NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 1 - Fall 2005

Special Collections To Digitize Historic Tobacco and Crop Science Materials

By Lois Fischer Black, Special Collections Research Center

Thanks to support from the North Carolina Farm Bureau, the North Carolina Tobacco Foundation, and the North Carolina Research Commission, the NCSU Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center will construct, enhance, and maintain the “Living Off the Land” Web site. The site will provide digital access to collections of rare and unique items on tobacco and crop science history in North Carolina dating from 1850 through 1950. Tobacco has figured prominently not only in the economy of the state, but also in its culture, from colonial times to the present. Agricultural history is a frequent area of interest for researchers and visitors alike to North Carolina’s cultural repositories. Completion of this project will result in expanded access to the resources available for the study of the state’s tobacco and crop science history.

The principal goal of “Living Off the Land,” will be to digitize primary source research materials on tobacco and crop science and subsequently synthesize them into an educational resource emphasizing the rise of the agricultural economy in North Carolina. The primary activities of the project will be to produce digital photographs of tobacco farms, plants, barns, warehouses, and agricultural equipment. Historical documents and publications relating to tobacco and crop science research and cultivation will also be digitized, including scarce printed pamphlets, such as those from the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. In addition to featuring primary source materials, the centralized Web site will provide information about and links to other noteworthy informational sites.

Among the topics represented in this digital collection will be education, history, economics, entomology, cultivation, and the literature of tobacco. The Web site will have sufficient breadth to be of interest to K-12 students; NCSU faculty, staff, and students; and the general public. It will contain seminal printed works, as well as key manuscript and archival collections represented by digital images and by finding aids to facilitate research. Printed texts will include some of the earliest agricultural textbooks assigned to the first classes at the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, as well as reports produced by the college. The subject of tobacco and crop science history is of statewide significance. As the research site is developed, it is expected to become an invaluable resource for researchers.

The project will be made possible by a donation of $10,000 from the North Carolina Farm Bureau and from grants made by the North Carolina Tobacco Research Commission and the North Carolina Tobacco Foundation of $15,000 and $4,867, respectively. The NCSU Libraries also wishes to thank Bill Collins, coordinator of NCSU’s Tobacco Program, for his assistance in planning this project.