EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University is one of 12 Midwest universities that are part of a new agreement with computer search engine giant Google to digitize the most distinctive collections of the universities’ libraries.

As part of the Google Book Search project, the agreement could result in the digitization of as many as 10 million volumes.

The agreement between Google and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) will help preserve and stabilize the libraries’ legacy collections, as well as provide broader and more in-depth access to historically significant print resources.

Below are descriptions of five unique collections from MSU Libraries that could be considered for inclusion in the project. Google will make the final decision on what to include.

Agriculture
Since its founding in 1855 as the nation's first land-grant institution dedicated to the teaching of scientific agriculture, MSU has assembled agriculture-related research materials through its MSU Libraries. The print set comprises close to 100,000 volumes, including early agricultural publications, current research monographs, works for the lay person and runs of periodicals (with more than 300 serials on current subscription). General strengths include works on gardening, forestry, landscape architecture, horticulture, animal culture, agricultural economics, food science and turfgrass. Rare book holdings include the Ray Stannard Baker Apiculture Collection (beekeeping) and a collection of historical agricultural equipment catalogs. The MSU Libraries own a significant number of items that are uncommon or unique within the wider holdings of the combined CIC libraries on topics such as horses, aquariums, cats, dogs, sericulture (silk), agricultural extension and farm exhibits. Several areas of strength reflect interest in the local lakeshore microclimates that support important Michigan crops such as berries, fruit orchards, flowers and viticulture (grapes). There are also strong holdings on agriculture in Africa.

Turfgrass
Through its collections of early and current publications, and its development of the online Turfgrass Information File database, the Turfgrass Information Center of the MSU Libraries is the world's leading research collection for the study of turfgrass. Turfgrass is a ubiquitous crop supporting a $50 billion per year business in the United States – from golf courses and stadiums to suburban lawns, highway margin ground cover and industrial park landscaping. The MSU Libraries began methodical collecting in this area in the 1960s and has benefited from the donation of the personal collections of key turf agronomists such as O. J. Noer and James B. Beard. Materials date back as far as 1790 with expanded holdings in materials published since 1895 and continuing through the present day. The collection includes more than 3,000 bound volumes of serials, representing more than 300 serial titles and some 1,400 monographs. Three quarters of the cataloged titles are unique within the holdings of the combined CIC libraries.

Africana
MSU launched partnerships with the newly independent nations of Africa in the 1950s and has continued to sustain intense international contact and on-campus research interest. MSU consistently produces more doctoral dissertations on African topics than any other U.S. university, and the library's Africana collection is ranked among the top five in the United States. The collection emphasizes sub-Saharan Africa, with notable strengths in the social sciences, history, agricultural economics and development. Geographic coverage is especially rich for Southern Africa (South Africa and Zimbabwe), West Africa (in particular Guinea, Gambia and Senegal), Nigeria, and the Horn of Africa (including Ethiopia). Holdings are substantial in African languages, especially the languages of Nigeria (Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo), Southern Africa (Shona, Ndebele and Zulu), East Africa (Swahili) and Ethiopia (Amharic).

Canadiana
The Canadian Studies collection of the MSU Libraries is the premier resource of its kind in the CIC, in terms of broad interdisciplinary coverage and comprises some 45,000 volumes. Areas of strength are Canada-U.S. foreign relations and trade, history, literature, native peoples, social conditions and natural resources. Initially a literature collection, the selection has expanded since the 1960s to reflect cross-disciplinary study on campus, where the Canadian Studies Centre serves faculty in the social sciences, humanities, communications arts, education, business, agriculture and natural sciences. Areas of collecting have expanded to include politics, government, anthropology and history, as well as popular culture. Current trends in collection emphasis include materials about native peoples, NAFTA, Great Lakes resources and Canadian culture. French language materials are included. The MSU Libraries has been a selective depository for Canadian Federal government publications since the 1970s.

Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection
With more than 150,000 items, the Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection is a major scholarly resource for the study of popular culture from the 19th century to the present. The initial emphasis was on American popular culture, but materials from other countries are now collected as well. While not the largest of its kind in the nation, MSU's popular culture collection is one of the most usable because of its early adoption of coherent planning that focuses efforts on a limited number of areas. Prominent in those plans are comic art; popular fiction including dime novels, story magazines, pulps, juvenile series books, detective fiction, mystery fiction, science fiction, western fiction and women's/romance fiction; popular information materials including almanacs and etiquette manuals; and print materials relating to the popular performing arts. Collection parameters evolve to follow trends in popular fiction, recently expanding to include gay and lesbian pulp fiction. Noteworthy elements of the collection include a nearly complete set of Deadwood Dick dime novels and substantial numbers of Tom Swift and Horatio Alger books. In addition, the Comic Art Collection is a research collection of more than 200,000 pieces serving national and international scholars. The strengths of the comic art collection are U.S. comic books, European comic books, U.S. newspaper strips and works on the history and criticism of comics. Less extensive collections are maintained for African, Asian and Latin American comics; fotonovelas; animation; cartooning; Big Little Books; and comics tie-ins. Materials held include the Yellow Kid beginning in 1895 and the Famous Funnies No. l comic book from 1934. The emphasis is on graphic storytelling in the newspaper comics or newsstand comic book tradition to present a complete picture of what American comics’ readership has seen, especially since the middle of the 20th century.

For additional information on MSU Libraries and its distinct collections, visit the Web at www.lib.msu.edu.