permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@sunsite.unc.edu>]

http://sunSITE.unc.edu/london   InterGarden   
london@sunSITE.unc.edu   llondon@bellsouth.net
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 10:05:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Andy Clark, SAN    Coordinator" <san@nal.usda.gov>
To: sanet-mg <sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Preserving Ag Literature: NEH Phase II preservation project
Thought you might be interested in this.  
Andy
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 09:57:04 -0400
From: Susan Barnes <sjb5@cornell.edu>
To: san@nal.usda.gov
Subject: NEH Phase II preservation project begins

NEWS RELEASE

June 1, 1998

Preserving Our Printed Agricultural Heritage:  Phase II of a National
Collaboration

Libraries in fifteen states are now working to identify and preserve state
and local historical literature about agricultural development and rural
life covering 1820-1945.  Since the nation was largely rural until after
WWII, these publications contain information about a significant sector of
U.S. history.  This cooperative effort is preserving agrarian literature
for future generations of scholars and farmers -- irreplaceable literature,
much of it in a fragile, embrittled state.

Phase I of this project began in 1996 with a grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities -- funding which enabled eight states to work
with panels of scholars to identify the highest priority literature for
preservation about each state.  The 1996 grant also included funding for
four states to microfilm their most valuable titles.  This spring, NEH
awarded $908,800 to Phase II of the project, which allows the remaining
participants to complete their filming and enables seven more states to
begin.  Part of the "National Preservation Program for Agricultural
Literature" (commissioned by the U.S. Agricultural Information Network and
published in 1993), both phases of the project are coordinated by Cornell
University's Albert R. Mann Library.

The literature of agriculture and rural life documents such historical
forces as life on the plantation, the abolition of slavery, westward
migration, sharecropping, the arrival of European and Asian immigrants, the
use of migrant workers in agriculture, Native Americans overrun by
land-hungry pioneers, and the clash of Anglo and Hispanic cultures in
southwestern states.  In preserving this literature, Phase I and Phase II
of the project save a collection of resources most valuable to social,
political, and economic historians.  In addition, researchers looking for
sustainable agriculture techniques find inspiration in this historic
literature, which documents methods from the days before World-War II,
after which use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers became commonplace.

In Phase I of the project Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
were funded to identify and preserve their literature while California,
Florida, Nebraska, and Texas received support to identify literature.  In
Phase II these latter four states will preserve their state and local
agrarian literature; Phase II funding enables Hawaii and Montana to
identify and preserve this most valuable rural literature while Arkansas,
Arizona, Iowa, and Minnesota have received support to identify their
publications.

To identify the highest priority publications to be preserved, pertinent
documents for each state are identified and then ranked by panels of
scholars.  These rankings provide priorities to insure that at least the
top ranked 25% of publications can be preserved for each participating
state.  In order to be preserved for posterity, these publications are then
microfilmed according to ANSI/AIIM standards and the technical microfilming
guidelines in the RLG Preservation Microfilming Handbook.  Records for each
item will be contributed to the RLIN and OCLC national databases, with a
master film negative sent to the National Agricultural Library for
safekeeping.  Each library will keep negatives of the publications they
have microfilmed, as well as positive microfilm copies for local use and
for interlibrary loan.

Phase II of the project will begin officially at the American Library
Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC later this month.  At that
meeting, project Director Wallace C. Olsen (Senior Research Associate at
Cornell University's Mann Library) will hold a workshop on identification
and evaluation of the literature, and Ann Swartzell (Head of Preservation
at Harvard University) will conduct a microfilming quality assurance
workshop.

A total of $1,750,000 has now been awarded by the NEH to preserve a variety
of publications:  agricultural and farm journals, histories, grant and
agricultural society documents, natural histories, and records of rural
growth and community development.  Examples of items to be preserved at
participating institutions include:

--early publications from Franciscan missionaries who worked with Navajos
and Apaches in Arizona during the 19th century,
--publications such as "The Plight of the Share-Cropper" (by Norman Thomas)
which reflect the difficulties of tenant farm life in Arkansas,
--records of controversies over public land use, protection of endangered
species, water rights, and agricultural labor in California,
--documentation of cotton plantation/slave culture, rural black
communities, and the draining of much of the Everglades in Florida,
--descriptions of the growth of the Hawaiian sugar industry and its
relation to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 (opening the way
for annexation by the U.S. in 1898),
--early journals which promoted scientific agriculture, such as "Wallace's
Farmer" in Iowa,
--details of the period when Minneapolis produced more flour than any other
city in the world as early milling companies such as General Mills and
Pillsbury evolved into conglomerates,
--contemporary information from the days of conflict between ranchers and
homesteaders in Montana,
--railroad pamphlets such as "Great Opportunities for Farmers, Businessmen,
and Investors in Nebraska, Northwestern Kansas, and Eastern Colorado,"
which were designed to sell farmlands and to attract settlers to the new
West,
--contemporary accounts of the period when settlers from the north came to
Texas looking for land, sparking cultural conflict which would eventually
lead to revolution and the raising of the Lone Star flag over the Republic
of Texas.

Mann Library at Cornell University will coordinate and manage the effort
under Project Director Wallace C. Olsen (607-255-8939).  Of the Phase I
participants, Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have completed
the preservation of their top priority state and local publications.
Contact persons for the remaining ten participating institutions are:

 Doug Jones
University of Arizona Library
(520) 621-6394 dejones@bird.library.arizona.edu

Michael J. Dabrishus
University of Arkansas Libraries
(501) 575-5576 mdabrish@saturn.uark.edu

Norma Kobzina
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 643-6475  nkobzina@library.berkeley.edu

Erich Kesse
University of Florida Libraries
(352) 392-0342 erikess@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu

Lynn Davis
University of Hawaii Library
(808) 956-8539 ldavis@hawaii.edu

Cynthia Dobson
Iowa State University Libraries
(515) 294-9697 cdobson@iastate.edu

JoAnn DeVries
University of Minnesota Libraries, St. Paul
(612) 624-7446 j-devr@tc.umn.edu

Jodee Kawasaki
Montana State University Library
(406) 994-2381 alijk@montana.edu

Katherine Walter and Rebecca Bernthal
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
(402) 472-3939 kayw@unllib.unl.edu
(402) 472-4404 rebecca@unllib.unl.edu

Kathy Jackson
Texas A&M University Libraries
(409) 862-4235 kathy-jackson@tamu.edu




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