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UC Cooperative Extension Archive

	Collection Highlight - May 2019 Author: Kelsey Raidt May 13, 2019 In honor of the graduating class of 2019, we’d like to take a moment to highlight an item from our University of California Cooperative Extension, Fresno collection. This item is part of a 1950s era handout for 4-H advisors. It contains several recreational games for 4-H students to play, including this example of a homemade board and dice game called “School Days.” We hope our Bobcats finish their studies without encountering any of the challenges faced by the players of this 4-H game! Class of 2019, we wish you all the luck with your future endeavors! #GoBobcats, #UCM2019
	CARA and Agricultural Education at the World Ag Expo Author: Emily Lin February 21, 2019 “Do you want to test your knowledge of California agriculture?” we asked visitors at the World Ag Expo last week. Young and old, students and seniors, teachers and parents, journalists and farmers, the confident and the hesitant, drew near and took part in our quiz game. Their task? To match three pictured items to the appropriate California county: Humboldt, in the North; Merced, in the Central Valley; and Ventura, in southern CA. As some participants guessed lemons in Humboldt, avocados in Merced, and timber in Ventura, we prompted them to consider regional geography and climate. When we revealed the answers, visitors learned about the Klamath beetle, introduced by UC Cooperative Extension advisors and entomologists in Humboldt in the 1940s to combat a weed that had taken over 150,000 acres of rangeland and posed a danger to grazing livestock. The solution...
	How to Use the UC Cooperative Extension Archive Collection Guides October 30, 2018 This month’s blog post is the second video in our series on how to use and search UC Cooperative Extension Archival materials online. This video walks you through using Collection Guides on the Online Archive of California, OAC. Next month’s video will be on locating digitized content in Calisphere.
	How to Find UC Cooperative Extension Archival Materials Online August 28, 2018 This month’s blog post is the first video in our series on how to use and search UC Cooperative Extension Archival materials online. Our first video focuses on defining and locating our Collection Guides on the Online Archive of California, OAC. Next month’s video will be using Collection Guides on OAC.
	UC Cooperative Extension Archive: Past, Present, and Future Author: Lisa Vallen August 2, 2018 Things are heating up at the UC Cooperative Extension Archive! July marks the start of our $308,900 three year grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for “A Century of Impact: Documenting the Work of the Cooperative Extension in California's Counties.” Over the next three years, we will appraise, process, and digitize historical material from 20 county offices, with the goals of: Digitizing approximately 180,000 pages and 2,000 photographs from California Cooperative Extension reports. Arranging and describing at least 100 linear feet of material from 20 county extension offices. (One banker box is the equivalent of a linear foot). Creating a scalable demonstration project using the records to engage Merced County 4-H students in tagging and curating digital records. Testing the use of natural language processing (NLP) tools to perform automated named entity recognition for use in creating controlled access...
	World Ag Expo a Showcase for New Library Digitization Project February 27, 2018 UC Merced made its first appearance at the annual World Ag Expo in Tulare earlier this month to spread the word about the library’s new digitization project to collect and preserve 100 years of data, documents and photos from the UC’s Cooperative Extension. The new project will collect 100 years’ worth of reports and historic photographs from 20 California counties — in the Central Valley, along the coast, up north at the edges of the Sierra and along the southern border — and will geocode all the records. Emily Lin, UC Merced Library’s head of Digital Curation and Scholarship, along with colleagues from the Library, Admissions, CITRIS and Development, and students from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), staffed UC Merced’s booth in the education-and careers pavilion, where they were in good company with other colleges and universities such as UC Davis, Fresno State and campuses from Utah, Oregon and Arizona. ...
	Preserving the Past: Library Digitizing a Century of Ag Records January 29, 2018 An ongoing effort to collect, digitally preserve and share 100 years of historical records by the UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) has earned the UC Merced Library a more than $300,000 grant. “We’re extremely proud to be able to further the work already begun on the UCCE project,” UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland said. “Our library is producing a collection that demonstrates the organization’s lasting effects on the state, the work it has done in the past and its potential for the future.” The work is especially relevant to the San Joaquin Valley, said Emily Lin, the UC Merced Library’s head of Digital Curation and Scholarship. “We have a lot of archives and historic records based around urban centers, but we haven’t been collecting the records of rural California in any systematic way,” she said. “But rural California has had an incredible influence on the state’s history. California was transformed by agriculture over the past century.” The Archivist...
	Connecting Merced Agriculture to Yosemite National Park Author: Lisa Vallen October 30, 2017 In 1926 Highway 140 construction was complete and it connected Merced to Yosemite National Park. During that time Merced’s farming community was facing some serious challenges. Merced County Agent John L. Quail writes in the narrative report for 1926-1927: Many new settlers have been coming into the County during the past three years. For the most part, these people are entirely unfamiliar with the local climatic conditions and crops. The Irrigation District most recently completed has been settled largely by people who have developed land during a period of high costs... Many of those who have purchased land in the County during the past few years find that with the declining prices of farm products, their mortgages far exceed the sale value of their property. Many foreclosures have been made… This severe economic situation has had a marked influence on the Extension organization and has been a great hindrance to the extension program. ...
	“Flood!” and Other Interesting Finds from Humboldt Cooperative Extension Office Author: Lisa Vallen September 25, 2017 I visited the Humboldt Cooperative Extension County Office in June and will preview a few items of interest I found. Thanks to the staff at Humboldt for all of their help in identifying where the historical material was located and providing some context for the material.
	An Agricultural Centennial: Farm Bureau & Ag Extension Author: Lisa Vallen August 17, 2017 August 21, 2017 On March 7, 1917 417 farmers in Merced county voted to start Farm Bureau and UC Cooperative Extension and by the end of 1918 they had 550 members in the County Farm Bureau and 42 members in the boys and girls clubs. Unfortunately, the 1917 Narrative Report has been lost, but the 1918 Narrative Report, written by County Agent J.F. Grass Jr., states: The Annual Report of 1917 found the Merced County Farm Bureau only seven months old but well underweigh (sic) and in a good healthy condition. Many of its projects had been started but it was still to be seen how much was actually carried through to completion. This year allows another twelve months of development and we find it still in a very good health condition, with many fair sized accomplishments to its credit, and well on its way on some of the big problems facing the county, which are being taken up in a larger way than usual. Join us on Sunday, August 20^th for 4-H Picnic...

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