Finding sources that meet the expectations of your professor may seem like a daunting task. However, Mizzou Libraries provides tools to simplify the process of finding high-quality, scholarly sources.
After you search the main search bar on the library homepage, you can limit your results to peer-reviewed sources by clicking this checkbox:
This way, you know the articles you’re viewing have been peer-reviewed and are scholarly.
Other databases may offer a similar option, but each is arranged and designed independently, so the wording or location may be different.
One more pedantic note–it is ultimately your job to determine the quality of source. If you are unsure, you can always chat with a librarian or come to the Research Help and Information Desk for assistance. We are happy to help!
The University of Missouri has long been a partner and sponsor of activities offered by Missouri River Relief, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to connecting people to the Missouri River. Now MOspace, the University of Missouri’s online repository, is partnering with Missouri River Relief to offer curriculum material to K-12 schools in Missouri. Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms: A Guide for Students is the first of these materials. Two Mizzou students assisted with its creation.
Missouri River Relief has removed 876 tons of trash from the river with the help of 23,000 volunteers over the past 16 years and has also reached 18,000 students through interdisciplinary and experiential educational events. Kristen Schulte, Missouri River Relief’s Education Coordinator, says these events are designed to “engage students’ innate sense of wonder and natural curiosity. We believe this approach inspires community engagement, academic achievement, and a sense of stewardship.”
Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms is not a foolproof taxonomic tree ID guide but instead a guide for a hands-on learning experience for elementary through high school students. It focuses on Missouri River floodplain trees’ bark rather than leaves, a unique approach to teaching and learning tree species. Many Missouri River floodplain trees are very tall with leaves out of reach, while tree bark is at the student level.
Kristen Schulte
Kristen knew that more young people would learn about Missouri River floodplain trees through this method if the guide were freely available online. As a graduate student at the University of Wyoming, she worked on Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps Resources Education Curriculum, seventeen lessons designed for the youth employed in the program. The curriculum is housed in the Wyoming Scholars Repository, which tracks how many times it has been downloaded. “When I started working for Missouri River Relief,” Kristen says, “I knew that we wanted to have a similar curriculum for the Missouri River, and it would be helpful to have the statistical information of the downloads, which we are not able to capture on our website. So I reached out to Noël and Felicity and they were supportive of the idea.”
Felicity Dykas, Head of Digital Services, saw the collection as a good fit for MOspace, and Noël Kopriva, Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Librarian, agreed. Felicity says, “One of our goals for MOspace is to preserve research and scholarship and to make these resources available to the Mizzou community and others worldwide.”
The reach of Common Trees of the Missouri River Bottoms has truly been international. It was added to MOspace in August 2017, and Felicity shares that “It’s already been downloaded more than 400 times, including by people in China, France, Serbia, and the United Kingdom, among other countries.”
Missouri River Relief is developing additional resources to be uploaded to MOspace, including Missouri River Curriculum, Missouri River Information Packets, and Missouri River STEM Challenges.
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.
Although the Cycle of Success typically focuses on the relationships among the Libraries, faculty, and students, the Libraries also contribute to the success of all the communities Mizzou serves. The Libraries are an integral part of Mizzou’s mission “to provide all Missourians the benefits of a world-class research university.”
If you would like tosubmityour own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.
Library of Latin Texts – Series B is a supplement to Library of Latin Texts -Series A that is sourced from existing scholarly editions. This database collects Latin text of all genres and periods and adds 4-5 million words to the searchable corpora per year.
Database of Medieval Latin from British Sources covers medieval Latin sourced from British authors works and papers from 540 A.D. to 1600. The interface can be configured to several languages (English, French, German, and Italian) and can be searched by Latin and non-Latin words.
Though many magazines have gone completely digital, Ellis Library is still home to a large variety of print editions – several of them are probably so obscure you haven’t heard of them, but they’re full of information you wouldn’t normally come across anywhere else.
Take, for example, December/January 2018 edition of American Craft. Erin Powell of our Serials Department couldn’t resist flipping through it when she saw this headline on the cover: “Tiny Scenes of the Apocalypse.”
Who remembers making a diorama in grade school? It’s a common enough project, but Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have taken it to new heights (or lows, considering the size of their art) by expanding on the diorama with increasingly complex themes and textures. While Nix and Gerber didn’t study miniature design in college, their combined skills in photography, ceramics, and glass made them perfect partners for creating realistic scenes of disaster and dystopian realism. They’ve gradually moved from store-bought props and empty backgrounds to making nearly every element by hand. Every diorama is extremely detailed and filled with various textures and designs because, as Nix explains, “I don’t know what the camera is going to catch.” Seeing this kind of in-depth art can make you feel a little out of sorts when viewing the photos, as you can’t easily tell which photos portray real life, and which have been created in a studio. Nix actually ran into this problem last summer, when she photographed a grasshopper while visiting her mother here in Missouri. After posting the photo to Instagram, her followers immediately thought it was a model.
An abandoned laundomat at night.
Most of their dioramas portray a “post-apocalyptic background,” as part of their ongoing series, The City, which debuted in 2005. Nix and Gerber both have a morbid streak, and their next exhibit, premiering at the end of November, takes the dystopian scenes from indoors to outdoors – from an overgrown library to a vast view of a city skyline. The dioramas are so detailed, the artists are only able to exhibit once every three years or so, but have been able to create their own commercial business, producing dioramas for companies like BBC America and Wired.
While people find a “dark humor” in the works, Nix worries that they “should be doing Utopian scenes” but admits, “it’s not in me.” She asks Gerber, “Do you think we should be making ‘pretty’? Could we even make ‘pretty’?” But neither of them know – they just know this is the art they need to make now.
Humanities researchers, help us decide which primary sources the Center for Research Libraries should prioritize for collection. MU, as a CRL member, will have access to everything they purchase. Your recommendations matter, so please take our survey by November 17!
If you have questions, please contact Rachel Brekhus at BrekhusR@missouri.edu or (573) 882-7563.
As you prepare for Homecoming on October 21st this year, take a look at some of the University of Missouri campus maps held in MOspace, our online repository. This collection consists of maps from 1872-2015 and includes a large variety of maps, such as aerial views and 3D renderings of campus buildings–even parking maps and proposals for new buildings.
Homecoming was first celebrated at Mizzou in 1911. This map from three years later shows what was then proposed for where the football stadium stands today: a lake. A 1927 map details campus and downtown Columbia. The back contains lists of rooms for rent in boarding houses.
This campus map collection is hosted by MOspace, the freely available online repository for scholarship and other works by University of Missouri, faculty, students, and staff, as well as other MU resources.
Looking for real-time interdisciplinary news? Consider taking a look at the University of Missouri Libraries’ trial of POLITICO Pro for broad and granular coverage in 16 industry areas: agriculture, healthcare, cybersecurity, employment and immigration, education, energy, environment, tax, technology, financial services, etc. Information is provided in various ways, including industry-specific morning briefings, ready-made infographics and PowerPoint presentations, Twitter-style policy-specific newsfeeds, archived primary source documents, legislative forecasting, and in-depth analysis.
