home Ellis Library, Workshops Friday Workshop, March 9

Friday Workshop, March 9

Law for the Lay Person
March 9, 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Ellis Library 159 and Online

Boost your knowledge of the U.S. legal system with this introduction to resources available for legal research. In this workshop, you will explore databases available at Mizzou, as well as other low cost and free legal resources.

Cindy Shearrer, Associate Law Librarian for Patron Services

Most workshops are offered simultaneously in two formats:
Face-to-face in Rm. 213 Ellis Library and live online.
To Register: tinyurl.com/MULibrariesworkshops
(click on gold calendar entries for face-to-face workshops and pink calendar entries for live online)

home Ellis Library, Workshops LibWIS Wednesday, March 7: Open Lab

LibWIS Wednesday, March 7: Open Lab

LibWIS Open Lab
March 7
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, Government Information Volunteer Income Tax Assistance at Ellis Library

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance at Ellis Library

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)
Tuesdays February 27 – April 17, 2018 (except March 27)
3:00-7:00 pm
Ellis Library Colonnade

Volunteers will be available to assist with do-it-yourself income tax preparation and e-filing for federal and state income tax returns. This service is available to U.S. citizens and resident aliens without treaty benefits on a first-come, first-served basis until maximum capacity is reached.

You will use software to self-prepare your return. Volunteers will be on hand to answer questions and help with tax or software issues. Volunteers have passed an IRS certification exam covering many aspects of tax law as it relates to tax preparation.

Details on what to bring with you, full-service assistance locations, and additional information can be found on the 2018 VITA flyer.

This program is sponsored by the Personal Financial Planning Department, MU School of Law, and the University of Missouri Extension. Questions? Call (573) 882-2173.

 

Where Did the Birds Go?

For many years, Ellis Library housed a collection of Dorothy Doughty porcelain birds that were donated to MU. According to the stipulations of the donor agreement, the University Libraries are now free to sell the birds. The collection has been sent to Link Auction Galleries in St. Louis to be included in the next live auction. The proceeds will benefit the University Libraries. The display cases where the birds were previously displayed is in the process of being refurbished as exhibit space to highlight University Libraries Special Collections materials.

For more information about the live auction, please visit www.linkauctiongalleries.com. The collection will be included in Sale#1079, the March Gallery Auction, at Link Auction Galleries, 5000 Washington Place, St. Louis, MO 63108, on March 17, 2018 beginning at 10:00am.

home Ellis Library, Events and Exhibits Open Education Week 2018 March 5-9

Open Education Week 2018 March 5-9

Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its goal is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Join us!

What Open Education Week events are happening on campus? 

See the full list here: Open Education Week Events at the University of Missouri

What is Open Education?

Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.

Open Education combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learner’s needs.

The idea of free and open sharing in education is not new.  In fact, sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built.

Open Education seeks to scale up educational opportunities by taking advantage of the power of the internet, allowing rapid and essentially free dissemination, and enabling people around the world to access knowledge, connect and collaborate.

Open is key; open allows not just access, but the freedom to modify and use materials, information and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for diverse audiences, large and small.

home Ellis Library, Events and Exhibits, Resources and Services Visual Artists Who Inspire Eve L. Ewing: Book Display in Ellis Library

Visual Artists Who Inspire Eve L. Ewing: Book Display in Ellis Library

Dr. Eve L. Ewing, writer, artist, and scholar, will give a reading at Mizzou on Tuesday, February 27th as part of Black History Month 2018. On her Goodreads author page, she answers a question about her main influences with a list of writers and visual artists who have influenced her “in terms of not only style, but what it means to live as a writer in the world.”

On display now near the Research Help and Information Desk at Ellis Library are books about the five visual artists Ewing names as influences. Take a look at the work of photographer Carrie Mae Weems or Kerry James Marshall, known for his large paintings. If you enjoy installations, check out Glenn Ligon‘s neon works or Dan Flavin‘s work featuring fluorescent light bulbs. Perhaps you will be moved to learn about Kara Walker and other contemporary working artists.

 

home Ellis Library, Workshops LibWIS Wednesday, Feb. 28: Using Google for Research

LibWIS Wednesday, Feb. 28: Using Google for Research

Using Google for Research
February 28
3:15-4:15 pm
Ellis Library Room 4D11

How is the best way to use Google for research purposes?  What is Google Scholar, and how does it differ from the various research databases in the Libraries? What are other features in Google that can assist me as a student?

We encourage you to bring your own laptop to this session. We will show you how to adjust your Google settings to locate Mizzou resources more easily.

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

home Ellis Library, Workshops Friday Workshop, March 2

Friday Workshop, March 2

Finding Health Literature: Keys to Searching PubMed, CINAHL & Scopus
March 2, 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Ellis Library 159

Explore the features that increase the power and precision of your searches for health literature. Learn how to use subject headings and field searching, how to save your searches, and more.

Rebecca Graves, HSL Educational Services Librarian

Most workshops are offered simultaneously in two formats:
Face-to-face in Rm. 213 Ellis Library and live online.
To Register: tinyurl.com/MULibrariesworkshops
(click on gold calendar entries for face-to-face workshops and pink calendar entries for live online)

home Ellis Library, Resources and Services University Libraries and Center for Research Libraries Partner to Digitize Microfilm

University Libraries and Center for Research Libraries Partner to Digitize Microfilm

The University of Missouri Libraries maintain large historical collections on microfilm, which are deteriorating and infrequently used. In order to ensure future access to these materials while also reducing the cost, space, and staffing demands of this format, the University Libraries plan to transfer most of its microform holdings to the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a long-standing central repository located in Chicago.

The University of Missouri has been a member of CRL since 1962; this membership allows our users to access CRL collections. CRL has been a reliable partner, providing rapid delivery of materials for extended loan periods and in some cases digitizing on demand. This transfer of materials will allow MU students and faculty ongoing access to the microfilm collections, although there will be some temporary interruption as materials are moved. The records for the materials will be added to the University Libraries’ online catalog, so they can be easily requested. The Libraries will maintain several microform and microfilm readers for patron use.

The University Libraries will retain master copies of University of Missouri dissertations and theses and all government documents received as part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).

For more information, please contact Associate University Librarian Jeannette Pierce at pierceja@missouri.edu.

home Cycle of Success, Databases & Electronic Resources, Ellis Library Curriculum on Missouri Trees Finds Worldwide Audience through MOspace

Curriculum on Missouri Trees Finds Worldwide Audience through MOspace

The University of Missouri has long been a partner and sponsor of activities offered by Missouri River Relief, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to connecting people to the Missouri River.  Now MOspace, the University of Missouri’s online repository, is partnering with Missouri River Relief to offer curriculum material to K-12 schools in Missouri. Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms: A Guide for Students is the first of these materials. Two Mizzou students assisted with its creation.

Missouri River Relief has removed 876 tons of trash from the river with the help of 23,000 volunteers over the past 16 years and has also reached 18,000 students through interdisciplinary and experiential educational events. Kristen Schulte, Missouri River Relief’s Education Coordinator, says these events are designed to “engage students’ innate sense of wonder and natural curiosity. We believe this approach inspires community engagement, academic achievement, and a sense of stewardship.”

Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms is not a foolproof taxonomic tree ID guide but instead a guide for a hands-on learning experience for elementary through high school students. It focuses on Missouri River floodplain trees’ bark rather than leaves, a unique approach to teaching and learning tree species. Many Missouri River floodplain trees are very tall with leaves out of reach, while tree bark is at the student level.

Kristen Schulte

Kristen knew that more young people would learn about Missouri River floodplain trees through this method if the guide were freely available online. As a graduate student at the University of Wyoming, she worked on Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps Resources Education Curriculum, seventeen lessons designed for the youth employed in the program. The curriculum is housed in the Wyoming Scholars Repository, which tracks how many times it has been downloaded. “When I started working for Missouri River Relief,” Kristen says, “I knew that we wanted to have a similar curriculum for the Missouri River, and it would be helpful to have the statistical information of the downloads, which we are not able to capture on our website. So I reached out to Noël and Felicity and they were supportive of the idea.”

Felicity Dykas, Head of Digital Services, saw the collection as a good fit for MOspace, and Noël Kopriva, Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Librarian, agreed. Felicity says, “One of our goals for MOspace is to preserve research and scholarship and to make these resources available to the Mizzou community and others worldwide.”

The reach of Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms has truly been international. It was added to MOspace in August 2017, and Felicity shares that “It’s already been downloaded more than 400 times, including by people in China, France, Serbia, and the United Kingdom, among other countries.”

Missouri River Relief is developing additional resources to be uploaded to MOspace, including Missouri River Curriculum, Missouri River Information Packets, and Missouri River STEM Challenges.

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 provide all Missourians the benefits of a world-class research university.”

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.