#TipTuesday: Alumni Access

Are you a University of Missouri student getting ready to graduate? Are you worried about losing access to our databases?

Fear not!

Ellis Library provides guest accounts for alumni and other visitors! Come visit the Research and Information Desk with a government-issued photo ID to have your guest account created.

For up to two hours per day, you can freely use the guest computers to search databases, use the printers, and more.

More information regarding visitors and guest accounts can be found here.

 

home Events and Exhibits HGSA Book Sale at Read Hall

HGSA Book Sale at Read Hall

There’s a book sale happening outside of Read Hall!

  • Monday 4/23
    10am – 2pm

  • Tuesday 4/24
    10am – 2pm

Books are $1 for paperbacks and $2 for hardbacks.

All proceeds go to the Mizzou History Graduate Students Association.

If you see a library book among the selection, please return it! (lol librarian humor)

home Workshops LibWIS Wednesday, April 25: Open Lab

LibWIS Wednesday, April 25: Open Lab

LibWIS Open Lab
April 25
3:15-4:15 pm
Ellis Library Room 4D11

This open lab is a come-and-go session to help you with any library or research questions you have.

Bring in your assignments and questions, and library staff will be on hand to assist you as needed.

For more information on LibWIS, see the Spring 2018 schedule.

home Ellis Library, Resources and Services #TipTuesday: Need Writing Help?

#TipTuesday: Need Writing Help?

You know the writing tutors in Ellis Library can help with papers for your classes, but what if you need help with other kinds of writing?

You’re in luck–writing tutors can help with:

  • creative writing
  • scholarship essays
  • personal statements
  • cover letters
  • and more

Check this semester’s hours and instructions so you’re ready for your appointment.

home Resources and Services Where Can I Go for My Phone or Video Interview?

Where Can I Go for My Phone or Video Interview?

Looking for a quiet place to take your phone or video interview on campus? The library might seem like a great place, but our study rooms are for group study only. The MU Career Center is here for you instead.

First, check out this list to see if your school or college has its own career services office. If not, the MU Career Center will work with you to use one of their interview rooms. These rooms are in high demand, and only one room has a landline, so make your reservation sooner rather than later. (All rooms have computers with webcams and Skype.) For more information, email peiterL@missouri.edu or call 573-884-6317.

Now that you know how to find a quiet place to have your interview, do you have questions about how to do your best during the interview itself?

Here are a few best practices for online interviews:

  • Remove anything from the background you don’t want employers to see.
  • Test both the audio and video.
  • Look at the webcam, not the screen.

Read the rest of the list and tips for phone interviews on the Career Center website.

Good luck, Tigers!

home Resources and Services #TipTuesday: Scan for Free

#TipTuesday: Scan for Free

You can scan documents for free at Ellis Library! The KIC scanners are located on the first floor of the library.

Place your materials in the middle of the document table, and use the touch screen to scan. An image of your materials will appear on the screen. There are several options to modify the image. When you are satisfied with your scanned image, use the touch screen to email the image to yourself or save it to a USB drive.

If you need help or have questions, just ask at the Research Help and Information Desk!

home Cycle of Success, Ellis Library Asking the Right Questions Pays Off

Asking the Right Questions Pays Off

Mizzou has made its mark on Nikolaus Frier, a senior mechanical engineering major from St. Louis, and he will leave his mark on Mizzou as well. For his field of study, Nik had a couple of in-state options but chose Mizzou, which he says “seemed beautiful and big” and where he knew he’d have many options for getting involved.

Extracurricular activities have in fact brought Nik unanticipated opportunities. He was a member of the 3D Printing Club during the time when the service was transitioning from being student led to being hosted by Mizzou Libraries. “I was losing hours at another campus job,” he said, “so I sent out my feelers and asked if the library would need any additional help running this service.” After demonstrating his knowledge of 3D printing to Ernest Shaw, Manager of Information Technology for the Libraries, Nik found himself employed by Print Anything.

Nik worries that his favorite Mizzou memory “might be a little cheesy,” but going to the midnight barbeque the first week of his freshman year was life changing. He met his girlfriend there, and they celebrated four years together in August.

His second favorite memory is yet to come. As project lead for Make Mizzou, a project of the 3D Printing Club, he’s overseen the design of a 3D campus map for the quad. “We have the 2D kiosks around campus, right?” Nik asks. “We wanted a 3D one so visually impaired students would be better able to navigate campus.” The 3D campus map is currently in the prototype finalization stage and will be installed in the fall.

“Getting involved is the right step into learning about your resources here at Mizzou,” Nik advises his fellow Tigers. “As soon as you’re part of a club, you realize you need this thing done. Well, how would I get that done? Then you start asking the right questions.” Nik is proof that asking the right questions pays off.

Nik plans to work as an engineer after graduation but also is confident that he has learned the necessary skills to open his own model-making company. Either way, he won’t miss what he foresees as his second favorite Mizzou memory: the groundbreaking of the 3D campus map in the fall.

home Workshops LibWIS Wednesday, April 11: Open Lab

LibWIS Wednesday, April 11: Open Lab

LibWIS Open Lab
April 11
3:15-4:15 pm
Ellis Library Room 4D11

This open lab is a come-and-go session to help you with any library or research questions you have.

Bring in your assignments and questions, and library staff will be on hand to assist you as needed.

For more information on LibWIS, see the Spring 2018 schedule.

home Ellis Library, Events and Exhibits Create Blackout Poems in Ellis Library 4/9-13

Create Blackout Poems in Ellis Library 4/9-13

Celebrate National Poetry Month by creating your own blackout poem in the Ellis Library Colonnade April 9-13.

Blackout poetry is created by marking out words from a text, like a newspaper, until a poem is created from the words that remain. For inspiration, check out others’ creations at Newspaper Blackout.

Newspapers and markers will be provided. Select poems will be posted on Mizzou Libraries’ Instagram account. Sign your poem with your handle if you want to be tagged!

home Cycle of Success, Ellis Library Libraries Are Where You Go When You Run out of Ideas

Libraries Are Where You Go When You Run out of Ideas

Research Enriches Undergraduate Writers’ Creative Nonfiction

Julija Šukys, Assistant Professor of English and creative nonfiction writer, says, “Libraries are one of my great loves. I’m a huge champion of libraries.” Much of her work is deeply researched, including her most recent books. Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė is an unconventional biography of the Lithuanian librarian whose heroic actions saved an untold number of lives during the Holocaust, while Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning, published in October, investigates her own family’s complicated history.

Julija introduces her advanced undergraduate students to the pleasures of combining research and creative work by incorporating a library research day into all of her nonfiction workshops. She finds that sometimes students at this level are “starting to tell the same stories over and over again,” and research is “a way of showing them how you break out of that, how you break out of writing the same narratives. It’s a way of showing them that there’s a bigger world and to look up, to look out, and to learn something as you write. Writing is a way of actually understanding the world better.”

Example Research Topics: the history and evolution of pinball, Berlin nightclub culture, narcissistic personality disorder and marriage, personality formation in fraternal versus identical twins, the hemp industry in the United States, the link between ear infections in children and the development of speech disorders, the influence of anxiety and depression on memory formation, the history of women in cycling, and American mobility and student mobility across the countryStudents begin by drafting personal essays and then are instructed to ask themselves, “What’s the piece that I could crack open with the help of research?” At this point, Julija sends Anne Barker, her subject librarian, their list of research questions. Because the topics arise out of students’ personal stories and interests, this list can be quite quirky.

By the time students show up at the library, Anne has gathered resources appropriate to the various topics. These workshops meet for weekly for two and a half hours, so one class session can accommodate both instruction and practice. During the first half of the session, Anne introduces them to library databases and also demonstrates search strategies that facilitate research “in the broadest terms.” Julija says, “We search really wide-ranging stuff, both scholarship as well as how to find things on Google Books, how to find movies, how to find video clips that are going to be interesting and useful. Students learn that there’s this enormous world that’s available to them.”

Then during the second half of the session, students begin their quest to find two sources for their essays. They have time to run searches, ask questions, and find books in the stacks. Julija reports that students often have their first experience requesting books through MOBIUS or interlibrary loan, or as she calls it, experiencing “the pleasure of having books sent to you from other places in the world.” Some of her students end up using maps or newspapers or doing genealogical research. “What I really want them to learn,” Julija says, “is how to work in a library and how to think about resources and for them to discover the pleasure of working both with archival materials and with books.”

This assignment brings what Anne calls her “detective instincts” to the forefront. She says, “I enjoy working individually with the students to think of different angles to pursue and different types of materials that could augment their research and then seeing them return with the things they’ve discovered. It’s like opening a treasure chest whose contents they can continue to explore for a long time.”

Anne Barker

In addition to helping students find new possibilities in their writing, Anne’s instruction helps Julija accomplish her mission of teaching her students how to use libraries. “Libraries are good places to work, and libraries are places for solace,” she tells them. “Libraries can be this place where you go when you’ve run out of ideas.”

Julija advises other instructors interested in incorporating library instruction into their classes to “plan it in advance and contact the subject librarian early.” She has also found that giving students concrete tasks helps them be able to put what they’ve learned to immediate use, and another recommendation is to “give students class time to do the hands-on work.” Conducting their own research with a librarian available gives students an appropriate balance of independence and support. “It’s very individualized, and on the other hand they’re learning transferable skills.”

Julija’s advice to students is simple: “Talk to a reference librarian because they have skills you can’t even imagine.”

Cycle of Success is the idea that libraries, faculty, and students are linked; for one to truly succeed, we must all succeed. The path to success is formed by the connections between University of Missouri Libraries and faculty members, between faculty members and students, and between students and the libraries that serve them. More than just success, this is also a connection of mutual respect, support, and commitment to forward-thinking research.

If you would like to submit your own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.