It was a moment that enthralled and inspired: humanity’s first steps on another world. It was the realization of centuries of dreams, and the fulfillment of decades of work. It was the courageous small step into a new age.
Join the Smithsonian and the University Libraries in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission with Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission. Organized by SITES in collaboration with the National Air and Space Museum, and based on a traveling exhibition of the same name, this poster exhibition examines the mission and recognizes the sacrifices and devotion of more than 400,000 people employed in NASA programs who worked through the trials, tragedies and triumphs of the early space program. Featuring seven posters, including a timeline of key events in the early space race, the exhibition will help viewers to look back at this historic mission, and inspire a new generation of scientists, explorers and those who dare to dream. In addition, the exhibit includes related government documents from the University Libraries collection.
The Preservation of Electronic Government Information (PEGI) Project, a grant-based endeavor spearheaded by the University of North Texas in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University of Missouri, Stanford University, Arizona State University, Yale University and the Center for Research Libraries, has concluded the first phase of its work to gather thoughts and concerns about the long-term survival of born-digital government information. The PEGI Project’s events attracted researchers, scholars, librarians, archivists, government agency representatives, journalists, teachers, government transparency advocates, leaders of not-for-profit organizations and others who shared valuable experiences and insight.
The PEGI team was gratified to discuss issues with groups already engaged in born-digital preservation projects of varying scope and size. Alongside leaders and advocates for these efforts, anyone who joined the PEGI Project conversation has become part of a new and growing informal network of people who share this common concern.
The PEGI Project team took what it learned from hundreds of conversations to prepare for a deeper exploration at its culminating event: a National Forum on Preserving Electronic Government Information, held December 9-10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Representing the public, academic, government and not-for-profit sectors, participants were asked to formulate ideas for a “shared agenda” approach for ongoing cross-stakeholder collaboration. The forum was designed to strengthen relationships between government information creators, librarians and archivists, information technologists and users of government information.
With the whole campus community excitedly gearing up for the 108th Homecoming, Ellis Library’s Government Documents department decided to bring their own unique spin to the preparations. Certainly, with such with a long and glorious tradition, the University of Missouri’s Homecoming celebrations can be found in Federal Government publications, we thought, Let’s find out!
With the help of the Government Publishing Office’s terrific database govinfo, we found three Congressional Record entries that mention Mizzou’s Homecoming.
The first dates from October 18, 2000, when Senator Kit Bond addressed the Senate to acknowledge the recent death of Governor Mel Carnahan:
“I was with him on Saturday at the homecoming for the University of Missouri. We shared a common interest on that day; our football team didn’t do well. But Mel Carnahan, with a ready smile and a lovely wife, was there. We enjoyed our time together as we appreciated and looked back on the tremendous accomplishments he had and the contributions he made to the State of Missouri.”
We continue on a happier note with two entries recognizing the 100th anniversary of MU’s Homecoming. On October 13, 2011, Blaine Luetkemeyer rose to congratulate MU on the landmark celebration (see insert to the left). Russ Carnahan did the same the following day on October 14. “The tradition of ‘homecoming’ at the University of Missouri,” Carnahan said, “served as a model for homecoming celebrations across the country.” He continues, saying:
“Each year, thousands of students and alumni come home to celebrate one of the university’s greatest traditions. Homecoming at Mizzou has gone beyond school pride and football. Through this event, Mizzou has broken the world record for the largest peacetime blood drive on a college campus, and has organized other large community service events. Moreover, the University of Missouri’s homecoming celebration was recently named the best homecoming in the Nation.”
It is good to be a Tiger; here’s to another great Homecoming, Mizzou!
While their covers and titles can be on the generic side, annual reports of State Agencies are filled with interesting information that can be hard to find anywhere else. A great example of this is the Annual Report of the Department of Liquor Control of the State of Missouri, which has chronicled the production and consumption of alcohol in the Show-Me State for four decades.
The Missouri Department of Liquor Control was established in 1934 with two major functions, the collection of revenue and law enforcement. As such, their annual reports are filled with statistical tables detailing how much beer, wine and liquor was produced in and shipped out of Missouri each year, per capita consumption, types of violations charged and more.
The links below contain samples of some of these fascinating tables from 1938 to 1968, including how many millions of gallons of liquor, beer and wine were consumed per year:
With the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s annual fashion exhibition coming up next week (accompanied, of course, by the opening celebration Gala on Monday), May means fashion. To add to this month’s conversation on fashion and its place in society, we are excited to showcase the delightful government publication The Dresses of the First Ladies of the White House by Margaret Brown Klapthor.
Published in 1952 by the Smithsonian Institution, this book contains images of dresses worn by First Ladies, from Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, lovingly displayed on a plaster figure with the appropriate accessories, coiffure and posture of the woman who wore them.
Detailed descriptions of each dress, as well as a portrait and brief biographical sketch of each woman, are also included. The gowns, which belong to a collection of the United States National Museum, “represent the changes in fashions in this country from the administration of President George Washington through the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt” as Klapthor says in her introduction.
This winter has certainly been one for the history books when it comes to weather—it is a rare event indeed for Chicago to be colder than the North Pole! Weather data is fascinating, but knowing where to go to find historical data can be tricky.
Luckily, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information exists to preserve and provide public access to the Nation’s weather data and information! Their site has an impressive digital archive of historical climatological data publications, with access to series such as Climatological Data, Storm Data, Hourly Precipitation Data, Monthly Climatic Data for the World, Local Climatological Data, and more.
The Weather Bureau’s Climatological Data series, for example, is a monthly publication with an annual edition as well. The monthly issues contain tables of daily maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation amounts at over 8000 weather stations all across the nation, while the annual gives an overview of the year, including temperature extremes and freeze data. They are issued by state, and date all the way back to 1884!
These could be used to find out what the weather was like a hundred years ago today, on days of historical significance, on the day you were born, or more. Most fascinating, don’t you think?
The 2019 Oscar nominations get one thinking of all the great films that came out in 2018. What were some of your favorites? Academy Award-winning director Morgan Neville’s documentary about Mister Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, certainly garnered a great deal of acclaim! It also gives us an opportunity to make use of historic U.S. government publications.
One important scene in the film shows Fred Rogers speaking before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications; the date is May 1, 1969 and the committee is in hearings on a bill that would authorize the appropriation of $20 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the 1970 fiscal year. Mister Rogers gives a powerful testimony that can be read in full in the published hearing Extension of Authorizations Under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which the University Libraries have access to through our online database subscriptions.
An excerpt from Fred Rogers’ statement in Extension of Authorizations Under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
The film, which played locally in 2018 at both Ragtag Cinema and True/False Film Fest, is available at the Columbia Public Library if you are interested in watching it.
And if you want to find out if more of your favorite personalities have made appearances before Congress, visit the Government Information department at Ellis Library.
“This daylight-saving plan will afford an opportunity to many thousands of working people, those who work in offices and in factories and in mills and probably in mines, and on railroads, so that if they feel disposed they will have an opportunity to use an hour in the evening, or more, to till their gardens. If we are going to start an individual conservation scheme, and it looks as though that idea is going to take root, it will be one of the blessings that will grow out of this world difficulty. It will get the people back to the land, if it is only a square rod or two. It will give them an opportunity to know how to raise produce.”
Thus spoke Mr. Arthur E. Holder, representing the American Federation of Labor, at a hearing before the Committee on Interstate Commerce on Thursday, May 3, 1917, where he was adding his voice to the support of a bill to establish a daylight saving time in the United States.
Harris & Ewing, photographer. Senate Sergeant at Arms Charles Higgins turns forward the Ohio Clock for the first Daylight Saving Time, while Senators William Calder NY, William Saulsbury, Jr. DE, and Joseph T. Robinson AR look on, U.S. Capitol building, Washington, D.C. [Between 1910 and 1920] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.With the end of this year’s Daylight Saving Time approaching on November 4th, MU Libraries’ historical government document collection can shed a little light on the early days of national daylight saving laws (there have been many) in the United States – a little something to think about as you turn your clocks back.
The 1958 Interstate Commerce Commission monograph Standard Time by Thomas E. Pyne examines the Standard Time Act, the result of ‘the agitation for ‘daylight saving’ during World War I to conserve fuel and increase national efficiency”, which caused the first national daylight saving to be inaugurated at 2 o’clock on March 31, 1918.
“The act, approved March 19, 1918, is entitled ‘An act to save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States.’ It served a twofold purpose. It divided the territory of the continental United States into five zones, eastern, central, mountain, Pacific, and Alaska…. It also provided that the time of each zone should be advanced 1 hour on the last Sunday in March of each year and returned to normal time on the last Sunday of October…”
The document gives a glimpse of the situation prior to this act, when each State adopted one of four standards of time “for its own use by statute, ordinance, or more usually, public sentiment or habits”:
“The areas embracing the States, cities, towns, and railroads observing the same standard of time were so irregular as to preclude an attempt to define them even approximately. In some instances localities employed a different time form that of the railroad serving them, and in other instances two railroads serving the same point used different standards of time.”
Imagine how difficult that must have made coordinating travel and the transport of goods!
While the daylight saving provision of this Standard Time Act was short lived (it ended after only two summers), other national daylight saving laws have a curious history in the U.S.—one was reinstated year round during World War II, another was passed in 1966, more—that you can learn more about by visiting the Government Information department at Ellis Library after you enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday.
And now you know a bit more about daylight saving time in the United States, how it was initially coupled with the standardization of the time zones and how it was influenced by railroads and the World Wars.
The University of Missouri Libraries are not just places to find books and journals – we also make available data that is ready for quantitative analysis. Through the University Libraries, all of our faculty, staff and students have member-level access to two data archives: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. The ICPSR offers training and webinars as well, and we are pleased to announce their 2018 Data Fair is approaching. Here’s more from their news release:
ICPSR’s 2018 Data Fair focuses on the most important variable: you. Data is in the news at a dizzying rate, reminding us that our choices in collecting and sharing data are of great consequence. Join us for the Data Fair, a series of webinars taking place October 1-5, to learn from thought leaders who will delve into important topics like:
Since 2010, the ICPSR Data Fair has provided thousands of participants with world-renowned data training and resources. All for free, all virtual, and all open to the public. We invite you to join us for the 2018 Data Fair by registering for sessions here.
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.
Detailed descriptions of each dress, as well as a portrait and brief biographical sketch of each woman, are also included. The gowns, which belong to a collection of the 
