4. Plan of Work--Bibliographic Analysis


Because the program is national in scope, the participants will come to final agreement at their first
meeting about those materials to be included and excluded from consideration based on subject and
topic, as well as considerations of format, date, provenance, and the likelihood of coverage in other
preservation projects. The project will exclude, for example, materials such as reprints, almanacs, daily
newspapers, state legislative documents. However, in the final analysis, each state will be responsible for
identifying their most important material relevant to the history of agriculture and rural life, therefore,
some differences in scope and subject matter will result from the process of refining the scope and
compiling the bibliography in each state.

Also at the start-up meeting, the participants will discuss the use of a database management programs for
compiling the bibliographies. The use of a database management program designed to handle
bibliographic references can facilitate downloading records from on-line systems, and allow merging,
sorting, and duplicate detection of records.

Following the start-up meeting, the participants will begin the project by:

 1) developing a detailed description of the scope of their particular state's bibliography; see
 Appendix D for an example from the New York project;

 2) listing the sources they will use for compiling the bibliography; and

 3) listing the subject headings to be used based on a modification of those used in the Phase 1
 project.

By the end of the first three months of the project, they will also have hired or assigned staff and begun
the searching and compilation process so that questions about compilation can be fruitfully addressed at
this early stage. Libraries will generally employ a team consisting of a librarian and a support staff
person to compile the bibliography and prepare it for scholarly evaluation. The amount of time devoted
to this will vary from state to state, but typically it will involve a half-time librarian and half-time support
staff person for 3 5 months, depending on the size of the universe of materials. These personnel costs
are included in the project budget for each participant.

Three months into the project, the Project Director and Project Coordinator will review the products
developed in each state and provide additional guidance. Participants will be provided with materials
developed for the scholarly evaluation stage of the project. In addition, questions about the preservation
stage of the project will be addressed by the project's Quality Assurance Consultant. [Note: Those
participants needing further assistance in quality assurance procedures will also be visited at the start-up
of the preservation stage of the project. See section 4.4.4 Microfilming and Quality Assurance below.]

With the scope of each state bibliography determined, project participants will compile the bibliographies,
a process that will take approximately 2-4 months to complete and will involve an extensive review of
both print and electronic sources. Participants will work from the list of subject headings derived from
the original New York State project and Phase 1, but customized to reflect their state's agricultural history.
Selected subject headings and date parameters will be searched in each library's on-line catalog as well as
the databases of other libraries in the state and, as appropriate, in the national bibliographic databases.
Lists generated from on-line sources will be supplemented with citations from a wide variety of printed
sources, including scholarly bibliographies, dictionary catalogs, repository shelf-lists, source
bibliographies appended to book chapters and theses and dissertations, and lists of titles available from
agricultural publishers.