Transcript Challenges and Opportunities in Agricultural Librarianship

School Gardening
Documents of the Early
20th Century:
A Digitization Journey
That Keeps Flourishing
Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries
Seattle, Wash., May 19, 2010
by Suzi Teghtmeyer
Librarian, Michigan State
University Libraries
The Spark and Idea
• Spring 2009 – school gardening
query via email
• Discovered the simply-bound
Board of Education - United
States School Garden Army
documents and School-Rural
garden documents on shelf
• Realized they were not digitized
anywhere, and poorly cataloged
in WorldCat with few holdings.
• Discovered LOC’s Constance
Carter’s School gardens website
Planning and Digitization
• Approached boss with the idea of
scanning the documents and
putting them online through our
digitization site and a research
guide using LibGuides.
• Drew up a proposal for
digitization of documents for inhouse DMC.
• Was approved, but with a time
delay.
• Visited NAL, was able to get
more docs there digitized.
Creation of site
• Began using LibGuides
program in July 2009 to link
to newly digitized
documents and other online
materials
• Used tabs at the top and
boxes within a tabbed page
to organized the information
and links
• Initial tab introduces site
and content
School Gardening homepage
Lib of Congress, C. Carter’s site
LOC’s site, more links
LOC Bibliography
USSGA tab and links
DMC School Gardens Site
Bureau of Education Documents
School Home – Garden Circ 6
Other Early Works
National defense gardening conference
National Resources, Assoc.
USDA - Gardening with Children
Michigan Resources
Images
Images - Photographs
Contacts Made
• Called MSU Extension and
have started talking and
connecting with statewide
agents who work with
schools and gardens.
• Called Constance Carder at
LOC and she was thrilled
with the site and resources
and told me to call others
More Content
• So far NAL has digitized the
initial two documents and
two more on school
gardening; total of four
• Continue to find older
documents already online
and link to them
• I have submitted a list of 8
more docs to DMC to
digitize; to be done this
summer
Future plans
• Continue to add pre-1923 and other
copyright free content
• Add additional content from websites
• Add Michigan curriculum information
as it becomes available
• Add a bibliography of materials that
help teachers learn gardening and
teaching it
• Consider name-change
• Add more state based curricular
material for other states
• Take the site national as an AgNIC
cooperative site
Questions?
Thank you
http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/SchoolGardens