Project Ceres is a collaboration between the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC), and CRL. The project sponsors are awarding funding for small projects that preserve print materials essential to the study of the history and economics of agriculture and make those materials accessible through digitization.

Sixteen institutions will each receive $3,125 to digitize and preserve important resources:

• Auburn University: Digitization of the 1820–1945 History of Alabama Agriculture and Rural Life
• Dalhousie University: Maritime Students Agriculturalist Digitization and Preservation Project
• Colorado State University: Preservation of Colorado Agriculture Literature, Supplemental Colorado Experiment Station Publications
• University of Idaho: Idaho’s Agricultural History Online: Digitizing The Idaho Forester and Extension’s Current Information Series
• Kansas State University: Digitization of the Kansas Farmer, 1863-1954
• Michigan State University: Grange Visitor 1875–1896 Digitization Project
• University of Minnesota: Preserving Knowledge Transfer: Digitizing Minnesota’s Historical Agricultural Serials and Series
• Mississippi State University: Digitization of Archival Mississippi State University Experiment Station Bulletins
• Missouri State University: History of Missouri State Fruit Experiment Station in Documents
• University of Nebraska at Lincoln: Preserving Nebraska’s Agricultural History: The Research Bulletins of the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station
• New Mexico State University: Digitization of Historical Agricultural Records (NMSU Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Station publications)
• North Dakota State University: Digitizing North Dakota Farm Research for the NDSU Institutional Repository
• The Ohio State University: Reformatting of Ohio State University’s Mimeograph Bulletin Series and Economics and Sociology Occasional Working Paper Series
• Purdue University: Digitization of Purdue Agricultural Publications (1910–1922)
• Washington State University: Digitizing Washington State University Extension Bulletins 1913–
• University of Wisconsin-Madison: Beekeeping Serials from the Charles C. Miller Memorial Apicultural Collection.

Projects will be completed by August 2014. 

The digital products will be available to researchers through local institutional repositories, and through the AgNIC catalog.

Information about the preservation of the print originals will be available through PAPR, CRL’s Print Archives Preservation Registry. The site will feature holdings and condition information down to the issue level as well as information about the facility and environmental conditions in which the material is kept.

The committee members:

• Amy Paster, Chair, Penn State
• Cristina Caminita, Louisiana State
• Diana Farmer, Kansas State
• Melanie Gardner, NAL
• Allison Level, Colorado State
• Rob McGeachin, Texas A & M
• Joy Paulson, Cornell
   

surveyed the major agriculture libraries and participants of the USAIN microfilming program to see how much of this material had been digitized or further preserved after the initial phases of the longstanding microfilming program. The committee then developed guidelines and proposal forms for the Ceres project and publicized it to colleagues at agriculture libraries who were members of USAIN, AgNIC, or CRL. The committee then reviewed submitted proposals to determine which projects would be funded.

For more information on Project Ceres, see the project page on the CRL website.