LSU Libraries faculty members Cristina Caminita and Gina Costello have secured a Project Ceres grant for the LSU Libraries, which will support the digitization of the LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins and Annual Reports. The "Louisiana Digital BibliAGraphy: 100 Years of LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Publications, 1888-1989" digitization project will start in August.

“The bulletins and annual reports of LSU’s Agricultural Experiment Stations document research conducted in various areas since the 1890s, after the Hatch Act of 1887 established agricultural experiment stations at the land grant universities in each state,” said Caminita, LSU Libraries’ agriculture librarian. “The experiment stations were set up to investigate improvements in agriculture practices and technologies.”

The digitization project includes research bulletins published by faculty who served in pivotal roles during the establishment of LSU as a research institution, such as William Carter Stubbs, who was the first director of the LSU Sugar Experiment Station, and William H. Dalrymple, the first veterinarian of the State Experiment Station.

The LSU Libraries has the bulletins and annual reports in print format, and once they are digitized, they will be available to the public online in the Louisiana Digital Library, an online repository of nearly 200,000 digital items from Louisiana archives, libraries, and museums and the Internet Archive.

Making these historical documents available to the public fits with LSU’s land-grant mission to deliver research-based information to people that will improve their lives and economic well-being. The publications demonstrate in a concrete way how the activities of the LSU Agricultural Experiment Stations have had an impact on the agricultural, economic, and social history of the state, as well as the history and development of the University, the state’s flagship institution.

Upon completion of the project, the collection will represent the most complete, fully accessible holdings of LSU Agricultural Extension Station publications.

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

For more information about the project, contact Gina Costello, Head of Digital Services, at gcoste1@lsu.edu or 225-578-3686, or Cristina Caminita, Agriculture Librarian, at ccamin1@lsu.edu or 225-578-9433.