USDA history

Content Description

The USDA Livestock Insects Laboratory Records include reports, data sheets, correspondence, technical bulletins, and journal articles.

Content Description The USDA Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory Photograph Collection includes photographs, associated notes, and a record book on various U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) activities and personnel, dated between 1888 and 1968. The collection contains a series of photographs related to testing insecticide spraying apparatuses on different crops between 1912 and 1944. Much of the collection consists of photographs of employees from departments of Plant Industry and Plant Pathology, and...

Content Description The USDA National Agricultural Library History Collection includes correspondence, reports, regulations, agreements, budget hearings, clippings, articles, newsletters, manuals, and photographs on library-related activities. Of particular note are the records from 1907 to 1940, when Claribel R. Barnett was not only head librarian for the USDA library, but she was also active in library-related organizations. The archival material includes papers relating to past directors of the library, such...

Content Description The USDA National Agricultural Library Photograph Collection contains approximately 16,000 photographs of activities and events that took place at the National Agricultural Library (NAL) in Beltsville, Maryland. The photographs are housed in 116 albums, and include prints, negatives, and contact sheets. Photographs were primarily taken by NAL photographer Joseph Swab, as well as other photographers, including Dan Starr, who photographed from 1989 to 1993. Subjects include the NAL building...

Content Description

The USDA National Commission on Small Farms Records include administrative files; transcripts (paper, tape, and disk) of public hearings; letters from farmers; executive correspondence; memoranda; drafts and a final copy of "Report of the USDA National Commission on Small Farms: A Time to Act"; letterhead and design for final report; email requests for copies of the NCSF report; computer disks containing small farm documents; NCSF committee reports; and miscellaneous resource documents.

Content Description

The USDA Office for Small-Scale Agriculture Records consist of letters, memoranda, correspondence, reports, newspapers, newsletters, and publications.

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The USDA Office of the Appointment Clerk Records is a bound volume containing copies of charges of misconduct letters written to USDA employees and signed by Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston, for the period October 27, 1915, through April 12, 1918.

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The USDA Office of the Secretary Memoranda consist of memoranda and circulars (1918-1979), general orders (1897-1913), plant and operations memoranda (1936-1937), special orders (1927-1934, 1939), technical advisory board circulars (1938-1940), USDA Defense and Agriculture Series (1940-1941), and USDA Defense Exercise memoranda (1960-1970s).

Content Description

The USDA Official Standards of the United States for Grades of Wool contains wool samples that document the 12 wool grade standards established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the 1920s, and the 13 standards for the 1940s. The standards are based on the fineness or diameter of the wool fiber. Samples show the maximum diameter or fineness of fiber for each of the grades. The collection includes wool standards for 1926, 1928, 1940, and 1966.

Content Description

The USDA Pear Psylla Control Investigations Lantern Slide Collection contains color lantern slides produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, Fruit Insect Investigations, Pear Psylla Control. There are 13 slides of pears infected with pear psylla, 3 slides of maps, and a slide showing a chart of spraying operations in counties of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon in 1941.