Felicity Dykas

home Staff news Digital Services update: Current digitization projects

Digital Services update: Current digitization projects

By Felicity Dykas   Posted in Staff news
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Digital Services is carrying out several digitization projects to meet the needs of different units in the library and on campus. This is a quick overview of most of our current projects, several of which are long-term.

Typography books. The Journalism Library reviewed the University Libraries collections and identified books on typography which were not yet in the HathiTrust. We are digitizing these volumes and are contributing them to the HathiTrust.

HathiTrust collection: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=1491577794

Early British pamphlets. This project supports the goal of making resources in the English Short Title Catalog (ESTC) available in the HathiTrust. Special Collections and Rare Books has identified 15,000 titles in their collection that meet the criteria of ESTC. We have added 900+ titles to the HathiTrust so far and  have several items in the process of being added.

HathiTrust collection: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=1689078988

MU Extension material. We received copies of older Extension publications when Agricultural Economics weeded their collection of resources and from the duplicates SHS didn’t retain. We seized this opportunity to digitize these duplicates, because we can disbind and scan them quickly. We have added 800+ titles to MOspace since Summer 2019.

MU Extension collection in MOspace: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/355

Missouri Place names theses. Under the direction of advisory Robert L. Ramsey, students in the 1920s and 1930s completed theses documenting the origins of places names in Missouri, including names for “counties, townships, post offices, rivers. branches, creeks, ridges, prairies, mounds, hills, valleys, gaps, churches, and mills.” We have completed digitization of twelve of the eighteen so far, and they are available in MOspace. We have gotten requests to make these available from the general public and from Missouri government agencies.

Example: Place names in six of the west central counties of Missouri  https://hdl.handle.net/10355/64422

University of Missouri course catalogs. Partnering with the Registrar’s Office, we have been digitizing MU Course Catalogs. Early volumes included histories and reports of departments and the university. For some years, we have catalogs for individual schools and colleges, too. We are currently digitizing catalogs from the 1990s, and are filling in gaps for other decades.

MOspace collection: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/60693

University Missourian. This serial publication was added to the University Libraries collections in 2019. It began publication in 1871; we have issues through 1880. We have completed scanning it and It will be available in MOspace soon.

MERLIN record: http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b2057091~S8

Shamrock. The Engineering Library had a duplicate set of the Engineering yearbook and asked to have them added to MOspace. These volumes provide an interesting look at the history of Engineering over the years.

MOspace collection: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/68822

Muse. We are partnering with the Museum of Art and Archaeology to make all issues of the MUSE, the annual publication of the Museum, available online. We are digitizing copies not in digital form and sharing copies with the Museum and are harvesting issues we need that are already available online.on the Museum site.

MOspace collection: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/66433
Museum website: https://maa.missouri.edu/muse

Focus. At the request of HSL, we have digitized over 300 articles published between 1967-2001 under the banner, “Highlights” or “Focus” in the periodical, Missouri Monthly Vital Statistics. This series of articles covers a range of topics related to the health and vital statistics of Missourians, and include statistical information. We hope to make these available in the HathiTrust, but will host them locally if full view cannot be provided in the HathiTrust.

As you can tell, we have been busy. We also are wrapping up other projects and processing one-time requests, on top of processing current MU theses and dissertations (Fall 2019 were added to MOspace this week) and other MU publications to MOspace.

 

 

home Databases & Electronic Resources Commemorate Labor Day with MU Theses and Dissertations in MOspace

Commemorate Labor Day with MU Theses and Dissertations in MOspace

By Felicity Dykas   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources
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Cover of a 2015 thesis written by Yandi Liu.

Labor Day, celebrated this year on September 3, is the national holiday during which we pay tribute to the social and economic contributions of American workers.  The American workforce is a focus of some of the research conducted by graduate students at the University of Missouri and documented in theses and dissertations available in MOspace, the University of Missouri institutional repository.  Below are examples of theses and dissertations from a range of departments which feature informative perspectives on the economic and social progress of the labor movement and focus on the expanding workforce in American society.

In MOspace you also will find older theses and dissertations. We are adding these as part of an ongoing project to digitize and provide online access to pre-1978 theses and dissertations.  An interesting example is a 1915 thesis from the Department of Sociology. As part of this thesis, University of Missouri student Mabel Griffith researched the working conditions of women in the laundry industry in Columbia.  In her study, Griffith surveyed thirty-one women in the laundry industry. She benefited from access to pay-roll records in order to tell the story of the work and home life of these wage-earning women. Read more in Women in the laundry industry in Columbia.

Learn more by checking out these and other theses and dissertations in MOspace.

home Databases & Electronic Resources Newly Digitized Book Highlights Eminent and Self-made Men in Missouri History

Newly Digitized Book Highlights Eminent and Self-made Men in Missouri History

By Felicity Dykas   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources
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What do Mark Twain, George Washington Carver, and President Harry Truman have in common?  That’s right – they all called Missouri home!  However, these are not the only interesting individuals from the Show Me State.  Have you ever heard of George Clinton Swallow?  Dr. Swallow served as Missouri’s first state geologist and MU’s first Dean of the College of Agriculture.  In fact, Swallow Hall was renamed in his honor in 1930!  How about General David Rice Atchison?  General Atchison questionably claims to have served as acting President of the United States for 24 hours before Zachary Taylor was inaugurated in 1849!

Find these people and others in the newly digitized United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-made Men: Missouri volume, originally published in 1878 by the United States Biographical Publishing Company.  As noted in the Preface, “this volume, containing about six hundred double-column pages of letterpress, interspersed with numerous fine steel portraits, durably and elegantly bound, will be deeply interesting to thousands of the best families of this· great and growing State.”

The title is accurate, unfortunately, and you will not find biographies of women in this volume. There are references to mothers, wives, and daughters and we learn, for instance, that The Rev. W. Benton Farr’s daughter, Cora H., “is one of the best female mathematicians in the State.”

Embrace part of Missouri’s history and find out about people who made contributions, both large and small, to our shared heritage though this title and many more in the MU Digital Library!

 

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Highlights from the MU Digital Library and MOspace

Highlights from the MU Digital Library and MOspace

By Felicity Dykas   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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MU Digital Library

A 15th-century book of hours from Venice, Italy has been digitized and is now available in the MU Digital Library. Books of hours would have been familiar to most members of the middle and upper classes by the late Middle Ages. These devotional books have as their central text the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, a shortened version of the daily cycle of Christian devotions called the Divine Office. This book of hours also includes more specialized prayers and litanies relating to the Virgin Mary. The original, which was possibly made as early as 1450, is in the Ellis Library Special Collections Department. It is about 3.7 inches in height and is 330 pages long.

MOspace Institutional Repository

In addition to papers and presentations from MU faculty, students, and staff, MOspace now includes many MU publications issued by departments. Recently, the Cambio Center Collection was greatly expanded. The MU Cambio Center, as noted on their website, “leads research and outreach on Latinos and changing communities.” In MOspace, you will find conference papers, eBriefs, and other Cambio Center publications. The University Libraries will continue to work with the Cambio Center to add new publications to MOspace.

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