, teaches North Carolina history and oral history methodology. From 1986 to 1991 she directed "An Oral History of Southern Agriculture," a project for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. In 2002 the University of North Carolina Press published her latest book, Mama Learned Us to Work: Farm Women in the New South. Ann R. Phillips, the third panel member, is a visiting professor in NC State's Department of History. Phillips's past experiences as an oral historian and project director for Washington and Falls counties in Texas contributed to her involvement with the Oral History Association, the National Women's Studies Association, the Southern Association of Women, and the Southeastern Women's Studies Association of Historians. Her research interests include North Carolina agricultural history and the role of women in a farm economy.

The USAIN National Preservation Project is an outgrowth of a 1993 USAIN proposal to establish a national preservation program for agricultural printed material. In the 1993 proposal, agricultural literature is defined as covering "agricultural economics and rural sociology, agricultural engineering, soil science, food science and human nutrition, animal science, forestry, crop improvement and protection, and human ecology." Microfilming southern agriculture literature from North Carolina will provide an excellent source for research into American cultural values and environmental conditions during a time when living and working in farming communities remained a dominant American experience. Currently, seventeen states-including New York, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Iowa-and the National Agricultural Library are working with Cornell University, USAIN, and the NEH in this important preservation program. Eventually, program coordinators hope to involve all fifty states in the project.