The article below was published in the Fall 2012 issue of the Library of Virginia’s Broadside. Check out Broadside for all things LVA related. . .
Voice of Virginia Agriculture: Back issues of Virginia Farm Bureau News are now online
In a welcome public-private partnership, the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Farm Bureau have combined resources to present an online version of the Virginia Farm Bureau News, providing images and full-text searching capability for issues dating back to 1941, the first year of the title’s publication. The current edition of the database offers access to issues through 1999. To quote from the bureau’s website, “With more than 150,000 members in 88 county Farm Bureaus, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation is Virginia’s largest farmers’ advocacy group. Farm Bureau is a nongovernmental, nonpartisan, voluntary organization committed to protecting Virginia’s farms and ensuring a safe, fresh, and locally grown food supply. The VFB is the chief advocacy group representing the farming community in Virginia.” The Library had significant holdings of the Virginia Farm Bureau News and filled in gaps with the help of the Farm Bureau. The title was microfilmed. While one might describe microfilming as being on the cutting edge of yesterday’s technology, preservation microfilming offers two important and very desirable advantages: it provides a stable preservation medium that can be archived for hundreds of years and it serves as the perfect cost-effective foundation for digital transfer. You can see for yourself by visiting digitalvirginianewspapers.com or virginiachronicle.com to browse through almost 60 years of Virginia farming news.
