home Cycle of Success Cycle of Success: Special Collection Instruction in Middle School Field Trips

Cycle of Success: Special Collection Instruction in Middle School Field Trips

Revision of article written by Clare Starkey, Haley Lykins, and Kelli Hansen

The University of Missouri’s division of Special Collections holds over 100,000 items, dating from the eighth century to the modern era, and focuses on books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, posters, printed ephemera and artifacts. Though the typical patrons are collegiate researchers, classes for elementary and middle school students are common and are an important part of the University of Missouri’s mission to benefit all Missourians. In the spring of 2024, Special Collections at the University of Missouri hosted a series of field trips for every sixth grader in the Columbia Public School (CPS) district—more than 1,300 students—under the theme of “Ancient Writing Technologies Lab: Cuneiform, Papyrus, Palm Leaves, Oh My!” This workshop gave students a chance to experience ancient writing technologies from across Africa and Asia while interacting with primary sources. Conceived in consultation with the school district’s social studies coordinator, the Special Collections staff provided hands-on activities on the history of the book to complement the school curriculum on ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China.

Public Services Archivist Haley Lykins stated, “It was exciting to see our primary sources utilized by a new age group. The experience taught us to look beyond the walls of our academic institution for opportunities of outreach and instruction.”

The students rotated between three workstations representing the ancient world. Items from the University’s collection were included to provide a real-life example of the focus of each station and included cuneiform tablets, papyrus fragments and a facsimile palm leaf book. The students visited the University of Missouri campus over the course of 14 field trips throughout April and May. In addition to Special Collections, students visited the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art and Archaeology, Museum of Anthropology, and Francis Quadrangle. Although Special Collections hosted only 10-25 students at a time, around 100 students overall visited each field trip day.

In each 25-minute session, groups of 3-8 students would spend 7 minutes at a station before rotating to the next one. Each station began with a short informational presentation about the collection item before moving onto the activity. The workshops included making replica cuneiform tablets using playdough, drawing hieroglyphics on papyrus using calligraphy markers, and creating replica palm leaf books by writing stories on long strips of paper and tying them together with yarn. The learning objectives for the workshops were to discuss different writing surfaces from different times and different parts of the world, to describe the advantages and disadvantages of the different surfaces; and to interpret, analyze and evaluate primary sources.

After the field trips, Joy Bass, the social studies coordinator for CPS, said, “Just wanted to let you all know that teachers AND students have rated your ‘station’ very high in their reflection surveys and SO many have said it’s been their favorite.”

home Cycle of Success Haley Lykins Appointed Public Services Archivist

Haley Lykins Appointed Public Services Archivist

The MU Libraries are pleased to announce that Haley Lykins has been appointed permanent reference/public services archivist for University Archives after serving in this position on a temporary contract since June of last year. Haley previously served as the Samir Husni Magazine Collection processing coordinator for Special Collections from 2023-2024 and as a student assistant in Special Collections and Physical Processing from 2019-2023. Haley has a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Missouri’s School of Information Science and Learning Technologies with an emphasis in archival studies and a Bachelor of Art degree from MU’s School of Visual Studies.

Welcome to Piper Brown-Kingsley

The MU Libraries are pleased to announce the hire of Piper Brown-Kingsley as the Information and Data Services Librarian at the Health Sciences Library. She began over the summer. Piper is a May 2024 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Information School. In addition, she’s been working as a remote Data Curation Intern at the National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) at the University of Michigan. We’re so excited to have her join the Information Services Team at the newly renovated Health Sciences Library.

home Cycle of Success Congratulations to Paula Roper, Winner of MLA Outstanding Professional Librarian

Congratulations to Paula Roper, Winner of MLA Outstanding Professional Librarian

Dr. Paula Roper was named Outstanding Professional Librarian at the 2024 Missouri Library Association Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. First awarded in 2017, the Outstanding Professional Librarian Award recognizes a librarian with an MLS or MLIS degree who has made a significant contribution to the improvement and advancement of library and information services. Nominees must have at least five years post- MLS/MLIS work in the library profession.

Dr. Paula Roper has worked for University of Missouri Libraries for nearly 40 years, beginning her career at Ellis Library as part of the inaugural MU postgraduate “Intern-Scholar Program” in 1986. During her time at Ellis, Dr. Roper has worked closely with the MU School of Education and the Black Studies Department to aid both students and faculty, from the early days of online catalogs to the current challenges of navigating AI software. She has also advocated for the Library’s involvement across campus, including large, public events like Black History Month programming and National History Day. Her experience, knowledge, and drive is valued by both her library colleagues and the faculty at her liaison departments. As one of her colleagues puts it, Dr. Roper “encourag[es] and valu[es] her less experienced colleagues, spurring us to get out of our academic comfort zone, and embrace the power we have, as architects of ‘extracurricular curriculum’.”

home Cycle of Success Cycle of Success: Librarian Finds Century-Old Line Drawing in Digital Library

Cycle of Success: Librarian Finds Century-Old Line Drawing in Digital Library

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.

Linda Hillemann, Clinical Instructor/Online Education and Field Support Specialist in the School of Social Work, works off campus and supports online students in southern Missouri. She was updating a lecture on the history of social work on Canvas when she realized she didn’t have a credit for a diagram by Mary Richmond, one of the founders of social work. Linda describes her research process: “I have digital copies of some of her documents and was pretty sure which one it came from, but I was wrong! Not only was it not from her book Social Diagnosis, it wasn’t in any of the other documents I have. So I started Googling. There are only so many websites devoted to social work history so I was pretty confident I could find it back, but it was much harder than I expected.”

After searching all the sites she knew with all the search terms she could think of to no avail, she contacted her subject librarian, Kimberly Moeller, for help. Kimberly was able to reverse engineer a search, and Linda says, “A mere two hours later I had the reference and a link to the document.”

Linda Hillemann

Kimberly found the original pencil drawing in conference proceedings over a century old. She explains, “The diagram was first presented and published at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1901, which didn’t originally come up in the search I ran. However, Richmond’s colleagues were apparently so impressed with her work that the diagram was mentioned in numerous iterations of this same conference, referring back to the proceedings from 1901.” Kimberly provided Linda with a link to the scanned version of the proceedings available through the digital library Hathi Trust, which meant she had immediate access.

Linda had never seen the conference proceedings before and found it be a fascinating historical document. More importantly, it provided the reference she needed to include vital information in her course. She explains that the diagram “demonstrates a clear line of a basic social work concept from our beginnings to current practice. That was something I wanted to demonstrate in this lecture: our connection today to our remarkable history, and thanks to Kim I was able to do that.”

Kimberly Moeller

Linda and her online students rely on Kimberly and other librarians to help them locate and obtain materials since they are not able to visit the library in person. When it comes to using the library or needing research assistance, Linda advises, “If you need something, ask, even if it seems like a pretty wild-eyed request. I think these librarians can pull rabbits out of a hat.”

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.