This collection houses materials that Dr. Horace C. Smith gathered while writing a history of the University of Tennessee's Agriculture program entitled Honored Calling: A History of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. Although the work was compiled in preparation for the University's bicentennial celebration in 1994, Dr. Smith's death delayed the final product until 1999.

Series I: Publications, 1889-1974 houses Agricultural Experiment Station bulletins from the late 1800s (including articles like Weeds of the Farm,The Chinch Bug,A Chemical Study of the Cotton Plant, and Grasses of Tennessee, Part II), leaflets and circulars, and a document from the UT-AEC Agricultural Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge outlining some of the radiation experiments being done on plants and animals in the 1960s.

Series II: Research Materials, 1930-1994 includes unpublished histories of the University and the Institute of Agriculture, newsletters, correspondence, articles, and notes on the department's history.

Series III: Audio-Visual Materials, 1924-1964, undated houses photographs, slides, and 3.5-inch and 5.5-inch disks containing Smith's research files. The photographs depict such subjects as students, faculty (including portraits of Harcourt Morgan, Charles Dabney, and O. P. Temple), the University campus, experiments, the University of Tennessee Farm, and the East Tennessee Farmers Convention. A collection of the older photographs were used in a Farmer's Convention exhibit entitled Century of Progress in 1961. The slides date from the mid to late 20th century and show such subjects as the University campus, the University Farm, and farming in other states.

Among the oversized materials are drawings of Morrill Hall, editions of the Tennessee Farmer and Homemaker (1961), and a scrapbook composed primarily of newspaper articles documenting the Agricultural College and Experiment Station.