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 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 LOCs Constance Carters 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
School Gardening homepage
Lib of Congress, C. Carters site
LOCs 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