Historical Note
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.
Content Description
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,