Post on 28-Mar-2015
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 TeghtmeyerLibrarian, 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 in-house 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
LOC’s site, more links
LOC Bibliography
DMC School Gardens Site
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