Extension and Experiment Station Communications Moving Images, 1937-2007

Title: Extension and Experiment Station Communications Moving Images, 1937-2007

Predominant Dates: 1957-1989

ID: FV 120

Primary Creator: Oregon State University. Extension and Experiment Station Communications

Extent: 65.4 cubic feet. More info below.

Arrangement: Most of the items in the collection are individually numbered; however, more recent additions are arranged by accession and not individually numbered.

Languages of Materials: English [eng], Spanish;Castilian [spa]

The Extension and Experiment Station Moving Images include final productions and raw footage documenting the wide variety of Extension Service programs and Experiment Station research activities including agriculture, logging and forest products, land use planning, nutrition and food preservation, consumer education, fisheries and marine resources, energy conservation, and 4-H programs. The collection includes footage pertaining to ashfall from the Mount St. Helens eruptions of the early 1980s; direct marketing of farm products; balloon logging; noxious weeds; and the Cowboy in Mongolia production.

Much of the footage from the 1960s and 1970s was shot for the Extension 7 and Oregon at Work television programs which were broadcast on KOAC-TV from 1959 to 1975.

Moving images in the collection from the 1980s were primarily used for public service announcements and video news releases. These include three series produced by Dave King and other staff: Whatever Happened to Mr. Wizard, or How Do We Really Find Out about Science? (1983), the Agricultural Heritage Project (1985), and Noxious Weeds of Oregon (1988).

The materials from the 1990s include final productions on VHS videotape and DVD and videorecordings of Extension Service teleconferences and workshops,

An addition to the collection (Accession 2011:016) consists of films produced by the Office of Extension and Experiment Station Communications. Numbering 288 recordings in total (130 U-matic cassette tapes; 135 VHS videotapes; 14 videotape reels; 5 Betacam tapes; 2 reel-to-reel films; 2 DVDs) these films were generated primarily as part of the instructional programming role of the Extension Service and Experiment Station in areas such as gardening, agriculture, finance management, 4-H leadership training, energy conservation, and food preservation. Other films contain pubic service announcements (PSAs), recordings of OSU-related stories broadcast on TV news, conference presentations, and informational segments highlighting OSU research projects. Included in this transfer are inventories listing most of the films by number and title as well as video log sheets and a transcript for the film Whatever Happened to Mr. Wizard? Sound recordings of public service announcements and gardening programs (hosted by Master Gardener Anna Torgerson) are also part of this accession. The sound recordings are made up of 12 cds and 2 reel-to-reel tapes.

A second addition (Accession 2014:097) is made up of 10 Betacam video cassette tapes containing full episodes and promos of the "Northwest Gardening" TV program. There are five different episodes listed as #101 through #105. One of the sets are broadcast copies and the other are master tapes.

The Extension Information Office (which later became Extension Communications) and the Agricultural Experiment Station Information office (which later became Agricultural Experiment Station Communications) were separate units until 1983, when they were combined into a single unit in the College of Agricultural Sciences known as Agricultural Communications. The name was changed in March of 1996 to Extension and Experiment Station Communications to reflect the move at OSU to make Extension a university-wide outreach activity. Extension Information provided support in the design, production, and distribution of educational materials, publications, news releases, feature stories, radio programs initially, but have added in more recent years: videotape, satellite delivery, web delivery.

William C. Smith worked in Extension Communications as a broadcast communications specialist from 1954 until his retirement in 1978. He filmed and produced many of the 1950s-1970s films in the collection.

Dave King, producer of many of the films in this collection from the 1980s, was Assistant Editor for Radio and Television from 1976 until 1987, when he became Experiment Station Electronic Media Coordinator for the office of Agricultural Communications.

Accruals: Additions to the collection are expected.

More Extent Information: 1,152 films, 696 videotapes, 130 U-matic cassette tapes, 15 Betacam tapes, 14 videotape reels and 4 DVDs; 164 boxes and 7 film cans

Statement on Access: Collection is open for research.

Acquisition Note: Materials were transferred from Extension and Experiment Station Communications and its predecessor offices in several accessions from the 1970s through 2007.

Related Materials:

The OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center collections also include the Extension and Experiment Station Communications Records (RG 069) and Extension and Experiment Station Communications Photograph Collection (P 120). Other films of Experiment Station programs and facilities are available in the Experiment Station Communications Films (FV 132) and the Agricultural Experiment Station Motion Picture Films (FV 029).

See also: Digital Resources: History of OSU Extension, a comprehensive collection of online resources documenting the 100+ year history of Extension and Oregon State University.

Preferred Citation: Extension and Experiment Station Communications Moving Images (FV 120), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

Processing Information:

This collection is not fully processed; this guide is preliminary.

We acknowledge that materials in SCARC collections and the language that describes them may be harmful. We are actively working to address our descriptive practices; for more information please see our SCARC Anti-Racist Actions Statement online. SCARC describes the contents of its collections using the language and terminology of the collections themselves. Since culturally acceptable terminology shifts over time, some of the terms that appear in these materials are currently outdated or offensive.

For instance, "disabled" has now largely replaced the once widely-accepted term "handicapped." Nevertheless, these materials are part of disability histories in that they can provide valuable insight into the social construction of disability, the perception and treatment of disabled people, and the presence of disabled communities and cultures. Please be aware that some of the contents in this collection may be disturbing or activating; for example, the collection contains materials using sanist/ableist language such as the use of the r-word.

Additionally, the term “gypsy” is considered derogatory by many Roma people. It comes from the word “Egyptian,” where many Europeans mistakenly believed the Romani came from. In 1971, at the First World Roma Congress, a majority of attendees voted to reject the use of the term “gypsy,” however some still use it to self-identify.

In this collection, the term “gypsy” refers to the “Asian gypsy moth” or “gypsy moth,” a group of invasive moth species that includes Lymantria dispar dispar, Lymantria dispar asiatica, L. d. japonica, L. albescens, L. umbrosa, and L. postalba. In 2021, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) voted to change the common names, and in 2022, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced new names for these species. Lymantria dispar dispar is now known as the “spongy moth,” and the rest are now the “flighted spongy moth complex.” For more information, please see our blog post.

In order to provide historical context and to enable standardized searching and access across our collections, we have retained the original wording in the collection descriptions. We acknowledge the racism and ableism represented by this wording and the harm they may cause our users. Providing access to these historical materials does not endorse any attitudes or behavior depicted therein.

[Date of Acknowledgement: March 2023 and November 2024]

Other URL: A preliminary container list was created for this collection on July 8, 2015. A preliminary container list for Accession 2013:085 is also available online.

Oregon State University. Extension and Experiment Station Communications
King, Dave (David Arthur) (1950-)
KOAC (Television station : Corvallis, Or.)
Oregon State College. Federal Cooperative Extension Service
Oregon State University. Agricultural Communications
Oregon State University. Agricultural Experiment Station
Oregon State University. Cooperative Extension Service
Smith, William C. (William Charles) (1919-)

4-H clubs--Oregon.
Agricultural extension work--Oregon.
Agriculture--Oregon.
Consumer education--Oregon.
Crops--Oregon.
Energy conservation--Oregon.
Farm life--Oregon.
Fisheries--Oregon.
Food--Preservation--Oregon.
Forests and forestry--Oregon.
Hatfield Marine Science Center
Home economics--Oregon.
Home economics extension work--Oregon.
Hops and Brewing
Horticulture--Oregon.
Irrigation--Oregon.
Land use--Oregon.
Livestock--Oregon.
Logging--Oregon.
Marine resources--Oregon.
Natural Resources
Nutrition--Study and teaching--Oregon.
Oregon Multicultural Archives
Oregon State University--Research.
Oregon State University. Extension and Experiment Station Communications
Saint Helens, Mount (Wash.)
Television in higher education--Oregon.
University History
Water--Oregon.

DVDs.
Motion pictures (visual works)
Silent films.
Video recordings (physical artifacts)