Experiment Station Publications

About the Collection

This collection includes publications of the United States Department of Agriculture Office of Experiment Stations, which consists of Experiment Station Records, Indexes, and Annual Reports.  This collection was donated by Vanderbilt University and digitized by the University of North Texas Libraries.

Currently, this collection only includes the Annual Reports of the Office for the years 1904 and 1908-1910 (under the title "Annual Report of the Office of Experiment Stations" ) and 1925-1941 (under the title "Report on the Agricultural Experiment Stations"); soon the reports will include the publications from 1901-1954.  These reports give a summary about the work and progress at each of the stations with more detail about the experiments than the record annotations provide.

About the Office of Experiment Stations

Between September 1889 and December 1946, the Office of Experiment Stations put out monthly bulletins that listed abstracts of papers from US experiment stations and selected foreign publications, as well as featured issues in agriculture.  These bulletins were compiled into annual or biannual volumes titled 'Experiment Station Records.'  Although the bulk of the information in these bulletins consists of annotations, they give an interesting overview of what scientists were experimenting with at the turn of the last century.  Certainly, a search of these publications will turn up some interesting facts, including the bactericidal properties of milk, the 'fascinating' eating habits of wireworms, and the radioactive bacteria that live near volcanoes.

In addition, the collection includes cumulative indexes to the Records which each cover approximately 10 years worth of volumes although they were published irregularly.  The indexes also have a cumulative list of the tables of contents for the relevant volumes.  Contents include the United States Experiment Station Record Volume 1 - 90 and issues of the Annual Reports.