Michigan State and USGA’s Turfgrass Information File now publicly available online for free

The Turfgrass Information File (TGIF) database is now publicly available. A cooperative project between the United States Golf Association (USGA) and Michigan State University Libraries’ Turfgrass Information Center, the TGIF was previously only accessible through a paid subscription and usually at an institutional or organizational level.

The release of the publicly accessible TGIF database coincides with the 40-year anniversary of the partnership between the USGA and the MSU Libraries. The database initiative began in 1983, to provide those in the turfgrass sciences expedient access to contemporary literature and expand to published and unpublished materials reporting on all aspects of turfgrass and its management.

“The development of what would become the Turfgrass Information File was a specific goal of the USGA Green Section’s original research committee, and the MSU Libraries has done an exceptional job advancing it,” said Cole Thompson, USGA Director of turfgrass and environmental research. “Today, TGIF has become the go-to database for people interested in turfgrass literature. I can’t imagine life without it, which reinforces both its status and how visionary the original development effort was.”

Included in the TGIF is a full archive of Golfdom magazine. A curated selection of articles from the TGIF can be found both in the magazine — in The Golfdom Files — and online.

“It’s great that the general public can now look back into the Golfdom archive, all the way back to our first issue in 1927,” said Seth Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Golfdom. “Just last week while on a business trip, I had a club member see my jacket and stop me to say an issue of Golfdom from 1965 helped the club with their recent Gil Hanse restoration. This history of golf made possible by our friends at Michigan State and the USGA really is a gift to the game.”

The majority of the database uses English-language materials, but it does include non-English resources. As of August 2023, the database comprised 323,469 records, 67 percent of which link to the full text of the item.