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Sophia LaMonica

Unearthing California's Agricultural History: CARA Highlights Inspire a Closer Look at Archives

Thu, June 1, 2023 3:00 PM

Author:

Sophia LaMonica began working at the UC Merced Library in January 2020 as an MLIS graduate student intern on a research project supported by a United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) Research Award. Her accomplishments included the creation of a Zotero library of key historical pre-1950 publications documenting agriculture in California. Given her skills in research, experience as a news and travel writer, and her interest in the subject matter, we were very fortunate to be able to hire her as a communications assistant to promote the California Agricultural Resources Archive (CARA) and historical resources to wider audiences, including through social media. Her work was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities American Rescue Plan grant in 2022.

She has been instrumental in developing our social media strategy; curated digital timelines on California agriculture and related topics; launched our LinkedIn presence; and laid the groundwork for a video/podcast series. She has been responsible for an astounding 1,600+ social media posts! As she wraps up her time at UC Merced, I asked if she would share her reflections and the highlights of her experience working with us on CARA. —Emily Lin

Unearthing California's Agricultural History: CARA Highlights Inspire a Closer Look at Archives

By Sophia LaMonica, CARA Communications Assistant

I first learned about CARA through an internship that involved the compilation of state bibliographies created during an earlier project, Preserving the History of United States Agriculture and Rural Life: State and Local Literature, 1820–1945. These bibliographies represent the collective works of state and local agricultural literature deemed of the highest priority for preservation.

Searching for the titles of California’s bibliography across the web and pulling them into an online library, I discovered my love for California history—and academic librarianship. Growing up in Los Angeles, I considered myself a California enthusiast, but it wasn’t until this internship that I realized that despite my love for my home state, I knew very little about California—especially the San Joaquin Valley.

For CARA, my role was to increase awareness of its collections of agricultural literature, photographs, and films, which span generations of farming families and rural communities of California. The work was not merely about promoting CARA; it was about shining a spotlight on the enduring legacy of California's early pioneers whose work has shaped the state's agricultural landscape.

It was an exciting and challenging prospect, and I was eager to apply what I’d learned in the MLIS program to work alongside librarians and archivists and bring CARA’s resources to a broader audience. I immediately immersed myself in the research papers, narrative reports, and especially the photographs.

Two deer crossing a stream close to camp

Group photo, Before breakfast hike to Mirror Lake

Photos from the University of California Agricultural Cooperative Extension, San Joaquin County, Collection: Two deer crossing a stream close to camp, 1928 (top), Before breakfast hike to Mirror Lake, 1928 (bottom)

How was it that I had never even seen that 300-mile expanse, representing one of the most important agricultural regions in the world, where so much of our food is grown? This is where the grapes are grown that make award-winning wine, supply the entire nation, and still there are enough left season after season to turn them into heaps of raisins. But the grapes are only drops in the enormous bucket of all that makes California so unique. It is a state capable of growing so much with such variety—yet thanks to whom and how this all came about had thus far been mostly a mystery to me. As I began unraveling the stories found within the archives, it became increasingly evident how the agricultural research conducted since the passage of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 helped create the state as we know it today, and how relevant these materials truly are.

When I first explored these collections, it was the photographs that drew me in—it was like being unleashed in a massive room with unlimited boxes of vintage photos and documents of California, basically a dream come true job. Within the research papers, narrative reports, journals, newsletters, audio recordings, and films, and photographs are thousands of stories of California’s early agricultural history, county by county, told through the works of UC Farm Advisors, Cooperative Extension specialists, and the communities in which they served. The significance of this recently digitized history is what makes CARA such an exciting archive to explore.

I thought it would be harder to decide, but when I saw it again I knew this was it: my favorite photograph found in CARA. So much about it speaks to me, like the brim of her big floppy hat, and the serene look on her face. I especially love how the sunlight filters through the trees.

Woman standing on car

[Woman standing on car], undated. University of California Agricultural Cooperative Extension, San Joaquin County, Collection.

San Joaquin County farm home department agent Mabel A. Wood’s story emerged in a newspaper clipping about the summer camp in Yosemite Valley (Newspaper clipping of report of camp). Her photographs memorialized the events, and she helped arrange the camp, among the first of its kind “out west, at which a paid cook was at the foundation upon which the objective—rest—was laid.”

What a trip down memory lane to scroll through the posts since October 12, 2020, Indigenous People’s Day, when my first and favorite post was published. That post promoted the online accessibility of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology on eScholarship, which featured “Plant Use by Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Paleoethnobotanical Studies in California” and “A New Look at Some Old Data: The Nisenan Photographs of Alexander W. Chase.

Post for Indigenous People's Day

In my time with CARA, I published 1607 posts to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. My posts have also highlighted work beyond CARA, including other library special collections and scholarly resources available online:

Post on AIDS History collections Post for World Soil Day Post on eScholarship resource on Farm Labor

I feel ever grateful to be a part of CARA, and know that its stories are reaching more and more people every day, fostering a deeper appreciation for the research and work of those that came before us, and ensuring that California's agricultural legacy continues to inspire and educate future generations.

Artists Discuss Activism at Opening Reception for Library's Photography Exhibit

Thu, April 27, 2023 3:00 PM

Author:

Sophia LaMonica

On Thursday, April 13, 2023, the UC Merced Library held an opening reception for the current exhibit, Building a New Future: Art and Activism in the Central Valley—Photographs by George Ballis. Ballis was an activist and photographer who documented the living and working conditions of farm workers beginning in the 1950s, and the development of organized agricultural labor.

Maia Ballis spoke at the reception and introduced her late husband’s work. “He made it a point to use his time to document what was going on in the fields,” she said, and described how he captured perspectives that may not have been seen otherwise, including images of Maria Moreno, the first woman organizer for the AFL-CIO. Ballis was impressed by Moreno’s strength, and with his photographs aimed to reflect the dignity he saw in each person.

Maia Ballis stands in front of exhibit

John Ballis looks at contact sheets

Following the reception, Agustín Lira and Patricia Wells spoke of a similar intent in their music and performed a selection of songs, including “Quihubo Raza,” “When I Die,” and “If You’re Homeless,” which wove in themes of resistance to exploitation and the continued fight for workers' rights. Lira is a singer, songwriter, and director who cofounded El Teatro Campesino with Luis Valdez during the Delano Grape Strike and created songs that inspired and supported the farmworkers' efforts. Wells was active with the United Farm Workers in the 1970s and partnered with Lira to establish El Teatro de la Tierra as well as the musical group Alma. Lira discussed the experience of marching to Sacramento during the Delano Grape Strike and how his song, “La Peregrinación” (The Pilgrimage), expressed the sacrifice as well as the motivation of fellow organizers.

Desde Delano voy hasta Sacramento

Hasta Sacramento

mis derechos a  pelear.

In a conversation with the audience moderated by Professor Manuel Martín Rodríguez, Lira and Wells asserted the urgency of the ongoing need to challenge dominant narratives in the media and to continue the traditions of protest music.

Agustín Lira and Patricia Wells perform songs

Agustín Lira discusses his music

Audience listens to Lira and Wells

Songs of Struggle & Hope by Agustín Lira is available to UC Merced through Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries, VPN connection required.

Building a New Future: Art and Activism in the Central Valley—Photographs by George Ballis, will be exhibited through July 28th at the Kolligian Library, second floor.

Library Acquires Collection of Official Yosemite Photographer, Ralph H. Anderson

Tue, November 15, 2022 1:40 PM

Author:

Sophia LaMonica

The UC Merced Library has been acquiring and digitizing significant primary sources that document the cultural, social, and environmental histories of the region, the development of parks and protected lands, and the Central Valley’s legacy of agriculture and labor.

The Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive at UC Merced Library focuses on the Central San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada regions, which together represent the agricultural heartland of California and one of the most distinctive and biodiverse landscapes in the world.

Among the new acquisitions in the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive is the Ralph H. Anderson Special Collection on Yosemite National Park and the American Southwest.

Anderson, who was born in Ohio in 1900, served as a Private in the U.S. Army and graduated from the Ohio State University, where he studied English, Botany, Psychology, Biology, and Spanish.

After an early stint working for the Forest Service in Prescott, Arizona, he accepted a permanent appointment with the National Park Service in 1930 as a Yosemite Park ranger, and later became the National Park Service's official photographer.

Anderson worked on many different types of photography for the Yosemite Museum, and made motion pictures of wildlife and other natural features of the park for use at the campfire programs. His personal collection of books, photographs, correspondence, and ephemera includes black and white photographs taken between 1925 and 1960.

Ranger under tree looking out at mountains

Photographs by Ralph H. Anderson

The Anderson Collection joins the papers of the "Okie Folk poet" Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel; Ernest Lowe's photographs documenting farmworker communities and labor activism in the Valley; UC Cooperative Extension records chronicling the development of rural communities across California; maps, audiovisual and other archival material related to the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada; and the George Ballis Collection of over 31,000 images documenting migrant communities, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, and the United Farmworker Movement in the Central Valley.

The UC Merced Library is grateful to Anderson's family for the collection, which was given in recognition of his wife, Millie Lois Anderson, and daughter, Barbara Jean Anderson Kerr.

Given UC Merced's close collaborations with Yosemite National Park, the Anderson Collection will provide valuable historical documentation for students and researchers.

Publications in the collection

"These resources often flow out of the region, but to be able to keep them here for this region is very important. The library will be a base for very rich cultural collections," said Emily Lin, director of strategic initiatives, archives, and special collections at the library. "It's vital to us that people in the region have access to them."

In partnership with the Center for the Humanities, the UC Merced Library was awarded $750,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), plus an additional $750,000 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott's $20 million gift to UC Merced, to establish the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive, a capital project that expands and retrofits existing facilities and will be a hub for students and researchers from around the world.

Highlights for National Dairy Month

Fri, June 17, 2022 (All day)

Author:

Sophia LaMonica

June has been celebrated as National Dairy Month since 1937 to promote drinking milk and to stabilize the dairy demand when production was at a surplus.

California's dairy reign began in the 1850s north of San Francisco, where the Point Reyes region joined New York state as the two centers of commercial dairy production in the country. In 1880, the California census counted 210,000 milk cows producing nearly 12 million gallons of milk.

Food safety and quality have been priorities in the dairy industry for more than 100 years. In 1891, the Dairymen’s Union of California was founded to improve distribution both inside and outside the state, and to set quality standards and benchmark prices. The Dairymen’s Union created the State Dairy Bureau, which promoted dairy research and education at the state's agricultural colleges and inspected dairy operations to verify that they met state health standards. The partnership and cooperation between dairy farmers and the government helped California's dairy industry become an economic success.

A search for "dairy" in UC Merced Library's California Agricultural Resources Archive (CARA) yields nearly 400 digitized resources documenting the state's history of research and development in the dairy industry. Annual narrative reports of county agents, milk flavor and production cost surveys, cow census records, and dairy industry newsletters provide a picture of how California's dairy boom came to be.

In 1922, tester G. Wolf of the Farm Bureau Dairy Department of San Joaquin County reported 472 cows tested, 39 of which produced over 400 pounds fat and made the state honor roll of butter fat production. These highs spotlighted the value of dairy animals and the efficiency of herds through improved knowledge and record-keeping of the milk and butter they produced.

Row of cows, circa 1920. Merced County UC Cooperative Extension Records.

In Merced County, the number of milk cows numbered 96,000 in 1946. Modern equipment made for more efficiency and larger herds, while improved breeding, feeding, and management upped production per cow.

"The Dairy Picture." Agricultural Resources and Trends in Merced County: Annual Report 1958.

Dairy Tales, published by UC Agricultural Extension’s Dr. John W. Seibert in 1983, presents a county-by-county statistical picture of the dairy industry, and a window into milk's starring role in California agriculture. That year, California dairy farmers earned $1,885,472,000 from the sale of milk, and the average dairy farm sold 14,202 lbs. of milk per day—producing enough milk in one day to meet all the dairy product needs of a family of four for over six years. A decade later, California became the leading dairy-producing state in the nation.

In 2020, the value of milk produced in Merced County alone totaled $1,050,940,000 (Source: California County Ag Commissioner's Data Listing).

Row of cows, circa 1920. Merced County UC Cooperative Extension Records.
Group with prize-winning cow, circa 1963. Merced County UC Cooperative Extension Records.

40 Years of AIDS: "They Were Really Us" exhibit on display through December 2021

Wed, November 10, 2021 12:00 AM

Author:

Sophia LaMonica

"They Were Really Us" exhibit at Kolligian Library

"They Were Really Us": The UCSF Community’s Early Response to AIDS at the UC Merced Library chronicles 40 years of the AIDS crisis in photos, essays, and research materials. The exhibit title is based on a statement made by Dr. Paul Volberding in the documentary, Life Before the Lifeboat: San Francisco’s Courageous Response to the AIDS Outbreak:

The patients were exactly our age… all those other ways that we tend to separate ourselves meant very little when you realize that the patients had gone to the same schools, they listened to the same music, they went to the same restaurants. So they were really us… which added to the commitment that I think all of us had.

Drawing from the AIDS History Project collections preserved in UCSF’s Archives and Special Collections, “They Were Really Us" sheds light on how UCSF clinicians and staff addressed HIV/AIDS from its outbreak in the 1980s to the foundation of the AIDS Research Institute in 1996. "They Were Really Us" exhibit at Kolligian Library

The exhibit could hardly be more timely now--parallels between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic are striking, from the medical professionals who were at the forefront of defining what was at first a mysterious disease, to the community organizations combating associated stigma and misinformation, to public campaigns preventing transmission by promoting practices like condom-wearing. "They Were Really Us" is an inspiring display documenting the medical successes and advances in activism that continue to impact the world today.

A recently aired podcast from Berkeley Remix, "First Response: AIDS and Community in San Francisco," is an audio complement to “They are Really Us.” This six series-podcast, produced by The Oral History Center at UC Berkeley, is about the politics of the first encounters with the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. It draws from thirty-five interviews conducted in the 1990s with Sally Smith Hughes, historian of science at the Bancroft Library and author of The Virus: A History of the Concept. The featured interviews focus on the early years of epidemic, when the first reports emerged of an unknown disease that was killing gay men in San Francisco, to 1984 and the development of a new way of caring for people in a hospital setting.

With funding from @NEHgov, we partnered with UCSF Library, The GLBT Historical Society & San Francisco Public Library to make 160,197 pages of AIDS history documenting the early days of the epidemic available online. In concluding the project, "They Were Really Us" was originally installed at UC Merced Library for an opening in Spring 2020, but ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the library's closure. A digital version of "They Were Really Us" was published on Calisphere in July 2020. We are continuing to digitize AIDS collections from UCSF with support from Network of the National Library of Medicine - Pacific Southwest Region.

See "They Were Really Us" at UC Merced Kolligian Library through December 2021.