ITHACA, N.Y. -- The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded $538,450 to the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University for the fourth phase of a long-term preservation project, called the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature.

This project will keep historically significant agricultural books and documents from being lost to natural decay.

The Mann Library will work with university libraries in other states to preserve about 770 titles. Since 1996 nearly 2,700 titles in 8,500 volumes, published between 1820 and 1945, have been saved. "This country was an agrarian society at its roots, and this is a historical record," says Mary Ochs, the head of Collection Development and Preservation at Mann Library. "This allows historians and others to see the impact of agriculture on the social history of a region. It even goes beyond agriculture; it shows how people lived."

Preserving this historical knowledge is invaluable. For example: In one year, from autumn 1916 to 1917, the price of milk in New York City soared from 9 cents per 100 pounds to 14 cents. This forced many of the city's mothers to buy cheaper, sometimes contaminated grades of milk for their children. The number of child deaths from diarrhea climbed. Haven Emerson, the city's health commissioner, asked Mayor John Purroy Mitchel to investigate the new prices being charged by the Dairymen's League. The mayor's findings, "The Report of the Mayor's Committee on Milk, City of New York" in 1918, concluded that the price was justified. Thanks to the Mann Library effort, that report can be seen on microfilm.

The United States Agriculture Information Network and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agriculture Library developed the preservation program in 1993. Each state is expected to preserve its own local agricultural literature. In each state, a panel of scholars and librarians evaluates and ranks individual titles in terms of importance to social, cultural and economic history, and the brittle books, are microfilmed in order of their importance. Other universities participating in the

fourth phase of the project include the University of Georgia, the University of Illinois, Michigan State University, Ohio State University and North Carolina State University.

Some of the titles from America's rural era include: How to Get Rich in the South: Telling What to Do, How to Do It, and the Profits to be Realized , by William H. Harrison, a North Carolina book from 1888; Enemies of the Vine: How They Affect the Roots, the Trunk and Canes, the Foliage, the Flower and Fruit , by L.O. Bonnet, a pamphlet published in California in 1926; and the Official Course of Study and Manual of Methods for the Rural Schools of Texas , published in 1899.

Among the salvaged materials is the New York State Food Commission's report from 1917. Gov. Charles Whitman had commissioned a census of the state's agricultural resources, which led to the establishment of a statewide field service to control insect pests and plant disease. A potato seed inspection service also was established, and an information service to report pest outbreaks was begun. Whitman served as the committee's chair and Albert R. Mann, then dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture, served as the commission's secretary.

Those services -- which have become a part of Cornell Cooperative Extension and Cornell's Integrated Pest Management Program -- exist to this day.