Recently I was walking through the stacks and came across a selection of books that have interesting cover images. The books turned out to be the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture. A description of the title from the USDA's website:"The main purpose of the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture was to summarize USDA’s research developments. However, the Yearbook, which was published (with a couple of exceptions) annually from 1894 to 1992, has a broad appeal outside of the scientific community. In fact, Congress passed a law to provide for its publication as part of an effort to make agricultural information more readily available to farmers and other interested citizens."
The USDA has digitized the full run of the yearbook; however, it does not appear that they digitized the covers of the volumes. A selection of cover images can be found on the State Library's Flickr page. I highly recommend checking out the the digitized volumes on the USDA's site, as the title and introductory pages of the volumes also include wonderful mid-century graphics. Print copies of these yearbooks are accessible to the public in the State Library, room 341.
- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian
