Flying Farmers & Farm and Home Week at OAMC

About the Collection

In 1944, with strong support from President Henry G. Bennett, the Oklahoma Flying Farmers organization was born on the OAMC campus as an association for farmers, both men and women, who owned and operated aircraft as part of their farming operations. The National Flying Farmers Association grew out of the Oklahoma Flying Farmers.

The Oklahoma Flying Farmers held its first convention at OAMC in 1945, with more than 2,000 farmers attending. The first National Flying Farmers Association convention was held on the campus the following year. The films in this collection feature newsreel-style footage of these conferences as well as the Farm and Home Week events, which were held at OAMC in 1947 and 1949.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to make these historic nitrate films available to the public and to celebrate a time capsule of sorts,” Patrice-Andre “Max” Prud’homme, OSU Director of Digital Curation, said. “These films represent a significant time in the history of the United States, where pioneering ideas and aviation led to a huge transformation in the agricultural industry.”

About the Digitization Process

The original films were in a nitrate format, which is highly unstable. The OSU Library converted the material to a digital format for both preservation and safety purposes. The digitization of this collection was made possible thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, a federally supported preservation grant program. NFPF is the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. They support activities nationwide that preserve American films and improve film access for study, education and exhibition. 

Thanks to the NFPF grant, during OSHA’s Safe and Sound Week in fall 2019, the OSU Library was publicly recognized for its work to remove unstable, flammable films from its archive, while preserving historic treasures.

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Contact Us

The Archives at the OSU Library
204 Edmon Low Library
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-6311
libscua@okstate.edu

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