Kansas agricultural history goes online thanks to K-State Libraries and Project Ceres
Monday, Aug. 25, 2014
MANHATTAN — A team of Kansas State University librarians has received its second Project Ceres contract to digitize more than 70 years of Kansas agricultural history.
The contract, worth more than $7,000, allows the team to digitize and preserve important Kansas youth-in-agriculture, agricultural education and rural life publications. Titles include Kansas 4‐H Journal, 1955-1988; Kansas Future Farmer, 1929-1979; and five additional newsletters and magazines.
In 2013, K-State Libraries received a $3,125 Project Ceres contract to digitize issues of Kansas Farmer from 1863 to 1954. That digitization process will be completed this year and available online by early 2015. Kansas Farmer documents changes in farm practices, livestock management and other aspects of rural life such as cooking and foodways.
"The work our librarians are doing will ensure that students, historians and agricultural researchers will have access to generations of farming knowledge and culture," said Lori Goetsch, dean of K-State Libraries. "The online collection will be freely available for anyone to search. The collections have academic applications, and they could also be of interest to the region's farmers, casual genealogists and the general public."
Project Ceres funding is provided through collaboration among the U.S. Agricultural Information Network, the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative and the Center for Research Libraries. The project's mission is to support initiatives that preserve print materials essential to the study of the history of agriculture and make those materials accessible online.
The digitized publications will be available through Kansas State University's institutional repository, K-State Research Exchange, or K-REx, at http://krex.k-state.edu. They will also be accessible through the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative catalog.
The K-State librarians working on the project include Diana Farmer, content development librarian; Amanda Harlan, metadata librarian; Linda Marston, digital collections coordinator; Livia Olsen, faculty/graduate services librarian; Beth Turtle, scholarly communications librarian; and Michelle Turvey-Welch, head, metadata/preservation.
