If you recognize the title of this Footnote, you know it is from the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” After Dorothy Gale was caught up in a tornado and deposited in the Land of Oz, she made this statement to her dog. She truly wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Last week the Friday Footnote described the Kansas FFA 2028 Project documenting the history of FFA in Kansas. During the last half of that Footnote I started to describe the research tools that might be helpful for this initiative and described the HathiTrust Digital Library. Today we will continue to examine other research tools that might be useful for the Kansas 2028 project but could also be used by FFA chapters and associations across the country.
The reason I picked the title for this Footnote is because in regard to research tools, we are no longer in Kansas. When I started my academic career the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature was where I would start. If you are not familiar with this publication it was a thick green book in the library that provided references to articles in popular and important publications arranged by subjects (such as education. Science, and Gardening to name a few). You would then have to go find the magazines or journals identified and read them. Google and other electronic resources were not available. There were no hyperlinks. So in the world of research tools, we are truly no longer in Kansas.
Figure 1. A typical library scene featuring the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature
Useful Research Tools for Agricultural Educators
Internet Archive. The mission of the Internet Archive is to provide universal access to all knowledge. It was started in 1996 with the ambitious goal to archive the Internet since information comes and goes on the Internet. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that works with 1,200+ libraries who upload materials. The archive contains 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings (including 255,000 live concerts), 10.6 million videos (including 2.6 million Television News programs), 4.8 million images, and 1 million software programs
The Internet Archive contains many past issues of the Agricultural Education Magazine, FFA convention proceedings. The National Future Farmer Magazine, ERIC documents, plus much more. A search using the terms “Future Farmers” resulted in 61,741 results. In doing a search you have choices to search the metadata, text contents, tv news captions, radio transcripts, or archived web sites. You might do a little experimentation to see what you can find. And you might be surprised.
For the Project 2028 researchers, it might be a challenge to narrow results down to Kansas in the Internet Archive. If you search for “Future Farmers” + “Kansas” you get a ton of results because the FFA convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri for many years. However a search for “Kansas Future Farmers” yields 62 results. Figure 2 below shows two rows of results from an Internet Archive search for “Kansas Future Farmers.” If you click on the image from the research inquiry, the document appears with marks showing which pages the information is on.
Figure 2. Partial results of a search in the Internet Archive for “Kansas Future Farmers”.
National FFA Archives. The archives for the national FFA are housed in the IUPUI library in Indianapolis. Much of the archive materials are on the shelves and are not digitized. If you are going to be in Indianapolis and want to touch and feel the real thing, go for it. Fortunately, a good bit of the material has been digitized. There are nine sections to the digitized FFA Archives:
- Administrative Records
- Alumni Association Records
- Awards Records
- This section contains handbooks and information about the various FFA award programs. It is not a listing of award winners. There is information about the Agriscience Fair, American FFA degree, Career Development Events, National Chapter Contest, Models of Innovation, Proficiency Awards and Scholarships.
- Board of Directors Records
- National FFA Convention Records
- National FFA Foundation Records
- Items include Annual Reports, Financial Statements Forever Blue Newsletters, Foundation Minutes
- National Office Records
- Program Records
- Handbooks and guides for Food for America, Life Knowledge, Local Program Success, National FFA Week, Partners for a Safer Community, PALS, and Supervised Agricultural Experience are located here.
- Publications
- FFA Advisors Making a Difference
- FFA New Horizons Magazine
- Handbooks (a variety of handbooks ranging from Brand Identity to Recruitment)
- Update (newsletter sent to advisors and other)
Much of the digitized archives are in PDF format. Once you download an item, depending upon the program you use to read PDF files, you can then search for specific words or phrases.
The Kansas FFA 2028 Project staff might want to include some of the Kansas National Officer Journals from the National FFA archives. For example, Justine Sterling from the South Barber FFA in Kiowa, KS was the 2004-2005 Central Region Vice President, and her 35 page journal is online in the FFA archives. Figure 3 is part of a page from her journal,
Figure 3. An excerpt from the National FFA Archives of Justine Sterling’s National Officer Journal.
Library of Congress. It is interesting to search the Library of Congress digital archives. If you go to the search bar and select “Everything” from the drop down menu and then type in a search term such as “Future Farmers of America”, you might be surprised by what you find (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Searching the Library of Congress
The search shown above will result in 4,630 hits. As I scrolled down through the hits I found Information about the National Future Farmers of America Commemorative Coin Act of 2009. How had I missed knowing about a FFA commemorative coin? Then I delved into the details. False alarm. A bill was introduced into Congress by Chuck Grassley of Iowa but never made it out of committee. So there was no FFA commemorative coin!
I also found information about the Agricultural Education Freedom Act, Student Agriculture Protection Act and the Crop Insurance for Future Farmers Act. None of these made it out of committee. While we often teach about legislation that has been enacted, it might be informative to look at what did not get enacted.
Typically this site provides legislative information such as resolutions, congressional testimonies, legislative bills and the like but sometimes you find something else. There are numerous newspaper articles. A recent search of the Library of Congress archives yielded the photo in Figure 5. I don’t know why but I was intrigued by the photo.
Figure 5. Photo taken between 1925 and 1930 in the Library of Congress Archives.
Looking Forward to Next Week
I am really excited about the next Friday Footnote. We will continue our exploration of resources for documenting FFA and agricultural education history. I will share with you the two resources I utilize most frequently in writing the Friday Footnotes. These two resources drill down into historical events at the local chapter level. See you next week.