For some reason, computer problems always feel more frustrating than other issues. You need to access an article for your research project, and you’re getting an error message. You have an assignment due, and the link to your article isn’t working. Thankfully, our electronic resources assistants are here to help.
Behind the computer glitches and improper technical set-ups that lead to blank pages, are Dave Walsh and Stara Herron. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every week day, the two work quickly and competently after they receive a request to resolve issues with electronic materials. The biggest part of their job is to ensure that patrons have access to e-resources and e-serials and that they are discoverable in the search services on the library’s website.
Below you will see just a few of the thank you notes that our electronic resource assistants have received from library users they have helped.
This guest post is written by Martin Karpa, Volunteer with the Superior Public Museums in Superior, Wisconsin.
My first job after graduating high school was on a ship sailing the Great Lakes. I worked the freighters for four seasons, hauling iron ore, coal, grain, sand and limestone from Duluth, MN, to Buffalo, NY, and numerous ports in between.
It was just within the last two years that projects around the home were winding down, freeing up more time for interests. With a sailing history and fondness of said, I took an interest in the Superior Public Museums, Superior, WI, of which one of the museums is the last-in-the-world above-water whaleback steamship S.S. Meteor. Volunteer efforts with the museums started out with their annual Volunteer Work Weekend held every last weekend in April when people come from across the Upper Midwest to preserve and prepare the Meteor for guests who tour the ship and learn about its history, sailing in the 1890s, the conception of its unique design and the influence this design has had on the present day shipping industry.
The first work weekend on the Meteor only piqued my interests and I wound up volunteering to come every couple of weeks or so to help out with routine seasonal maintenance on the ship. One thing leads to another, and this role in maintenance has now expanded to also being a volunteer tour guide not only for the Meteor but also at another of the museums, Fairlawn Mansion.
My opinion: dedicated tour guides are not given enough credit. These individuals put themselves out there before the general public and are expected to be the resident authority of what they are teaching, able to field any question thrown at them. Guides will learn the tour script, of course, but many will go above and beyond, gleaning all the facts they can about their particular expertise in order to answer even the most unpredictable question as best they can.
Marie Concannon
One such question was, “What were the sailors’ wages at the time?” (referring to sailors in the 1890s). I didn’t know, said so, and spent some time with the individual after the tour trying to find an answer on the internet without satisfying success. This lead to a more extensive internet search later at home, also without much concrete success. Now, I am not an idiot, but doing such specific research is not in my educational background. All of the clicking around on the net somehow lead me to Marie Concannon‘s contact information as the University of Missouri Libraries’ Head of Government Information. With mounting frustrations over negative search results and no better idea as to where to go with this question, I fired off an email to Marie last August, knowing it was a crapshoot . . . a roll of the dice . . . and I hit the jackpot!
Marie responded promptly, and a very pleasant correspondence followed, impressing me with her passion and dedication to her work. It was obvious even across the internet that she is enthusiastic about researching an issue and my hat is off to her. Information provided by Marie has now been adopted and fit into my personal script when giving tours of the S.S. Meteor, giving those interested in this aspect of our nation’s industrial history a better understanding of daily life at the end of the Victorian Era, beginning of the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. Being able to offer more detailed information to guests of the museum also gives them a fuller experience, which in turn helps spread an even more positive review of their visit.
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.
Although the Cycle of Success typically focuses on the relationships among the Libraries, faculty, and students, the Libraries also contribute to the success of all the communities Mizzou serves. The Libraries are an integral part of Mizzou’s mission “to produce and disseminate knowledge that will improve the quality of life in the state, the nation and the world.”
If you would like tosubmityour own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.
The following events and exhibitions have been scheduled to facilitate conversation regarding this year’s One Read Program selection: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community–and all of us–to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
A Brief Moment in the Sun Art Contest
Submissions beginning September 1st- October 18th
We want to feature your work based on The New Jim Crow. Submit a poem, mixed media, a sculpture, a painting, a photo; whichever medium speaks to you. Please contact Michelle Baggett for more information.
September 6th @ 5 pm: 13th Documentary
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans. After the screening, stick around for a guided discussion. Ellis Auditorium
One Read Discussion…Without the Reading August 22, 1:00-1:50pm
Didn’t get a chance to read the 2018 One Read book but still want a chance to hear about it and discuss the topic? This is the event for you. Wraps and chips will be provided for the first 25 participants. Bring your own beverage! Hulston Hall Room 4
July-October: The New Jim Crow – One Read Program Exhibit
An exhibit in the Ellis Library Colonnade features a timeline showing the increasing numbers of incarcerated Missourians over the past four decades. Key moments in law, the privatization of prisons, and stories of anonymous Mizzou Tigers impacted by incarceration are highlighted. Ellis Library Exhibit Case
The One Read Program, which promotes conversations regarding diversity, inclusion, and social justice through students, faculty, and staff reading a particular book together, is sponsored by Mizzou Law and Univerisity Libraries.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is this year’s One Read Program selection. The One Read Program is sponsored by Mizzou Law and Mizzou Libraries in order to facilitate conversations of diversity, inclusion, and social justice throughout the MU community. This year’s selection, The New Jim Crow, examines how old forms of discrimination have been legalized through the war on drugs and unequal enforcement of criminal laws.
An exhibit in the Ellis Library Colonnade features a timeline showing the increasing numbers of incarcerated Missourians over the past four decades. Key moments in criminal law, the privatization of prisons, Supreme Court decisions, and more are highlighted. The exhibit will be on display through October.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is this year’s One Read Program selection. The One Read Program is sponsored by Mizzou Law and Mizzou Libraries in order to facilitate conversations of diversity, inclusion, and social justice throughout the MU community. This year’s selection, The New Jim Crow, examines how old forms of discrimination have been legalized through the war on drugs and unequal enforcement of criminal laws.
An exhibit in the Ellis Library Colonnade features a timeline showing the increasing numbers of incarcerated Missourians over the past four decades. Key moments in criminal law, the privatization of prisons, Supreme Court decisions, and more are highlighted. The exhibit will be on display through October.
Several anonymous Tigers share their experiences of having friends and family members incarcerated.
For more information on the book, events, additional resources, and information on the One Read Program, see Mizzou Law’s guide. Copies of the book are available for checkout in Ellis Library, the Journalism Library, and the Law Library.
Guests can register for a free computer account at the Research Help and Information Desk. You need a current, valid government-issued photo ID. The account provides two hours of computer access per day.
Looking for your next summer read? University Libraries are here for you.
David Sedaris is a well-known writer (well, well-known to most people: https://goo.gl/hcFmQY) whose humorous essays tend to focus on his own crazy life in addition to the crazy lives of his family and friends. However, his new work changes things up a bit.
While Sedaris has never been one to hide anything, his honesty reaches new heights in his latest book, “Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002).” The first of two volumes, this diary contains Sedaris’s observations on the world, which is different from most diaries, which contain the introspective thoughts and experiences of the writer. This creates a new kind of reading experience for fans of his previous works, offering a peephole into other people’s lives, and who doesn’t love that? Have you ever had a strange experience with a stranger, overheard a crazy conversation, or come across some hot gossip? While many of us might tell our friends and family, Sedaris told his journal, and now the world. Like many authors, he draws from life for his writing, and records the things around him. But unlike other writers, Sedaris records the little minutiae that some wouldn’t give a second thought. It’s an interesting look into the mind of a writer, and will inspire you to take an extra look/listen to things around you, and, possibly, start a journal of your own.
Have you seen our latest display in the Bookmark Café? From a distance, these maps–neither paintings nor drawings–look like antique marbleized papers with amorphous shapes in a dreamy blending of lavenders, corals, blues, golds and pinks. But up close another scene is unveiled: villages as they appeared nearly a century ago. Schoolhouses on hilltops. Green plantations on the banks of the Rio Grande river, looking out into Mexico. Islands in lakes. Cemeteries and church buildings. Serpentine trails that wander through the wilderness, terminating at lone cabins. On the south wall, you can visit Las Vegas back when it only had a dozen streets each way, dots indicating buildings.
Sampson County, North Carolina
For nearly 100 years, a large collection of these soil survey maps have been folded up and tucked in the back of U.S. Department of Agriculture documents in Mizzou Libraries’ Government Information collection. Although the project’s purpose was to document soil types and alkalinity, the maps show much more than that.
These maps are generally too fragile to unfold without tearing, but with the help of award-winning preservation specialist Michaelle Dorsey, some maps from a 1923 volume were very carefully opened up and placed inside clear plastic envelopes, custom made in our on-site preservation shop. See the original maps on display now because they are for the most part not available online. However if you want to see one for a different place or year, you can use this guide to discover which areas were mapped on which dates, and we can help you view others in our print collection.
The microfilm collections in room 406 are being moved to offsite storage in preparation for renovations that will turn the space into a classroom for Special Collections. All of the microfilms stored in this room are currently unavailable, and this change has been noted in the MERLIN catalog and on the microfilm finding aids. If you have questions or need access to these materials, please contact the Special Collections reference staff at SpecialCollections@missouri.edu.
The story of how Mizzou Libraries came to be one of the few libraries with a nearly complete set of Bildende Kunst, a visual arts journal from the former German Democratic Republic, began with an email but involved many hands. In Leipzig, Germany, on research leave, Assistant Professor Seth Howes contacted his subject librarian, Anne Barker, to ask about access to the journal after he returned to Mizzou. Without microfilm or online versions and with the closest complete set of the journal located in New York, Anne determined that access would be very difficult.
In the end, Seth considered not only “here’s why this is important to me” but also “here’s how important this is to me,” contributing some of his funds for research materials, matched by library funds, towards the purchase of additional issues.
Seth’s research focuses on the literature and experimental music and film of East Germany in its final fifteen years of existence, and Mizzou Libraries already had full print runs of the other two critical journals for his research, covering literature and music. Bildende Kunst can be translated as “Visual Art” or as “Educating Art or Art that Educates,” Seth explains. Because it reproduced art otherwise unavailable to East Germans, Bildende Kunst served as an educational magazine as well as a trade journal aimed at professionals.
Anne Barker
“One of the things that I think is very cool about having this in our collection now,” Seth says, “is that as a research institution with the teaching mission that comes with being a land-grant institution, we always need to think about how we can translate our work into teaching, and that is to a great extent what that journal did.” He plans on scheduling sessions with Special Collections in his courses so he can show students how these ideas were debated: “Can we have socialist art that looks like this? Is it not distracting or alienating to paint a worker in this way? Shouldn’t we just take recourse to 19th century realist painterly techniques?” Seth finds that students who are visual thinkers connect in a more meaningful way with a richly illustrated journal than ones that require greater language fluency to decode “communists arguing with each other.”
Anne says, “I was excited by this opportunity to enhance our research and teaching collections, but also because this adds to regional resources, making this important publication much more accessible to scholars in Missouri and surrounding states. I’m grateful for Seth’s initiative and willingness to invest his personal research funds to make this acquisition possible.”
Seth suggests that students and faculty think of “the library’s existing strengths as a jumping off point for our imagination of how to make strategic additions or strategic developments in new directions.” Despite budget challenges, he has found that “there is a will to grow the library’s resources for research and teaching, and everybody here is obviously working like mad to make resources available to students and faculty.”
Special Thanks
Many Mizzou Libraries staff members in addition to Anne played vital roles in getting the journal issues onto our shelves:
Corrie Hutchinson, Head of Acquisitions, identified and worked with the German vendor, determining costs and handling payments
Libby Myre, Senior Library Information Specialist, identified and worked with the German vendor, determining costs and handling payments, and input the journal’s information into the catalog
Michaelle Dorsey, Senior Library Information Specialist, with assistance from her preservation assistants, created containers to store the journal in its original format
Bette Stuart, Senior Library Information Specialist, input the journal’s information into the catalog
Kelli Hansen, Interim Head of Special Collections, provided space for the collection
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 tosubmityour own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.
