USAIN Preservation Program

May 12th - Joy Paulson, Cornell University, gave an update on the USAIN Preservation Program at the USAIN 2010 Conference. There have been seven phases of the more than $4 million+ NEH-funded USAIN Preservation program since 1996. The projects have involved 29 states so far, most in microfilming historical agricultural literature in the U.S. However, the latest phase included Cornell, the University of Arizona (UA), and Colorado State University (CSU) in the digitization of that early literature.

A preliminary portal is now available for access. Called 'Harvest: Access to Historical U.S. Agriculture Collections', this portal is a single point of access to a portion of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) and the state level collections of CSU and UA.

Created as a fedora repository that harvests metadata from the partner sites, there is a Drupal interface.

The user can browse or search collections individually or together. In the 'About' section, there are extensive state-specific essays on the history of agriculture. Relationships are being developed with Google Books at http://books.google.com/books and the HathiTrust at www.hathitrust.org for additional access.

Story by Barbara Hutchinson

More on the 2010 USAIN Congress