Agriculture Research Guide: Online Resources

Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. They are digitizing the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections, and so far have over 1.124 million pages of key taxonomic literature available on the web. From a scholarly perspective, these collections are of exceptional value because the domain of systematic biology depends -- more than any other science -- upon historic literature. The “cited half-life” of natural history literature is longer than that of any other scientific domain.

Botanicus is a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.

The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science, forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. Scholars have selected the titles in this collection for their historical importance. Their evaluations and 4,500 core titles are detailed in the seven volume series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences, Wallace C. Olsen, series editor.

Together with the introduction of rural mail delivery, the telephone, and the automobile, farm newspapers played a key role in the modernization of rural America. The Farm, Field and Fireside collection contains historically significant U.S. farm weeklies published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using the menu to the left, you can browse the newspapers by date or search by keyword across articles, advertisements and photo captions. You can print, download, or e-mail individual articles.

This website provides a large number of free e-books available for immediate download. The books are mainly about holistic agriculture, holistic health and self-sufficient homestead living. There are secondary collections about social criticism and transformational psychology. No fees are collected for this service.

HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines, published between 1850 and 1950.

MoA is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

Contains 428 digitized titles (many composed of multiple volumes) published before 1923. Most are full-text searchable, with results displayed as an image or PDF. A user guide is available at this research guide with screen shots.

The NALD Collections provide access to primarily historical USDA publications either digitized by NAL or through NAL’s partnerships with other institutions. Links to specific series, i.e. Farmers' Bulletins, Agriculture Handbooks, etc., is available here: Agriculture Research Guide: USDA Resources

The Organic Agriculture Information Access is an electronic collection of historic United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publications related to organic agriculture. In this collection, there are almost 200 documents published before 1942 (before synthetic chemicals became widely used) that contain state-of-the-art information and data that is still very pertinent for today's agriculture. Access to this data is intended to provide growers with new ideas on crop production without chemicals, as well as help researchers conserve scarce resources by avoiding unintended duplication.

Search by term or by the LC Call number to find open access, full text titles. Most are older titles, but some are more current.

The Smithsonian Collections Search Center is an online catalog containing most of Smithsonian major collections from our museums, archives, libraries, and research units. There are 8.1 million catalog records relating to areas for Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology with 860,477 images, videos, audio files, podcasts, blog posts and electronic journals. This catalog is regularly updated as catalog records are being added and revised.

This website provides free downloadable e-books about radical agriculture, natural hygiene/nature cure and self-sufficiency. There are secondary collections involving social criticism and transformational psychology. Some textbook level works are included.

Treesearch is an online system for locating and delivering public domain publications by Research and Development scientists in the US Forest Service. Publications in the collection include research monographs published by the agency as well as papers written by our scientists but published by other organizations in their journals, conference proceedings, or books. Research results behind these publications have been peer reviewed to ensure the best quality science.

The Pesticide Product and Label System (PPLS) provides a collection of pesticide product history and labels that have been accepted by EPA under Section 3 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Source: EPA.

Chemical Search was created by EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs and allows a user to easily find the pesticide chemical or active ingredient that they are interested in by using an array of simple to advanced search options. Chemical Search provides a single point of reference for easy access to information previously published in a variety of locations, including various EPA web pages and Regulations.gov.
Source: EPA

NPRO provides an easy and clear search interface for pesticide and label information. Data is drawn from the EPA.

This site is the newest version of the Crop Protection Reference (no longer in print format). It provides label Safety Data Sheets and Labels for pesticide products on the market.