NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 2 - Winter 2006

Digitizing 4-H and Home Demonstration

By Todd Kosmerick, Special Collections Research Center

The NCSU Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center is involved in a new digitization project called “‘Green ‘N’ Growing’: The History of Home Demonstration and 4-H Youth Development in North Carolina.” Funded by a $49,992 NC ECHO Digitization Grant, the project will facilitate access to primary resource materials on the two Cooperative Extension programs. The resulting research and educational tool should be a valuable resource for students and scholars.

 “Green ‘N’ Growing” draws upon the rich historical records found in the University Archives that document the Home Demonstration and 4-H programs. These records provide valuable information about women, children, race relations, education, agriculture, and rural life in North Carolina during the twentieth century. Because North Carolina was predominantly rural and agricultural for most of the twentieth century, the 4-H and Home Demonstration photographs and documents reveal significant aspects of the state’s history.

The mission of the Extension Service, which grew out of the Populist and Progressive movements, was to help North Carolina’s rural citizens develop a more prosperous economy and way of life by providing information about new advances in agricultural sciences. The home demonstration and 4-H programs were created to reach out specifically to rural women and children. Home Demonstration began in 1906 with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture’s Farmers’ Institutes for Women, and it had firmly become part of NC State’s Agricultural Extension program by 1914. Home demonstration later became home economics and today is the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. Between 1907 and 1912, 4-H began as “corn clubs” for boys and “tomato” or canning clubs for girls. The term “4-H” was not widely applied to these organizations until the mid-1920s. By the 1950s, North Carolina had more 4-H participants than any other state. For both 4-H and home demonstration, separate organizations existed for whites and African Americans until desegregation in the 1960s. North Carolina’s 4-H and home demonstration programs generated such nationally known luminaries as L. R. Harrill and Jane McKimmon [see “Development of the National 4-H Program,” Focus, volume 23:3 (2003)].

 “Green ‘N’ Growing” will greatly enhance access to these unique images and documents in the University Archives. Through the project, Special Collections is digitizing approximately 3,000 photographs and 2,000 pages from pamphlets, flyers, newsletters, and other publications dating from the 1910s to the 1970s. The digital images and associated metadata will be maintained through the same Luna Imaging® database created for the University Archives Photograph Collection project [see “Improving Access to the NCSU Libraries’ Visual Collections,” Focus, volume 24:3 (2004)], and they will be accessible through the center’s Web site. Users will be able to conduct keyword searching through the database and download low-resolution images from the Web site to local computers. High-resolution copies (up to 1,200 dots per inch) can be obtained by contacting the Special Collections Research Center.

In addition to the digital images, the project will create other resources. Staff will develop Web-based search tools such as Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids for the original archival materials. They will also compile narrative histories, bibliographies, and timelines to provide context for the study of the Home Demonstration and 4-H programs in North Carolina. These resources will facilitate research and educational use by faculty and students here at NCSU, as well as for researchers at other universities and at primary and secondary schools.