Nine land-grant university libraries -- the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University among them -- have received a two-year, $850,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve and protect brittle agricultural volumes.

Mann Library and the other institutions have joined to identify and preserve historical literature that covers a period from 1820 to 1945. Part of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature, commissioned by U.S. Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), will result in saving more than 6,800 brittle volumes.

Sam Demas, project director at Mann Library, will coordinate and manage this effort. Mann Library will receive $170,000 of the grant.

This cooperative preservation effort will preserve agrarian literature for future generations of scholars and farmers. Historical literature for each of the nine states will be identified and then evaluated by a panel of scholars. Four of the nine land-grant libraries will receive funds to preserve the most valuable titles, while the other five will identify and rank the titles but not preserve volumes until additional money is available.

"This rich literature traces agriculture as it evolved from a home and family way of life to the business enterprises which we know today," said Wallace C. Olsen, senior research associate at Mann Library.

The grant will fund work with local and land-grant literature about or published in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. Rural life will be the focus as represented in many types of publications: agricultural and farm journals, histories, grant and agricultural society documents, natural histories and records of rural growth and community development.

For further information, contact Sam Demas, (607) 255-6919.