Databases & Electronic Resources

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Special Collections and Archives Celebrate Armistice Day with HathiTrust Books

Celebrate Armistice Day with HathiTrust Books

By Ying Hu   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Special Collections and Archives
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In honor of Armistice Day, Digital Services and Special Collections added five new items to the HathiTrust. These five items, from the University Libraries collections, offer unique perspectives on World War I.  Each of these is a new addition to the HathiTrust Digital Library.

First, is Democracy and Terms of Peace: An Open Letter to the People’s Council, by William Benjamin Smith of Tulane University. This small book has a large rallying cry to stay the course against the Central Powers.

Missouri and the War, by Floyd C. Showmaker, gives a wide array of information about how Missouri joined the rest of the nation’s call to join the fight against the Central Powers. This item gives farm outputs by cities in Missouri, lists of Missouri war heroes and in what country they fell, as well as a report about a person from St. Louis who discovered a treatment for poison gas.

Included are two pamphlets from the American Red Cross: Our Army and Navy and You and Why One Hundred Million Dollars for American Red Cross War Fund. These pamphlets give a picture of the American home front during the Great War.

Finally, Barney Stone’s Love Letters of a Rookie, is a collection of humorous letters from the author to his sweetheart, Julie. This book includes illustrations by Gordon Ross.

home Databases & Electronic Resources Voter Registration Guide

Voter Registration Guide

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources
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2018 Register to Vote Library Guide

Top things to know are:

  • Voter registration deadline in Missouri is Wednesday October 10.
  • First-time Missouri voters must vote in person on November 6, unless they presented acceptable photo ID to the County Clerk at the time they registered. Only those who have voted in Missouri before, or who have presented that ID (not just included their driver’s license number on their registration form), will be sent an absentee ballot when they request one, and they must request it by October 31.
  • If a student wants to register in a district outside Boone County (either in Missouri or in another state), they must be aware that the process for both registration and absentee voting differ, and may be unexpectedly complicated (for instance, to vote absentee when registered in another Missouri county, you have to get that absentee ballot notarized). Our guide has links to other counties’ requirements.

If you have questions that are not answered in the guide, visit the Boone County Clerk’s Office.

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Government Information University Libraries Provide Access to Online Data Fair

University Libraries Provide Access to Online Data Fair

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Government Information
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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:

  • data transparency
  • data activism
  • data in the community
  • what to do with data
  • and more

Watch this one minute video for more information, and review the full list of webinar sessions. 

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.

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, Ellis Library Cycle of Success Snapshot- Electronic Resource Assistants

Cycle of Success Snapshot- Electronic Resource Assistants

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Ellis Library
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For some reason, computer problems always feel more frustrating than other issues. You need to access an article for your research project, and you’re getting an error message. You have an assignment due, and the link to your article isn’t working. Thankfully, our electronic resources assistants are here to help.

Behind the computer glitches and improper technical set-ups that lead to blank pages, are Dave Walsh and Stara Herron. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every week day, the two work quickly and competently after they receive a request to resolve issues with electronic materials. The biggest part of their job is to ensure that patrons have access to e-resources and e-serials and that they are discoverable in the search services on the library’s website.

Below you will see just a few of the thank you notes that our electronic resource assistants have received from library users they have helped.

 

Taira Meadowcroft

Taira Meadowcroft is the Public Health and Community Engagement Librarian at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri.

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Resources and Services University Libraries Provide Resource for Suicide Prevention Student Group

University Libraries Provide Resource for Suicide Prevention Student Group

By Ashley Granger   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Resources and Services
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Here is a terrifying statistic: suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 10 to 34-year-olds*. According to the CDC, in the United States, someone takes their own life every 12.3 minutes. That’s over 44,000 people lost to suicide annually. The Mizzou Student Suicide Prevention Coalition (MSSPC) is working to change those statistics.

MSSPC is “a student organization at Mizzou founded to bring people of all backgrounds together to raise awareness for suicide prevention methods.”  Zach Lahr, the president of the organization, contacted Corrie Hutchinson, our Associate University Librarian for Acquisitions, Collections, and Technical Services, to ask for help procuring a license for a documentary, The S Word, for their week of action in April. The S Word is about a “suicide attempt survivor on a mission to find fellow survivors and document their stories of courage, insight and humor.  Along the way, she discovers a rising national movement transforming personal struggles into action.”

This documentary is especially important as it includes interviews from a diverse group of people, including a veteran and members of the LGBTQ community, to show that this is a national problem that encompasses all populations.

Suicide is a difficult topic to address, and MSSPC wanted a streaming license for this documentary so that students on the MU campus would have the opportunity to view it.Hutchinson was not only able to procure the streaming rights in time to stream the video, but was able to find the library funding to purchase the video. Because of this, students who weren’t able to attend screenings can now view it on their own, with others, or even in various courses.

To view this documentary on campus, stream here: http://proxy.mul.missouri.edu/login?url=https://missouri.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/t/0_yur6xt37.  If MU students would like to view this off-campus, they can click here: http://merlin.mobius.umsystem.edu/record=b12278488~S8.

For more information on MSSPC, you can visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/mizzousuicidepreventioncoalition/, as well as on their Twitter and Instagram accounts: @MizzouSSPC.

For more information on suicide, suicide prevention, and to get help, please visit https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/.

*according to the National Institute of Mental Health https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Government Information, Resources and Services Prices and Wages Give Us a Glimpse into the Past

Prices and Wages Give Us a Glimpse into the Past

By Super Admin   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Government Information Resources and Services
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The Prices and Wages by Decade research guide has found fans across campus, the state, and the world since Marie Concannon, Head of Government Information, created it six years ago.

Esteemed research scientist Jay Zagorsky, who collects data for the National Longitudinal Surveys of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is one of the latest scholars to use the detailed lists of resources for prices and wages throughout the history of the U.S. Zagorsky investigated how prices at high end restaurants have changed since 1899 using menus found via the guide.

Marie enjoys making historical prices meaningful by placing them in context with average wages paid at the time. The guide directs users mostly to U.S. federal and state government information, supplemented by other primary sources when needed.

The audience for the Prices and Wages by Decade guide has dramatically increased each year. Maries notes that the vast majority of visitors find the guide through Google searches. She says, “I developed the site expecting that most people would look for hard-to-find information from the 1800s, but it turned out that the most popular decades are the 1920s, 1950s and 1970s.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you use the guide, let us know about your project and how the information you found on prices and wages made the research process easier.

 

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Ellis Library, Resources and Services #TipTuesday: Alumni Access

#TipTuesday: Alumni Access

By Super Admin   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Ellis Library Resources and Services
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Are you a University of Missouri student getting ready to graduate? Are you worried about losing access to our databases?

Fear not!

Ellis Library provides guest accounts for alumni and other visitors! Come visit the Research and Information Desk with a government-issued photo ID to have your guest account created.

For up to two hours per day, you can freely use the guest computers to search databases, use the printers, and more.

More information regarding visitors and guest accounts can be found here.

 

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 #TipTuesday: Grad School Prep

#TipTuesday: Grad School Prep

By Super Admin   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Resources and Services
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Are you an undergrad interested in furthering your education? Have you thought about medical, law, or graduate school?

Mizzou Libraries have many resources for your use, including this guide featuring information on entrance exams.

We also offer links to practice tests and how to locate test prep books within the library.

Lastly, you can visit the LearningExpress Library database for practice exams and eBooks on exams such as the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MAT, MCAT, PCAT, and more. Be sure to register with a username and password to gain complete access.

If you have any questions, visit our Research Help and Information Desk or ask us online.

Study away!