Brand new from the National Agriculture Library.

In 1895, Congress passed a law providing for an annual publication to disseminate the USDA’s resarch developments to scientists and farmers. The first volume published under this law was the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1894, with over 25 articles on such topics as “The grain smuts,” “The improvement of public roads in North Carolina,” and “The crow blackbird and its food.”

With its long publication history, the yearbook provides a convenient way to trace the development of a topic over time. For example, a search on DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) finds the insecticide mentioned in 217 articles from 1943 to 1992. An early article assures that DDT is safe to use if a few simple precautions are taken (see “DDT in the Home”) while later articles begin to mention environmental concerns, as raised by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (see “Protecting the sportsman’s paradise” and “The Place of insecticides”).

Two Ways to Access the Content:

Browse the volumes – 1894 to 1937 or 1938 to 1992

Search on a topic – Select the yearbook from this list and click the “Go” button to return to the Search page. Then enter your keywords.

Source: National Agriculture Library

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 and is filed under Digitization Projects, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.