Congratulations to these winners of yesterday's Centennial Celebration raffle!
Grace Atkins, Charmain Fernando, Nita Kohli, Helena Lam, Emma Libby, Phil Neff, Meghan Stuckel, Derek Su, and Tushar Tarun
Congratulations raffle winners!
Cycle of Success
MU Libraries Fall 2015 Newsletter
Welcome back!
Here are some updates about the MU Libraries since last semester:
Faculty and graduate students can now renew materials FIVE times online instead of two. If you experience any glitches with the new renewal amounts, please contact Esther Schnase (Schnasee@missouri.edu or 882-9158) for a quick fix.
Thanks to funding from University administration, Ellis Library hours will be extended to 24/5, starting September 8th.
BrowZine is now available for the desktop or laptop, although it does not sync with the app.
The temporary residents from Jesse Hall have vacated Ellis Library, so rooms 114 and 202 are undergoing some renovation before reopening later this semester.
As noted in Mosaics (p.16), the new census Research Data Center will open on the 2nd floor of Ellis Library before the end of 2015.
We are increasing our services in data and data management. DATA-ARCHIVES-L is an announcements service and forum for MU campus affiliates who use quantitative data for research, teaching and study. To subscribe, go to https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/datasets and click on the Listserv tab or send an email to Marie Concannon, Data Librarian, at concannonm@missouri.edu. Our Data Management Plan guide offers resources and best practices for complying with data sharing requirements. For more information about data management plans, contact mulibrariesdp@missouri.edu.
We’ve also had some changes in personnel. Ann Riley, Associate Director for Access, Collections, and Technical Services, is now Acting Director and responsible for all library operations. University administration will name a search committee for a new director later this fall. Jim Cogswell will be continuing with the Libraries until his retirement next year. Jim will be focusing on Advancement opportunities and the MU Libraries Centennial Celebration.
We are delighted to welcome new librarians: Grace Atkins, User Engagement Librarian in Ellis Library, and Taira Meadowcroft, Information Services Librarian in the Health Sciences Library. Timothy Perry will join Special Collections later this fall.
We continue to recover from the mold outbreak of 2013. Salvaged materials and replacement copies are being processed back into the collections and will reappear in the MERLIN catalog as they become available for circulation. University Facilities Management is working with us on improving and expanding off-site storage options.
We also face significant budget challenges and are working with University administration on how to improve this situation. There will be a vote of the student body on a proposed student library fee in November. We are grateful for the support of MSA for this fee.
We also continue to seek solutions to the pressure of ever-increasing subscription costs. We are compiling data in preparation for a review of high-cost/low-use subscriptions to be considered for cancellation after faculty consultation later this semester. We will send more detailed information on this issue in a later communication.
Upcoming events
Friday workshops on various research tools and topics begin on August 28. Recordings of past workshops are available online.
This year, we celebrate the centennial of Ellis Library and the history of all the MU Libraries, with these events:
- September 23, a student-focused party on the North steps of Ellis Library
- October 15, a celebration at the Health Sciences Library
- January 15, a Rededication Celebration in the grand reading room with presentation of A Place of Visions, the centennial history authored by Prof. Steve Weinberg.
- April 15, the grand finale with honored guest David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States
Upcoming exhibits in the Ellis Library colonnade and in the Bookmark Café.
Banned Books Week, Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2015.
Open Access Week, Oct. 19-25, 2015.
Ellis Library, under construction in 1914-15.
Teaching Spotlight: Megan Peiser
Teaching spotlight returns this semester for an interview with Megan Peiser. We've taught several classes alongside Megan and are happy to have the opportunity to present her thoughts about teaching with Special Collections.
SC: Please tell us a bit about yourself and your interests.
I’m a doctoral candidate in the English department working in the fields of Eighteenth-Century British Literature, and Book History. My dissertation in progress focuses on uncovering the contemporary critical response to the only period in literary history when women published more novels than men—1790-1820. I came to University of Missouri to work on this project because our Special Collections holds hard copies and microfilm of The Critical Review and The Monthly Review, the two most prominent book review periodicals of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. Using rare books and special collections holdings throughout my own research journey has impressed on me how using their resources can deepen one’s experience with literature.
When not leaning over a 200-year-old book, I am taking walks with my dachshund, Rory.
How do you use Special Collections in your teaching? What outcomes resulted from your class visits? What were the effects on your students?
I always include Special Collections in my teaching when I can. Literature especially favours visual and aural learners. Special Collections helps students to come into physical contact with literature in a temporal way, and often for the first time gives kinesthetic learners an opportunity to see the study of literature as something that plays to their strengths. Engaging with books as objects takes students out of their cookie-cutter anthology, and allows them to experience a text as its contemporary readers would have.
When my ENG 1210 Introduction to British Literature classes visit Special Collections they get a lesson on the history of the book. They are able to see via examples from Special Collections’ holdings the evolution how mankind has received the written word, from—cuneiform tablets, to papyrus scrolls; illuminated manuscripts, to incunabula. Seeing these changes helps students to imagine a work’s original form, and think about how it both changes and does not change as it passes through the various mediums that bring it to their textbook.
I also use special collections to get students think about how they receive information. Students in my ENG 2100 Writing About Literature class visited Special Collections to look at examples of the same literature re-packaged over several centuries. Holding our class meetings in Special Collections with example books on the table before us enables the students to engage in discussion about the ramifications of a nineteenth-century erotic poem later printed in a children’s book. While referencing the book objects before them, students become critics of more than words—of narratives of history, of collections, canons, and objects.
In my ENG 2159, World Literature 1899-Present class students combed artifacts from Special Collections and the University Archive’s collections to study ephemeral texts that represented historical moments from the marginalized viewpoints of those who lived through them. They asked how a poster, a pamphlet, a comic book might be literature? How it makes its meaning?
These students leave the classroom having not only read through literature’s past, but having had a physical experience with it. No longer feeling alienated from literature, they are empowered by its ability to reach readers across nationalities, languages, and mediums, and their ability to trace its path and engage with it throughout its journey. When they learn to criticize literature beyond their textbooks, they are able to apply their critical reading skills to other texts in their academic and professional lives.
What advice would you give to faculty or instructors interested in using Special Collections in their courses?
- Ask the librarians! Librarians spend much more time with the physical collections than you could ever attempt to re-create via searching the catalog. When I start thinking about my syllabus, I right away send a list of texts we’re reading, a theme I have in mind, or a brainstorm for an assignment to one of our Special Collections Librarian. Then we are able to meet, pull pieces together, and further brainstorm how to collaborate for the students’ best learning outcome.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. My most successful assignments with Special Collections had very loose parameters. They were shots in the dark, and I told my students that! It gave them ownership over the project, and let them help me shape it into its refined version.
You can see examples of the interactive media projects my 2100 Writing About Literature students did in conjunction with Special Collections and their materials on our class website here: http://meganleapeiser.wix.com/writingaboutlit#!projects/cg5v
If you would like to nominate a faculty member or graduate student to be featured in the Teaching Spotlight, contact us.
MU Libraries News Spring 2015
MU Libraries News Spring 2015
It has been an eventful year for the MU Libraries! We’d like to give you a brief update and forecast of things to come. While we face many challenges, we also find opportunity for new projects and developments.
You may have seen reports in the media of the proposed student library fee. With the encouragement of Chancellor Loftin and with input from the Missouri Student Association (MSA) and the Graduate Professional Council (GPC), the MU Libraries have proposed a student library fee.
- If passed by the students, the fee will begin at $5.00 per credit hour in fall 2016 and will be followed by $2 annual increases over the five years to a total of $15.00 per credit hour.
- The fee will dramatically increase funding to the Libraries and help Mizzou to deliver library services on par with our peer institutions.
- The vote will take place in November 2015.
- For more details and opportunity to give your input, see http://library.missouri.edu/yes/
The budget is indeed challenging. With expenditures of $18,643,152, the MU Libraries rank 53rd among the 62 AAU institutions that are members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Our expenditures per FTE student are 37.33% below the ARL average. (For more detail, see our Annual Statistical Report, attached, and our Operating Expenditures report.) Special challenges this year include:
- Continued inflation of journal and database subscriptions.
- The 2% reduction in the general allocation of funds, as for all University units.
- Mandatory increases in minimum wage and for some staff classifications.
- The need to replenish our self-insurance fund following the mold outbreak and fire of recent years.
- Increased cost for rental of off-campus storage of materials.
- Flat or reduced funding of the UM Library Systems Office and other state library organizations, resulting in some cancellations and shifting some costs to the MU Libraries’ budget.
We are considering options for dealing with these issues. If the proposed student fee does not pass, we will almost certainly face a very large journal cancellation. We will begin the work of compiling usage statistics and costs this summer and will be reviewing subscriptions with faculty in the fall in order to be prepared for this eventuality. We will also need to consider curtailing services. If you share our concern regarding library funding, please convey that to your department chair, your dean, and to the Campus Library Committee.
Despite these budget woes, we have been able to make some additions and improvements:
- We are grateful to Vice Chancellor of Research Hank Foley for funding the subscription to Web of Science for MU. In addition to indexing major journals in many areas, Web of Science provides the metrics used by the AAU to measure the impact of scholarly work. Training videos are available at http://library.missouri.edu/announcements/2015/04/08/web-of-science-tutorials/.
- We have also been able to extend our subscription to BrowZine, an app that facilitates access to online journals.
- We have made some changes to our website and implemented upgrades to several technologies in order to improve access and usability.
- Thanks to the Student Fee Capital Improvement Committee we will have a new KIC scanner in the Journalism Library.
- Thanks to engineering student Nick Bira and the Interdisciplinary Innovations Fund, we have a 3D printing service available in Ellis Library.
- We will be transitioning to a new electronic reserves system, an improvement on eRes, this summer.
- We continue to increase our capacity to support online learning through the creation of online learning tools, streaming of our workshops, and effective use of tools such as Blackboard’s Collaborate.
We have also done some reorganization. The former Ellis Library Reference Department has been reconfigured as a cluster of closely related teams with the aim of developing services for new students and experienced researchers, regardless of location:
- Research Services
- Instructional Services
- Online Information Services
- Government Information & Data Services
- User Engagement
Recovery from the mold outbreak of 2013 is ongoing. Salvaged materials are returning to circulation as they are processed into the new storage facility. Applause are due to many behind-the-scenes staff who are putting in untold hours on quality control, physical processing, and record management as part of this project. Special thanks to Government Information Librarian Marie Concannon, whose coordination with other government libraries to replace documents has allowed us to use available funds to salvage more materials than would otherwise have been possible.
In July we will say farewell to our colleagues from Admissions, Financial Aid, and the Registrar’s Office as they return to Jesse Hall. Their occupancy of rooms 114 and 202 in Ellis Library has inspired us to think more creatively about our spaces. Most of the materials moved from those rooms will remain in their new locations; we have been able to open up some new spaces for study areas—notably The Nook on the 4th floor East.
In the course of the year we have also said farewell to many colleagues who have left us, either for retirement or for new jobs, and we’ve been able to welcome some new colleagues to our team. Searches are ongoing to fill several vacancies. We appreciate your patience as we go through these transitions.
Finally, we look forward to celebrating one hundred years of library service, occasioned by the centennial of the dedication of Ellis Library. Although our history has been marked by significant challenges, there are many positive memories and achievements and exciting possibilities for the future. We hope you will join us for exhibits, performances, book signings, and other celebratory events throughout the year. Signature events include:
- September 23, a student-focused party on the North steps of Ellis Library
- January 28, a Rededication Celebration in the grand reading room
- April 15, the grand finale with honored guest David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States
Congratulations to Shelly McDavid!
Congrats to our very own Shelly McDavid!
Shelly, Library Information Assistant at Zalk Library, and Rebecca Graves, education librarian at the Health Sciences Library, have recently published two chapters, “Introduction to Learning Theory” and “Introduction to Instructional Techniques,” in Curriculum-Based Library Instruction: From cultivating faculty relationships to assessment (Medical Library Association Book Series), 2014.
ZPH Special Issue on Systematic Reviews
Check on the Zoonoses & Public Health Issue on Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis in Animal Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine !
See especially the article on searching the literature, written by Kate Anderson, Head of the Zalk Veterinary Medical Library (aka yours truly…):
O’Connor AM, Anderson KM, Goodell CK, Sargeant JM. Conducting systematic reviews of intervention questions I: Writing the review protocol, formulating the question and searching the literature. Zoonoses and Public Health 2014;61 Suppl 1:28-38 doi: 10.1111/zph.12125. PMID: 24905994.
Teaching Spotlight: Nicole Johnston
Nicole Johnston is our guest for this month's Teaching Spotlight. We have looked forward to working with her Textile and Apparel Management students for the last few years, and we're excited to share her thoughts on object-based teaching.
Please tell us a bit about yourself and your interests.
I am Collection Manager of the Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection in the Department of Textile and Apparel Management (TAM) and also teach a large Writing Intensive lecture class for TAM titled “Survey of the History of Western Dress.” I have completed two degrees from the University of Missouri, during which time I learned that history, material culture and art are three of my favorite interests. I very much enjoy the hands-on, object-based aspect of material culture and working with the costume collection and in TAM enables me to combine all three of my passions. Teaching, in turn, lets me explore and research these fields in further detail and pass on this knowledge and excitement to my students. Dress, after all, incorporates almost every discipline on the University campus in one way or another, and it’s great to see students make these connections and, in turn, broaden their horizons and stretch their minds.
How do you use Special Collections in your teaching?
As manager of an historic costume collection, I’m a big believer in object-based teaching and learning, and I try to take advantage of as many visual learning opportunities as I can. There is so much more one can learn about an object and its history through seeing and possibly touching the object up close. The object itself, the process of creating the object, it’s use and meaning, all become so much more real through this process, more personal. That’s why my class visits Special Collections every year. This year, in the process of learning about the development of book making and printing technologies, and their impact on dress, we took a closer look at the Collection’s illuminated manuscripts and incunabula. Last year, we looked at the Collection’s primary sources from the 18th century, such as books, journals and fashion magazines, while researching Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and her social and political uses of dress.
What outcomes resulted from your class visits? What were the effects on your students?
While looking at illuminated manuscripts and incunabula, it was important for students to discover not only how these objects illustrated and reflected dress of multiple periods, but also for students to reflect on the development of these processes and their role in our own modern development. As students become more dependent on the use of technology (and their thumbs) to communicate, and become more anti-social in the process, the value and benefits of the written word – the book – are diminishing. By exposing them to these early methods of communication and their effects on societal development through the dissemination of knowledge and ideas, students develop a deeper appreciation for and understanding of how far we’ve advanced beyond and because of these earlier methods. And, hopefully, even went out and bought a book…
What advice would you give to faculty or instructors interested in using Special Collections in their courses?
Students’ learning experiences are broadened and amplified through the use of objects. Stretching young minds in this manner is a tremendous opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. In the process of discovering and researching history’s rich resources, students learn more about themselves, where they came from and where they’re going, than they ever could without them. The staff at Special Collections will assist in any way they can to create a quality, object-based learning experience for any and all faculty who are interested in incorporating this type of teaching tool into their classroom experience.
Teaching Spotlight: Mark Langeneckert
For the next installment in our Teaching Spotlight feature, we're featuring Mark Langeneckert. Mark and his students visit our reading room each semester to work with our bookplate collection. His use of the collections in teaching is a model for those looking to historical collections for creative inspiration.
I’m an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Art Department. Drawing is my passion and the focus of my teaching. I’m responsible for coordinating the drawing area and leading the study abroad in art to the Netherlands (on even years) and Italy (on odd years).
One of the drawing courses I teach is Illustration. This course requires students to create an original work for a specific visual problem. One assignment is to create a bookplate design that incorporates the students name and the text, Ex Libris, into their work. The assignment is introduced by a visit to Special Collections to view their extensive assortment of historical bookplates. In many cases, this is their first visit to Special Collections.
The impact of this first-hand experience for students has resulted in some of their best work.
In the fall of 2014, I will be teaching a Drawing III course with an emphasis on the Graphic Novel. I look forward to accessing Special Collections resources in developing this new course.
The staff at Special Collections are extremely helpful with gathering materials, offering support and promoting their collection. I would encourage all faculty to consider using this resource in their classroom.
Welcome, Shelly!
Please help us welcome Shelly McDavid, our new Library Information Assistant, to Zalk Library! In addition to performing a wide variety of circulation duties, Shelly will serve as our point person for Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery.
Shelly previously worked at the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library. She holds a Masters of Education in Counseling and a Masters of Library Science and Information Management.
Welcome, Shelly!
Teaching Spotlight : Johanna Kramer
Energetic, youthful, admired by her students, Professor Johanna Kramer is our guest for the month of March.
Professor Kramer, please, tell us about yourself.
I am an assistant professor in the English Department. My area of specialization is Anglo-Saxon literature and culture. In my research I am most interested in Old English religious literature, especially homilies and saints’ lives, the transmission of patristic theology into vernacular poetry and prose, and popular religious texts and practices.
My first book, Between Earth and Heaven: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Literature, a study of the ways in which the theology of the Ascension is taught and visualized in a wide range of Anglo-Saxon texts, will be published at the end of March by Manchester University Press.
At MU, I teach classes that concern the early Middle Ages, Anglo-Saxon England, and the history of English, for example, Women in the Early Middle Ages, World of the Vikings, Introduction to Old English, and History of the English Language as well as graduate seminars on various topics in Anglo-Saxon and other medieval literature.
How did you incorporate Special Collections into your teaching?
I take almost all of my undergraduate classes for visits to Special Collections. I take my students so that they can have at least minimal exposure to actual medieval materials. I want them to see what different types of medieval manuscripts look like (liturgical, biblical, philosophical, etc.), get a basic sense of manuscript production (both codicology and paleography), and recognize different writing surfaces (papyrus, parchment, even clay). Since I teach in an area—medieval literature—in which primary sources in their original form are not very accessible to students, showing them some of the wonderful materials we have at SC is a small way in which I can have students share the same space and even get in physical contact with manuscripts that were produced a thousand or more years ago. This way, students also become more alert to the fact that the original formats in which we find texts are radically different from the neatly edited and translated versions that students read in class. Aside from seeing what various medieval codices and scripts look like, students get the opportunity to see some of the beautiful illuminations and other depictions that accompany texts, be it a whimsical decoration of an initial, a miniature showing a biblical scene (like the Ascension at the opening of Acts), or a woodcut in an early printed book (like the cityscape of Nürnberg).
What outcomes resulted from your class visits? What were the effects on your students?
Students are typically blown away by what they see. The immediate encounter with medieval manuscripts really opens up their perspective of what “a book” is or looks like. Students tend to be especially intrigued by items that get them close to the human side of manuscript production. Thus, for example, many students love the notarial registry (La Turade), a well worn, leather-bound notebook with lots of professional notarial entries in varying scripts made at different times. Students may have a sense of elaborately decorated medieval manuscript, but the quotidian nature of an item like this registry is exciting on a different level and connects students on a more human level across a vast gap in time to the individuals who were originally writing these texts. Similarly, therefore, they love seeing marginal notes or little pointing hands drawn in the margins of manuscripts where medieval readers took note of remarkable passages (which makes students think twice about what they might write into the margins of their own books!). Another aspect that always impresses students is the sheer materiality of manuscripts. Seeing hair follicles and the remnants of veins in parchment, feeling parchment—both the silky, paper-thin kind and the thick, rough, and stiff kind—noting holes in the parchment, all of these aspects speak to the physical nature of the making of a book and the “live” origins of its component parts.
What advice would you give to faculty or instructors interested in using Special Collections in their courses?
There might be some hesitation to take a class to SC when an instructor does not expect the students to do a particular project or use specific holdings. In my view, there is always a benefit of taking students, whether a research project follows or not. Exposing students to resources that are unfamiliar to them is a valuable service we provide through our teaching. Equally, in my classroom instruction, I introduce students to select scholarship in my field, whether they end up incorporating it in a paper or not. Just knowing that this kind of scholarship exists and knowing that one could be interested in it and get excited about it is worthwhile demonstrating to our students. It’s part of our responsibility as teachers and scholars to model such interest and excitement for our students, and we can do that by showing them the widest possible range of resources, including the wonders of SC.