25 Years of USAIN: A plan for preservation

USAIN members are leaders in the preservation of agricultural literature.

A signature achievement of USAIN has been the development and implementation of a national preservation plan for agricultural literature, one of the first discipline-based plans, which provided the structure for several rounds of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and resulted in twenty-nine state projects. USAIN continues to be a strong player in the preservation arena, recently partnering with AgNIC and the Center for Research Libraries on Project Ceres, which awards 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.” Over the course of 25 years, many USAIN members have provided, and continue to provide, outstanding vision and leadership for these preservation initiatives, primarily through the oversight of the Preservation and Digital Library Committee (formerly the Preservation Committee.) The breadth and depth of these efforts are recorded in a recently published paper written by Sam Demas, Amy Paster and Joy Paulson. 

Demas, Sam, Amy Paster, and Joy Paulson. "Agriculture and Rural Life: A Discipline or Domain Based Approach to Preservation and Access." Against the Grain 25, no. 2 (2013): 79-81. PDF

(Permission to post this paper on usain.org has been granted by the publisher. )

USAIN Celebrates 25 Years

A special logo and member pin was issued for the 25th anniversary

USAIN was founded in 1988 as a network of agricultural information professionals. Today, the organization still fosters collaboration, advocacy and professional development in support of agricultural information.