The NC State Libraries was awarded a $98,997 grant in June to fund the “Better Living in North Carolina: Bringing Science and Technology to the People” project to document the history of the transformation of North Carolina’s agricultural economy during the 20th century.
The project is designed to digitize a large selection of materials that NC State’s libraries has in its archives. The historical records are primarily from the Cooperative Extension Service, originally called the Agricultural Extension Service.
Todd Kosmerick, university archivist, co-program and co-primary investigator of the project, said he expects that NC State students in the history department and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will make the most use of the records in thier research for written assignments.
Making the materials easily accessible can foster research, Kosmerick said.There have already been researchers from California and Virginia and graduate students from Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro coming to look at the materials.
NCSU Libraries is working with North Carolina A&T State University’s F. D. Bluford Library on the project. Both land grant universities have offices where the extension started 101 years ago. A&T also ran an African-American only program when segregation legally existed in NC.
The extension service began in 1914 when the federal government allocated funds to land grant colleges, though NC State had programs before the extension was created.
Bluford Library is digitizing records of correspondence, pamphlets, scrapbooks and photographs between two African-American extension agents. NCSU Libraries will be digitizing the annual reports from the first annual report in 1909 to 1983.
The annual reports have a summary of what the extension service did that year from each county. There are certain large programs run by the cooperative extension that have separate annual reports which are also being digitized.
The programs include 4-H, a program that taught children how to manage a farm, a rural electrification program and several programs that focused on particular crops or animals including swine, dairy, plant pathology and animal husbandry.
The extension service provided farmers training on better methods of growing crops, raising animals and handling business. It also provided information to women on the farms for growing and preserving garden vegetables and fruits, sewing, furniture repair projects and home management.
The record shows that in the 1960s, the extension started offering more non-traditional programs such as photography. The extension also has moved more toward sustainability — educating participants on sustainable agriculture and preserving the environment.
Dee Shore, media specialist at NC State, said the project is important because it shares the history of the research-based outreach within the community. The extension has been a major outreach program of the university for more than the hundred years that it’s been at NC State.
“Right from the very beginning, there was a strong drive for the research and the learning that was going on here on NC State’s campus, particularly in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and getting that information out to citizens of the state,” Kosmerick said.
NCSU Libraries have digitized the Agromeck, Technician, architectural materials, 4-H and family consumer science materials in the past, and these are online on their website.
Brian Dietz, digital program librarian for special collections and co-primary investigator of the project, said that the extension content that has already been digitized has been well received by the general public and on campus.
“We’ll continue to work with faculty and students who have an interest in either agricultural extension, the history of agriculture in the state or just history of North Carolina,” Dietz said.
