Agricultural resources support graduate and undergraduate programs in the natural, physical, and social sciences as well as courses and research in the professional schools (Business and Medicine). Collections in plant and animal biology, conservation biology, ecology, forestry, and toxicology are located primarily in the Biomedical Library. Materials dealing specifically with soils, climatology, hydrology, and water resources are located primarily in the Kresge Library. The agricultural resources in Baker Library support social science courses providing information on food supply, natural resources, climate, and environment.
Agricultural resources in Baker Library support courses in the social sciences and sciences where the main emphasis, as elsewhere in the library system, is not on practical agriculture. For example, Economics 38: Urban and Land Use Economics gives attention, among other issues, to those that are agricultural.
Agricultural materials in the Feldberg Library generally support the technological aspects of subjects. Its most thorough coverage is for the area of commodity trading and futures markets.
The soils material in S 590-S 599 goes to Kresge, where state geological reports (QE) are also to be found. Some of these include agricultural reports as well. Materials in soil chemistry, physics, and biogeochemistry are also collected; these class in the QCs and QDs. Kresge Library has the major soil science journals. Desertification has been a traditional area of emphasis; soils in arid regions in general are an area of growing importance for Kresge. Ground water supply and quality is also an area where the collection is being developed more currently than in the past. The effect of climate change on soils and food supply is often included in monographs on global climate changes, which are being collected in Kresge as well as in other libraries.
In Baker Library there remains a small collection in the old 630-639 range, largely candidates for the Storage Library. General Agriculture (S) is, for the most part, in Baker. Angling (SH 400-SH 691) is assigned to Baker as is hunting (SK 1-SK 350 ). The federal Census of Agriculture is in HD. But the subject lines are not as clear-cut as they might seem; for example, the Russian translation journal Problems of Desert Development and the journal Crops and Soils are currently both in Baker.
Federal and state publications make up a significant portion of the S category. The Library is a selective depository for Canadian government publications which become part of the general collections; the Map Room is a depository for Canadian maps. U.S. government documents--those classified and in the stacks, those in microcopy, those in electronic format, those in paper and kept in the Superintendent of Documents classification-- contain much material on all areas collected by all the libraries. In general, though no attempt is made to provide materials dealing principally with practical agriculture, they are to be found, for example, in publications of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, i.e., Farmers Bulletins and similar materials received from the states like New Hampshire and Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut (particularly their agricultural experiment stations). Questions of a practical nature (such as how to raise rabbits or chickens) can frequently be answered by publications like the Farmers Bulletins . In these series, there is also information of use on such topics as population, economic statistics, climate and weather, geology, sociological studies, and the like. Many of the publications of the United Nations system, especially the Food and Agriculture Organization, are of this sort as well.
The Map Room has a variety of thematic sheet maps and atlases providing agriculturally-related information.
While indexes for agriculture and materials related to agriculture are largely at Dana and at Kresge, Baker Library's reference collection has at least one index pertinent to the subject, World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts. There are also some indexes and bibliographies in the general stacks. Apart from referring patrons to the other libraries, reliance is on coverage in more general indexes or those in subject fields like geography. Online searching also allows access to indexes not available otherwise in any particular library. The Feldberg Library collects in the following pertinent areas: technological advances/developments (including appropriate or intermediate technology and rural agricultural technologies); management of technology (including applications in food production); resource management (especially water resources for agriculture and irrigation); energy technology (including fuel from biomass, solar technology, and agricultural applications); soil science (especially as it relates to civil engineering including foundations, soil stability in cold regions, etc.); and agricultural economics (especially commodity trading and futures markets with interest in theoretical, applied, and numeric information).
Feldberg has primary responsibility for the T group of call numbers (which includes environmental and chemical technology)with the exception of TR (Art) and TT (Baker).
As departments and faculty develop new, and more interdisciplinary, interests the interplay of materials located in all the libraries becomes greater.
See the policy statements for Biology, Business Administration (see Collecting Intensities) , Climatology, Earth Sciences, Economics, Engineering (see Collecting Intensities), Environmental Studies, Geography, and for United States Government Documents and other policies dealing with collecting government documents, all of which indicate areas of common interest.
At Kresge no area is excluded, but currently the United States and Canada are emphasized, followed by materials about Africa and other arid environments.
In Baker Library, a large amount of material is received through the federal system and covers both the country as a whole as well as regions, states, and smaller localities. Authoritative commercially available studies of agriculture across the country, such as an agricultural history of Ohio, would be purchased not only for agricultural information but because of their related value to disciplines such as geography or economics. Studies dealing with Great Britain, Europe, Africa, the Middle and Far East and Latin America would be purchased on this same basis.
At Kresge the collection contains material from the mid-1800s to the present. Older material and retrospective data is occasionally purchased, but the emphasis is on current research and data.
Materials covering both historic and current practice are purchased for the Baker collection.
Interest in Feldberg is primarily on current materials.
At Kresge journals, books, research reports, data sets, and descriptive surveys are collected.
At Baker journals, books, organization publications, and publications of the federal and some state governments are collected. Suitable materials, regardless of type, would be generally acquired.
The Feldberg Library collection includes monographs and serials as well as selected government documents.
Audio-visual material is not collected at Kresge.
Print materials make up the primary collection in Baker at the present time although government documents are increasingly being received in microfiche and in electronic format. Agricultural and industrial census for both New Hampshire and Vermont for the nineteenth century are available in microfilm.
The most frequent need at Baker Library is for publications of either New Hampshire or Vermont materials not in the collections. This is met by use of interlibrary loan or referral to the appropriate state agency.
HD, HG, S, SB, SD, SF, SH, SK and other classes as appropriate.
Top of PageCollection Development
Policy Table of ContentsCMDC Home Page