Travel and Exploration
Special Collections has a number of materials related to travel and exploration. The three largest holdings consist of around 400 travelogues and other published accounts of travel throughout Europe, approximately 100 of which focus on travel within Great Britain; around 150 titles related to travel in North and South America, including emigrants’ guides, sea expeditions, and published accounts of western expansion; and a collection of maps and atlases dating from the 16th century to the present.
How to Use the Collection
With a few exceptions, the collections can be accessed and requested through the library catalog. Finding aids for individual collections are linked on this website. Materials are available for use in the Special Collections Reading Room (room 401) during regular hours. Materials do not circulate.
Finding Aids for Travel and Exploration
Gary E. and Janet J. Venable Antiquarian Atlas & Map Collection
The Venable Collection documents the history of cartography, geography, and exploration from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century.…
John G. Neihardt Collection.
Biographical Sketch John Gneisenau Neihardt (1881-1973) accepted a position at the University of Missouri-Columbia's Department of English in 1949…
Martin and Margaret Hiller Collection of Audiovisual Materials on China, 1945-1948.
Scope and Contents The Hiller Collection documents cities, industries, farming, and everyday life in China during the second phase of the Chinese…
Poster Collection.
Scope and Contents The collection consists of posters from both World War I and World War II with a tourist and other miscellaneous posters from the…
Rare Books
The Rare Books Collection is the default designation for materials in Special Collections that are acquired as individual items. Like Special…
William Least Heat-Moon Papers.
Scope and Contents Material by Wililam Least Heat-Moon (b. 1939). Manuscripts and additional materials from the following books: PrairyErth (A…
Related Exhibits
Commercial Art: Travel Posters in Special Collections
This exhibit focuses on nine European travel posters from Spain, France, Italy, Britain, Germany, and Norway. In a century of...
Hiller Collection
The Hiller Collection documents cities, industries, farming, and everyday life in China during the second phase of the Chinese Civil...
Leaders and Heroes
Every age, every race, has its leaders and heroes. ~ Ohíye S’a (Charles A. Eastman) Libraries tend to hold those materials that...
Leaders and Heroes 2: The Arts
This exhibit was born out of a desire to showcase materials within Special Collections at the University of Missouri that...
Places in the World: Treasures from the Venable Collection
Maps tell us where we are. The most obvious way they do this is geographical, but there is also a...
The Art of Cartography: Cartes-à-figures
Cartography is the art and science of map-making. During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cartography was experiencing a peak of...
Selected Items
Hiller 09-070: A introduction sign of The Ancient Armillary in Nanking
Photograph of a introduction sign of The Ancient Armillary. The sign states that the Ancient Armillary was made between 1431-1449.
Digitized from…
Foot-loose in India ; adventures of a news chaser from Khyber's grim gash of death to the tiger jungles of Bengal and the Burmese battle ground of the black cobra.
312 pages : illustrations
Author's holograph note to Walter Williams inserted.
Hiller 09-094 : A boat on the river, two people rowing
Photograph of a boat with sails on a river in Soochow. Another boat with sail in the distance. Houses on far side of riverbank in…
Map Illustrating the Plan of the Defences of the Western and North Western Frontier, as Proposed by the Hon. J. R. Poinsett Sec. of War, in his report of Dec. 30, 1837.
Map showing the lands just west of the Mississippi River from Fort Snelling in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Shows the lands of the Omaha, Pawnee,…
Hiller 09-036: Sun Yatsen Mausoleum in Nanking 2
Photograph of Sun Yatsen Mausoleum. The photo looks vague.
Digitized from glass slide. Quality of original is poor. Scan: Creo iQsmart3. Image is…