USAIN/CBHL 2024 Biennial Meeting

Join us for a tour of the MSU Main Library and learn about our unique collections and spaces. Some of the locations we will visit include the Digital Scholarship Lab, Hollander Makerspace, Turfgrass Information Center, Map Library, Kline Digital and Multimedia Center, and Murray Hong Special Collections. Participants will also have an opportunity to view our gallery exhibit on the history of the nation's first Extension Program piloted here at MSU. There is no cost for this tour, and it is open to all USAIN/CBHL attendees. Participants should plan to meet our guide, Elisabeth Mabie, by the Main Library's Red Cedar Entrance, near the Circulation Desk.

Established in 1873, the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden is the oldest, continuously operated university botanical garden in the United States and is located in the heart of MSU’s campus, right next to the MSU Main Library. Maeve Bassett, Education Director, will lead us on a tour and discuss how this unique living laboratory encourages exploration of the natural world and illuminates the interconnectedness between people, plants, and place. There is no cost for this tour, and it is open to all USAIN/CBHL attendees. Participants should plan to meet our guide, Jodie Coalter, by the Main Library's Red Cedar Entrance, near the Circulation Desk, before walking over to the garden.

Join your USAIN and CBHL colleagues as we kick off the first in-person conference since 2018! Food and a cash bar will be available.

Indigenous peoples’ identities, histories, spirituality, and traditions are inseparable from their ancestral homelands and place-based foodways. However, colonization has disrupted those relationships to food and land. Today, there is a growing Indigenous food movement working to restore those relationships and revitalize cultural foods, and seeds often play an important role. Whether they are a seed keeper, farmer, or homecook, the act of practicing ancestral foodways makes community members historians and cultural memory keepers– passing on the knowledge, technologies, and skills that have sustained and nourished generations.

Remembrance and Resilience: Documenting the History of African Americans through Plants, from the Slave Trade to Present Day
Rhonda Evans (New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library)
Lucas Mertehikian (New York Botanical Garden, Humanities Institute)

A three year-project generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, The African American Garden seeks to narrate the history of the many diverse Black communities in the United States through the lens of plants. Including more than one hundred different species. The plants selected for the African American Garden represent the journey of those whose ancestry hails from West Africa via the Transatlantic slave trade, the Caribbean community, and the broader Diaspora including South and Central America. Each year, the garden’s eight beds are rearranged to cover a wide array of themes, from the plants that fueled the plantation system in the Americas to those whose creative, curative, and transformative uses remain culturally significant for Black people all over the world. This presentation discusses in detail the development of this ambitious project, which has resulted in a carefully curated experience enhanced with poetry, food, public lectures, symposia, and art, and which has attracted more than 100,000 visitors. The presentation will discuss the Garden’s origins, and how, under the umbrella of the Library, the staff collaborated with experts across multiple disciplines, community members, artists, and horticulturists to bring this project into fruition. Finally, there will be an analysis of the impact of this specialized garden on the institution, the community, the creators, and an exploration of how this garden will influence similar future projects.

Plowing their sacred spaces: The history of colonial agriculture as it relates to the prehistoric earthworks created by the Indigenous Peoples of the Mississippi Valley.
David Luftig (Washington State University)

Over two thousand years ago, indigenous cultures within the Mississippi Valley began creating magnificent earthworks in the form of conical mounds, effigy works, and ceremonial complexes. Amongst the most well known of these earthworks are the Serpent Mound (Ohio), Cahokia (Illinois), and the Poverty Point complex (Louisiana). All three are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Earthworks, large and small, were ubiquitous in many parts of the Midwest when colonial farmers arrived. At the beginning of the 19th Century, there were 10,000 sites in just Ohio. Today, that number has been reduced to around several scores.

Farms have played a transformative role in the destruction, interpretation, and preservation of these sites. As farmers worked their land they inadvertently dug into an archival record of human activity. As such, farms became a place where knowledge was both generated and destroyed.

This study provides a historical overview regarding the relationship between these earthworks and the farmers who came to occupy the land containing them. Although agriculture was the most destructive force of these sites, the history is more nuanced than typically accounted for.

This presentation looks at multiple aspects of this relationship including (a) experiences and opinions of farmers regarding these sites, their creators, and the artifacts that kept turning up in the fields (b) the logistical hurdles that came with plowing and grazing earthwork sites (c) the legacy of colonial farming communities as it relates to Indigenous Peoples and their creations (d) the complicated relationship between archaeologists and farmers and (e) recent trends regarding preservation and collaboration.

Exploring Inclusivity: A Diversity Audit of Life Science Library Exhibits
Janis Shearer (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Yanling Liu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Funk Library (Funk) has three exhibit cases with a goal to display materials related to Funk subject areas, university events, or campus groups. Display materials are drawn from the Library’s extensive collection for agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences, biology, city planning and landscape architecture, the Prairie Research Institute and agricultural communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus.

Exhibitions offer an opportunity to connect with our patrons and to provide a glimpse into the unique topics, subjects, and services that science libraries have to offer. They are also opportunities to develop strategies that integrate diversity into our work, increase our impact, and maintain our relevance. With motivations to foster diversity through our exhibits, the authors’ reflection on past work attempts to identify gaps in representation that can address inclusivity and a sense of belonging within an academic community.

This paper will discuss the process and findings from a diversity audit of physical materials exhibited by Funk over the past 5 years. Applying methods used to audit print collections, the authors will discuss their manual methodology to assess diverse representation of authors and subjects, their tools used to document findings, and how the resulting information will be used.

From AI Workshops to Off-Campus Partnerships: A Library’s Journey of Engaging with Extension Agents
Livia Olsen (Kansas State University Libraries)
Carol Sevin (Kansas State University Libraries)

This presentation will explore the impact of using developments in AI as a library outreach tool. K-State Libraries AI team began conducting workshops on using generative AI which sparked the interest of many groups, including Extension agents, who wanted to learn more about AI and how to use it in their own contexts because they saw the library as a place to help them learn more. The team was invited to present a professional development workshop about the basics of AI to a group of family and consumer science extension agents. K-State is focusing more on external audiences and the team saw this engagement as a way to build off-campus relationships. A “get to know each other” session was included in the workshop for the extension agents to learn more about how the library can serve them and for the librarians to learn more about the work of Extension. This engaging, reciprocal outreach opportunity would not have arisen without people’s interest in generative AI.

In addition to sharing this experience, we will reflect on the challenges and disappointments that we faced, because not everyone is interested in engaging with the library about AI. Additionally, we will address the following questions: What will be the lasting outcomes of this engagement with Extension? Will this interest and engagement last as AI becomes more ubiquitous? Is our project a translatable idea that can be replicated or adapted by other libraries or institutions?

The Librarians Role in a Nutrition Class at Louisiana State University
Randa Morgan (Louisiana State University)

In the Nutrition and Dietetics Program at Louisiana State University, the ability to discern between original research and review articles is crucial for students to successfully graduate. However, despite its significance, students routinely struggle with the challenge of locating original research articles each semester. This necessitates a profound grasp of information literacy concepts, including synthesis, and critical evaluation. This paper thoroughly explores the crucial nature of this skill set, providing an in-depth examination of the methods employed to address these challenges within the Nutrition 3110 classes.

The discussion encompasses the rationale underpinning the teaching of distinctions between original research and review articles, outlining the specific content covered and clarifying the integral role of a librarian throughout the instructional process. This discussion also opens a dialog about students receiving information literacy instruction and what happens to those students who manage to sidestep the classes that teach it. Everyone assumes someone is teaching them these skill sets when the reality may be different. Additionally, the presentation sheds light on the development and practical utilization of a handout designed for one-on-one consultations, offering a tangible example of the teaching strategy in action. The exploration extends to the role of evidence synthesis-type papers, underscoring their relevance while also not using them for the assignment.

The presenter candidly shares firsthand experiences and initial struggles with the assignment, acknowledging the broader difficulties that students may encounter when faced with similar tasks. This presentation not only provides a comprehensive understanding of the pedagogical approach taken but also offers valuable insights into the practical implementation of strategies aimed at equipping students with the skills essential for navigating the intricate landscape of scientific literature within the domain of nutrition and dietetics.

Herding Cats: A Librarian's Guide to Launching a Veterinary Medicine Program
Karen Burton (Clemson University)

There is a chronic shortage of veterinarians around the country, and in a state with no vet school this shortage is even worse. The obvious home in South Carolina for a much-needed new School of Veterinary Medicine was Clemson University, the R-1 public land-grant university that already offered a veterinary science program for undergraduate and graduate students. As the current liaison for that program, I was asked to be involved in preparing the libraries for this new addition to our university. I benchmarked our collections and services that could potentially support veterinary medicine against our peer institutions with a vet school and produced a report that offered purchasing recommendations to effectively support a veterinary medicine program. This report included plans for hiring necessary personnel, options for library space usage, and a projected budget for the electronic resources, books, and journals we would need to purchase. I will share how I managed the project, what information I used for benchmarking, software and tools used, and I will offer a framework for future benchmarking projects that could potentially be used for any new program.

I will also address the importance of open communication between the libraries and the administration for a new program as it relates to program accreditation. The subject of the library’s role in accreditation for the new School of Veterinary Medicine, as well as the timeline, was something I had to initiate conversations about in order to make hiring and acquisitions plans to meet those accreditation requirements by certain deadlines. This timeline begins years before the first student is accepted, and may not be on the library’s radar when they are asked to branch out into a new program dependent on accreditation, but is certainly an important aspect all librarians need to be aware of.

The 2026 World Cup promises to be the grandest edition yet, as it will be co-hosted by three
countries for the first time in history: Canada, the United States of America, and Mexico. In
contrast to the usual 36 participating countries, 48 countries will participate in the 2026 World
Cup, resulting in 104 scheduled games, marking a significant increase from previous
tournaments. The 2026 World Cup spans across 16 host cities, stretching from the heights of
Mexico City's 9,500 feet elevation to the sea-level enclosure of Vancouver's indoor stadium –
which are 3,100 miles apart – presenting immense logistical challenges.

Aside from the 16 host stadiums, there will be 49 base camps and 178 practice fields. Adding to
the complexity, FIFA mandates that all games be played on natural grass surfaces. However,
eight out of the 16 stadiums feature artificial turf, with five of them being indoor stadiums. These
challenges underscore the need for uniformity and consistency across all venues.

Two universities – Michigan State University (MSU) and University of Tennessee (UT) – have
undertaken the task of finding solutions for the unique demands of the 2026 World Cup. The
primary research areas of emphasis include turfgrass establishment, stadium floor
construction/renovation, pitch installation, and turfgrass management. The collaborative efforts
between the universities have been extensive, with 86 research trials conducted since 2021.

Given that half of the stadiums (which includes the five domed stadiums) do not have natural
grass, it is crucial to address the issue of converting these artificial turf fields into natural grass
playing surfaces. To address this issue, the researchers are developing a temporary shallow turf
profile (STP) system that can be easily installed and removed after the tournament. The
development of the STP system utilizes the advancement of sports turfgrass research
throughout the years. Comprehensive testing and evaluations to optimize the components of the
STP system, including big roll sod grown on plastic, hybrid turf systems, portable drainage mats
and vacuum/ventilation systems, are being conducted. Additionally, a climate-controlled
greenhouse has been constructed to simulate the growing conditions of an indoor stadium.
Ongoing research in this facility focuses on artificial lighting and plant growth regulators.

The innovations resulting from this research project will have a broader impact not only
benefiting soccer but also extending to other sports, such as football. Beyond the technical
advancements, one of the most significant outcomes of this research collaboration is the
invaluable opportunity it provides for undergraduate and graduate students to engage in
turfgrass research at the highest level while actively contributing to the advancement of sports
turf science in preparation for the world's most prestigious soccer event.

In this session, a representative from the three invited organizations, AgNIC, CBHL, and USAIN, will provide a 10-12 minute description of their organization. This will include a condensed history, organizational structure, descriptions of member libraries/organizations, and other interesting details. After the three presentations, there will be time for Q&A.

Hosted by the USAIN Advocacy and Action Committee

This panel session will facilitate a discussion of the key ideas in the OSTP policy. The session will begin by presenting the results of a survey of USAIN members and their status regarding adopting the policy. Together, the panelists possess vital experiences through their work of advocacy, federal libraries, and public Universities within and outside of USAIN. They will share their experiences advocating for and supporting the implementation of public access and open access policies for federally sponsored research and highlight the benefits and potential challenges of this legislation for libraries and universities.

Audience members will be encouraged to share their experiences and ask OSTP- and open access- related questions. The audience will learn about challenges and best practices for adopting the OSTP policy at higher education institutions. The discussion will highlight the role of libraries, stakeholders, and partners in implementing this policy and how to encourage trust and adoption at their institutions. The session will raise awareness of this policy and its status to inform individual and collective strategies for supporting and enabling open scholarship at USAIN and peer institutions.

There is an emerging body of research in Library and Information Science (LIS) that reveals the benefits of open access research to society and to the scientific research and the scholarly communication processes. The proposed OSTP policy and mandates are consistent with the core values of libraries and the pivotal role that libraries play as guardians of information ensuring ‘ready and equitable access to information for all library users.’ [ALA Core Values]

Evaluating the reporting quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in agricultural publications
Chao Cai (Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies)
Jane Yatcilla (Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies)
Justyna Czader (Purdue University School of Languages and Cultures)

Systematic reviews, as a methodology that comprehensively synthesizes current research results, provide the highest level of evidence that could guide the practices in medicine, engineering, as well as agriculture. However, the quality of the reporting of published systematic review articles significantly impacted the biases and reproducibility of these articles, thus impact the quality of the evidence provided in these systematic reviews. In recent years, systematic reviews, especially systematic reviews with meta-analyses gained popularity in agricultural research. It is crucial to ensure that published systematic reviews and meta-analyses fulfill the reporting standards, so that they could be used as appropriate evidence to guide agricultural practices. we conducted an umbrella review to examine the current reporting quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in agricultural research. We searched and screened all systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses published before December 2023 in the Web of Science Core Collection under the “Agriculture” research area. We conducted a bibliometric analysis to demonstrate the publication trend, topics, authors, and affiliations of these publications. To evaluate the reporting quality, we took a random subset of these publications, and coded the quality metrics of them, including if an article reported a protocol, full search strategies, risk of bias assessment, etc. Our results showed that most of the recently published systematic reviews and meta-analyses did poorly in reporting important information. Our results suggested that training on how to conduct and report a systematic review project properly, is needed among agricultural researchers, as well as journal editors and reviewers in agricultural research.

Search Hedges to Improve Discovery of Animal Welfare Citations
Elizabeth Tobey (National Agricultural Library)
The "3Rs" of animal research refers to the replacement, reduction, and refinement of animals in biomedical research. The Animal Welfare Act requires that researchers consider alternatives to painful and distressful procedures that lab animals may undergo. One way to comply with this regulation is to conduct a literature search for the 3Rs (i.e., animal use alternatives) when planning a study using animals. However, 3Rs articles can be difficult to find in bibliographic databases due to inadequate indexing, searcher skill and knowledge gaps.

Our library unit developed search hedges to improve the discoverability of 3Rs literature. This could lead to increased adoption and implementation of 3Rs methods. Search hedges are premade or predetermined search strings. Individuals, including non-librarians, can copy and paste hedges directly into a database to retrieve citations on a specific topic. We have worked in collaboration with other librarians to create, test, revise, and publish animal welfare search hedges. In 2022, we published search hedges designed to retrieve citations on 15 species of domestic animals commonly used in research. Throughout 2023, we developed and tested new hedges focused on non-animal models (replacement), environmental enrichment for mice (refinement), and pain/anesthesia (refinement). In addition, our unit also published two hedges on alternatives to oral gavage for rodents and social housing of laboratory animal species. We plan to assess hedge use by measuring page views and through user feedback.

In this presentation, we will give an overview of our two-year process of creating animal welfare hedges. We will discuss the challenges and questions encountered when developing new hedges. We will also discuss our ongoing efforts to establish best practices for testing hedges. We hope that sharing our experience will empower other agricultural libraries to create their own hedges.

Adapting Evidence-Based Review Methodology for Data Infrastructure Using a Climate Smart Agriculture Search 
Stephanie Ritchie (USDA National Agricultural Library)

Most data included in evidence-based reviews is reported in journal articles, study reports, and other text-based, narrative documentation. A key component of the systematic review process is data extraction, a manual process to identify and collect data for synthesis across studies. Some hypothesize, if relevant datasets, rather than documents, could be identified using a standardized evidence-based review process, the labor-intensive manual extraction process might be omitted.

For our study, we demonstrate the use of evidence-based review methods for collecting climate-smart agricultural datasets. We employ a standardized process to identify relevant data repositories that aggregate or host climate related agricultural datasets. For the resulting repositories, we evaluate search infrastructure and other characteristics to determine capabilities for search. We further assess the use of systematic review methodology practices following search and identify the gaps in data repository infrastructure to support these methods. We will share lessons learned from utilizing evidence-based review methodologies for discovering climate-smart agricultural data and convey the need for addressing these within the scientific community as well as within data repositories, to extend the usefulness of data repositories as an information source.

View the 2024 Poster abstracts on the conference website.

1. X Halt Salute: 20+ Years of Equitation Science Research, Erin E. Kerby
2. More User-Friendly and Direct: Creating a Workshop for a New Discovery System with Mixed User Satisfaction, Noel Kopriva
3. Plant Patent Color Image Database and Visualization, Isabella Baxter, Milan Budhathoki, Nevenka Zdravkovska, Jim Miller, Sarah Weiss, and Russ Allen
4. Evidence Synthesis Publishing Trends in Agricultural Economics, Kendra Spahr
5. A Bibliometric Analysis of McGill University's Natural Resources Department, Mylene Pinard
6. Welcome to the Macdonald Campus Library! Adapting a Library Onboarding Program for the Local Environment, Emily MacKenzie and Mylene Pinard
7. Unearthing the Past: Preserving and Utilizing Historic Data for Research, Bethany G. Anderson, Erin Antognoli, Sandi L. Caldrone, Justin D. Derner, Shannon L. Farrell, Katrina Fenlon, John R. Hendrickson, Lois G. Hendrickson, Holly A. Johnson, Nicole E. Kaplan, Julia A. Kelly, Kristen L. Mastel
8. Needs and Opportunities: Supporting Agriculture and Environmental Science Researchers at UC Davis, Emily Atkinson
9. Don't Let Library Jargon Get Your Goat: Analogies for Agriculture Faculty and Students, Carol Sevin and Livia Olsen
10. Seed Library: Dig Into Seed Growing and Saving, Leora Siegel

Thank you to all of our 2024 USAIN/CBHL conference sponsors!

Using PubAg to Share USDA-funded Work
Maggie Foust (USDA - National Agricultural Library)
Stephanie Ritchie (USDA - National Agricultural Library)

The United States Office of Science and Technology Policy has released two memos providing guidelines on public access awareness and compliance. This informational presentation on Departmental Regulation (DR) 1020-006, involving public access to scholarly publication and digital scientific research data assets, will provide details on how to meet the requirement to submit final, peer-reviewed, accepted manuscripts to PubAg, the USDA public access archive system, and create catalog records for datasets in Ag Data Commons.

This presentation will be of interest to all librarians who assist awardees and contractors who are engaged in USDA-supported scientific research. DR 1020-006 makes all peer-reviewed, scholarly publications and digital scientific research data assets arising from unclassified scientific research, supported wholly or in part by the USDA, accessible to the public to the extent practicable. DR 1020-006 applies to NIFA grant awards, cooperative agreements and contracts having started on or after October 1, 2022.

What Will You Pay? Investigating the Impact of APC Discounts
Suzanne Stapleton (University of Florida)
Laura Spears (University of Florida)

Open Access (OA) publishing makes scholarly research free to read, thus helping global researchers grow together. To support Open Access (OA) publishing, the University of Florida (UF) entered into a Gold OA Pilot agreement with Elsevier in 2020. Article Processing Charges (APC) discounts of 10-15% are available to UF authors who choose to publish their work as OA articles in eligible Elsevier OA or hybrid journals. Librarians at UF used this opportunity to better understand researcher publishing behavior. Surveys of authors who published OA or behind a paywall (Subscription) were distributed 11 times between January 2021 and January 2023. A total of 203 surveys were completed, 80% from Subscription authors and 20% from OA authors. Two focus groups were conducted in 2022 to explore researchers’ publishing decisions with qualitative methods. Results illuminate researchers’ familiarity with OA publishing and the complexity of factors that impact their publishing behaviors. Most respondents had previously published two or more OA articles. Factors influencing their decision whether to publish OA include fee amounts and availability of funds, target audience, and philosophy. Although 56% of survey respondents indicated that the amount of the APC discount influenced their decision whether to publish OA, no statistically significant correlation was found between the amount of the listed APC and the authors’ statement of the influence of the APC discount. From July 2020 through February 2023, APC discounts in this pilot reduced author expenses by nearly $64,000, an average of $1,560 per article yet the majority of authors elected not to publish their eligible articles as OA. Overall, this research exemplifies the challenges with current OA publishing where APC levels restrict sharing new knowledge with the global research community. Proposed new public access compliance mandates in the U.S. offer additional opportunities for researchers to disseminate their work widely.

Beyond Blooms: Exploring the Multi-Faceted Significance of Seed and Nursery Catalogs in Historical Research
Erin Aults (Royal Botanical Gardens)
Kristen Mastel (Andersen Horticultural Library, University of Minnesota, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum)
Jocelyn Mehle (Andersen Horticultural Library, University of Minnesota, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum)

Historical seed and nursery trade catalog collections capture an elusive type of information. These catalogs were meant to exist no longer than a year or two, consulted heavily for a brief time and discarded once out of date. Today, librarians, archivists, and researchers view these collections as important primary source materials for numerous fields of study. While they are used primarily as a resource on the growth of ornamental horticulture and agriculture, they also serve as a portal into the social mores, political anxieties, local and national economies, the dinner table, farmer’s market, and florist shop.

Whether the users are searching for the introduction of invasive plants or artists looking for inspiration, some of the challenges and opportunities for librarians remain the same. Who are the researchers and what do they want to know? What are the trends we see in the catalogs that might be overlooked by researchers? How do we better facilitate discovery and access and attract more users? What has worked and what could we do better in promoting the use of the catalogs? What does it look like in a born-digital world and the archival processes? What are the challenges that lie ahead in acquisition, outreach, use, and preservation?

This presentation proposal will bring together the curators of two major collections of seed and nursery trade catalogs. These collections span four centuries, focusing on both United States and Canadian horticultural companies. The curators will discuss the questions posed above while determining a common path ahead for their collections and similar ones at similar institutions.

Communication, Collaboration, and Calibration: Steps Toward Materializing the Carlquist Extended Specimen Network
Ana Niño (Fort Worth Botanic Garden)
Krishna Shenoy (Fort Worth Botanic Garden)
Samantha Ekberg (Fort Worth Botanic Garden)
Jason Best (Directory of Biodiversity Informatics)

In an age where libraries and archives are increasingly turning toward digitization to enable virtual access to collections, the question of how to add value to digitized collections arises. With the support of National Science Foundation grant funding, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas Library has been strategizing and working with California Botanic Garden to link related botanical and archival materials created by Sherwin Carlquist, a mid-century American botanist—uniting these disparate collections and imbuing their contents with greater context in the process. Through this project, the BRIT Carlquist team is reckoning with challenging questions such as: How can a small team efficiently and adequately digitize and describe over 150,000 digital objects? What are cutting-edge digitization methods we can draw upon from related fields for high throughput digitization, and how can we quickly adopt these specialized skills? Who can we enlist to assist with this multifaceted project?

Extension Microfilm Digitization Project: Putting History Into Our Hands.
Inga Haugen (University Libraries at Virginia Tech)
Julia Westblade (University Libraries at Virginia Tech)
Meagan Russell (University Libraries at Virginia Tech)

The Virginia Cooperative Extension microfilm digitization project aims to create digital copies of and provide access to the agricultural reports of the state of Virginia. These primary source reports consist of the work of extension agents at the county-level from 1908 to 1968 for men and women from white communities and communities of color, including information regarding production and salaries. This paper will discuss the process of digitizing 141 reels of microfilm and making the contents accessible to researchers. The paper will highlight the methodologies and challenges experienced during the process as well as the importance of the data uncovered in the documents. It will give an overview of the effort it takes to provide access to primary resources that researchers need to uncover untold stories.

Digitization of the Microfilm
The original documents were scanned onto microfilm in the 1960s. The digitization lab at Virginia Tech's Newman Library has digitized, reformatted, sorted, and combined into text-searchable PDFs over 100,000 pages of county-level reports adhering to FADGI standards. The team had to document progress as the project moved through several stages of production before members of the team sorted through these PDFs to create item-level metadata to ensure the reports are findable and searchable.

Document Overview/ Importance
This set of microfilm was the most complete set in the state and in WorldCat, and had a reel guide of the counties and years for only 86 of the 141 reels. This project will bring to light individual reports, the authors, and the extension work that was happening in the whole state from 1908-1968. Because the authors include women and Black extension agents, this work brings local history into the hands of the communities we currently serve. As an example, a technician saw a report about her partner’s grandfather while processing the collection.

ARSIG will host a set of breakout discussions to allow attendees to hear from others and share what they’re doing in the area of agricultural research services. One discussion will be geared towards juggling responsibilities between liaison work and manager work, another discussion will be centered around the new public access rules for grant funding, and participants will be welcome to create their own table to have a discussion on other topics of importance to the group.

It's time to ACT UP: How privilege shapes academic conversations
Kelly Wiegand, Auburn University

This presentation will describe how the ACT UP evaluation tool (Stahura, 2018) was used to frame class discussion on the use of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Students participated in a lecture on how animal agriculture may be contributing to human, animal, and environmental welfare, then were tasked with listening to a podcast that explores how dietary changes may lead to long term environmental change. During the following class, students were challenged to consider who was contributing to the conversation, what biases they may have, and whose voices were missing.

Stahura, D. (2018). ACT UP for evaluating sources: Pushing against privilege. College & Research Libraries News, 79(10), 551. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.10.551



Development of Training Materials for Equine Welfare Assessment
Kiri DeBose, Virginia Tech

A project to develop training materials to assess the welfare of horses, poultry, and shelter dogs provided an opportunity to expand beyond typical instructional support. The goal of this lightning talk is to demonstrate where expertise within and outside of traditional librarian roles can open doors for collaboration and provide additional services to library constituents.

In my plenary talk, we will explore the intersection of community design and systems-level memories and stories. We will delve into the profound intimacy embedded within sovereign realms and how it relates to technological ecological knowledge, data, and information flows. Drawing inspiration from my experiences as a black agrarian designer in the Global Food Systems, we will discuss the need to create new tools that promote non-harmful practices and contribute to an equitable and just Global Food System.

Using a blend of theoretical poetics, experiential narratives, and visionary perspectives, we will embark on a journey of discovery into how our stories can infuse deep understanding and growth into what it means to be human with accountability, action, and transformation. Designing sovereignty is a conduit for developing deep relationships and nurturing collective flourishing toward transformational systems change.

The Collection Management Interest Group is pleased to invite you to attend a panel and discussion session on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in collection development and management.  We will grow together as we learn from panelists including: Inga Haugen (Life Science, Agriculture and Scholarly Communication Librarian; Virginia Tech), Susan Kendall (Head of Collections Strategies and Copyright Librarian; Michigan State University Libraries), and from the publisher perspective, we’ll hear from David Hemming (Commissioning Editor at CABI) and Sandra Phelps (CABI’s Gender Manager).

Meet bus in front of Kellogg Center

Meet bus in front of Kellogg Center

Continuing Fieldwork with NC Cooperative Extension Site Visits: A Research Fellows Update
Hillary Fox and Tisha Mentnech

In 2020, Hillary Fox and Tisha Mentnech received an award to travel to different Cooperative Extension sites in North Carolina as a way to better engage the libraries with Extension professionals. Many factors prevented the travel until two years ago when we were able to finally visit Research Stations to deliver day-long information literacy workshops.

This presentation will highlight our experience in working alongside Extension professionals during these site visits, including what library services and research needs were identified as being the most helpful. We will also provide insight on what we will do differently as these site visits continue as well as why in-person travel is a critical component of truly connecting with Extension. Attendees will have the opportunity to share ideas to help further this work and to share their experiences in working with their state’s Cooperative Extension program.


Highlighting New Farmers of Virginia, a historical Black agriculturalist organization
Inga Haugen and Tom Melton

New Farmers of Virginia (NFV) was founded in 1927 to provide a racially segregated counterpart to the agricultural vocational training programs available to young white farmers through Future Farmers of Virginia. As the latter organization expanded nationally and became Future Farmers of America (FFA), so too did NFV inspire the national organization New Farmers of America (NFA). Though a post-desegregation merger between the FFA and NFA ostensibly increased opportunities for NFA members, the new organization kept Future Farmers of America’s name and most of its white leadership intact. In turn, much of the NFA’s traditions, awards, and identity were either lost completely or subsumed into the broader history of FFA.

This presentation documents our efforts to highlight New Farmers of Virginia’s impact on agriculture in Virginia and beyond through a research guide that integrates Virginia Tech’s materials on NFV’s history, creating a virtual special collection. By foregrounding the NFV and connecting its work to the subsequent national organizations, scholars and community members will have the opportunity to understand the group’s distinct historical significance. The resource also seeks to contextualize the systemic historical marginalization of Black farmers, with an eye towards helping modern practitioners support the needs of non-white farmers and extension members.


Economic Analyses of the Impacts of Seasonal Heat Stress on Dairy Production
Kiri DeBose

The dairy industry is fast reaching a crisis point. While farm managers are accustomed to accounting for tangible costs such as feed, labor, equipment in animal production systems, heat stress is a hidden cost that is often overlooked. Heat stress is particularly devastating to milk production and the overall performance of dairy cattle. Published in 2003, the most trusted and cited source on this topic by St-Pierre, Cobanov, and Schnitkey, is almost 20 years old. There has also been a plenitude of publications published since then that have significantly added to our understanding of how heat stress affects dairy cattle physiology. There have also been changes in production costs, cooling technologies, farm demographics, and heat stress exposure. It is time to reexamine this issue and determine current economic losses with this knowledge to replace those reported in outdated sources. This project seeks to provide a new, comprehensive analyses of heat stress-induced economic losses to the dairy industry. Such analyses would inform researchers, government officials and stakeholders seeking to guide innovation and public policy related to the effects of heat stress.
Citation: St-Pierre, N. R., B. Cobanov, and G. Schnitkey. 2003. Economic losses from heat stress by US livestock industries. J Dairy Sci 86:E52-E77.


Using Digital Learning Objects for Instructional Support for Faculty in Agricultural Sciences: A Pilot Study
Maggie Albro and Hanwen Dong

This research project aims to better understand how agriculture faculty use digital learning objects (DLOs) in their current courses, emphasizing DLOs used for information literacy instruction. The research fellows conducted 14 interviews with agriculture faculty at two land-grant institutions to discuss their instructional practices of incorporating DLOs into their curricula. The research fellows recorded, transcribed, and coded the interviews to identify themes. As a result of the interview and coding process, the research fellows sought to better understand agriculture faculty’s DLO use and how the library can partner with them to create DLOs to improve students’ information literacy skills. The findings of this study will benefit librarians who liaise with agriculture faculty or are responsible for DLO creation.

Heat waves, which are becoming more frequent and longer because of anthropogenic climate change, have already had an impact on economic growth and raised concerns about global sustainability, food security, and species conservation. Thermophilic plants thrive under heat and understanding their mechanisms and strategies can help us engineer heat resilience in other plants. Tidestromia oblongifolia, a thermophilic C4 plant that thrives in the harsh summer conditions of Death Valley (California), has an optimal rate of photosynthesis at 47ºC and can increase its biomass by 30% per day in Death Valley summer conditions. The thermoadaptation mechanisms of this extremophile remain a mystery. We are using an interdisciplinary approach that combines ecophysiology, genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, biochemistry, cell biology, and population genomics to understand the molecular and metabolic underpinnings of its thermoadaptation. Using phylogenomic methods in Tidestromia and related C3 and C4 Amaranthaceae species, we are investigating the role of gene family expansion in the evolution of thermal tolerance. We have collected seed from wild populations across the species range to identify novel heat-adaptive loci in the most extreme heat tolerant individuals. Understanding the mechanisms of its thermoadaptation may lead to the development of new crops and varieties more resilient to climate change.

Agenda Review
Introductions
AgNIC Year-in-Review  

Working Group 1 - Evidence Synthesis
Working Group 2 - Historic Publications
Working Group 3 - Public Access

NAL Update, Scott Hanscom, NAL Deputy Director
Public Access Overview (Discussion to Follow in Working Group Breakout) 

Working Group 4 - Data
Working Group 5 - Collection Development

1. Elections (Past-Chair & Member-at-Large)
2. Bylaws review and vote
3. Next Year's Meeting - Gauge interest in hybrid meeting at NAL or all virtual
4. Report outs from working groups with start on action plan (5-10 minutes each?)
5. Approve priorities for 2024-2025 and recruit additional team members for working groups
6. Add others as needed