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Take a chance on a Mystery Date with a Book! We’ve carefully wrapped up a variety of books from the MU libraries and written you some clues. If the book sounds like a match, go ahead and unwrap and check it out! You can find them on the shelves in the Ellis Library colonnade during the month of January.
Samir Husni Magazine Collection
Samir Husni, Ph.D., believes in the power of print. His decades of research, collecting, and consulting produced a picture of American culture, all told through magazines. Husni, born in Lebanon, is an internationally recognized magazine expert. He earned scholarships to pursue advanced degrees in the United States, receiving a master’s degree from the University of North Texas and a Ph.D. in magazine journalism from the University of Missouri. Nicknamed “Mr. Magazine” by his students, Husni knows what it takes to launch a successful magazine, and what makes the magazine format special. In his 2019 book The Definitive Guide on How to Launch Your Own Magazine, Husni emphasizes the magazine’s role as a reflector in the Twentieth Century:
“This is what a print magazine does best: it reflects the souls and mindsets of the human consumer and engages their concerns and delights in a way no other medium ever has or ever will.”
In October 2022, Husni donated his collection of nearly 100,000 magazines to the University of Missouri Libraries. This includes 24,000 first-issue magazines published after 1985, media kits and prototypes documenting the development of popular magazines, 10,000 magazines published before 1985 (2000 of which are premiere issues) dating back to the 1800s, foreign and non-English magazines, and Samir Husni’s publications about magazine publishing.
After a long year of work from Special Collections staff, Series 1: Samir Husni’s Guide to New Magazines is ready for use. This series contains every first issue published in the United States from 1985 to the present. Husni published a guide to new magazines each year; Simultaneously, he collected a physical copy of all magazines included in his guide. The Husni Collection has it all: Technology, Fashion, Pop Culture, Politics, Sports, Travel, and much more! Whatever your interests, this collection has a magazine for you. Contact Special Collections with questions on how to access materials and begin exploring the Husni Collection.
Stroll by Ellis Library to pick up a book from our Black History Month Book Display! Celebrate African American authors, stories, culture and arts and learn the history of the African diaspora. Thanks to Paula Roper, social sciences librarian, for providing a curated lists of books from the library collections for the display.
The Missouri Affordable and Open Educational Resources Conference (A&OER) planning committee invites you to the 5th annual virtual conference.
The MO A&OER Conference will be held virtually on March 7, 2024. A Creative Commons Pre-Conference Workshop will be held virtually on March 6, 2024. Registration for the virtual A&OER Conference is free to all attendees and we welcome out-of-state and international participants. Pre-conference training from Creative Commons will be limited to 50 attendees based in Missouri. Registration for both the CC Pre-Conference Workshop and the A&OER Conference is open through March 5, 2024. Limited space is available for the CC Pre-Conference Workshop so register early if you plan to attend.
The theme of this year’s conference will be “OER: A Student-Focused Innovation” and will focus on faculty/instructor/teacher experiences of adopting and adapting OER, creative uses for OER in the classroom, the impact of OER on student outcomes, open practice and pedagogy. We are excited to announce Dr. Virginia Clinton-Lisell as our keynote speaker. Her session titled “Degrees of Open: The how and why of incorporating open education into courses one step at a time” will be presented as a lunch keynote.
Visit the conference website for more details or register through Sched.
Special Collections has a new digital exhibit in honor of Black History Month: Life in America: Sixteen Black Magazines from 1953 to 1998, curated by John Henry Adams. Magazines offer a snapshot of everyday life, both as it was and how some people might have wished it to be. What makes someone beautiful? What should people be wearing? Who are the important entertainers? What is the best music? What is happening in the world? What should children and teenagers be interested in? All of these are questions that magazines give answers to, and that is before we take into account what is being advertised in the magazines themselves. What is for sale? Who is expected to buy it? Taken together, magazines give us a chance to approach the culture of the past, but also to consider the present through the same lens.
The exhibit features magazines from a recent acquisition, the Samir Husni Magazine Collection, on topics ranging from beauty and fashion magazines to news and lifestyle magazines.
Grassland Expectations
A plein air artist from rural Boone County, Martha Daniels enjoys sharing her love for nature through painting and art. Her background in wildlife conservation and nature education peeks through the paintings. Prairies are complex and fascinating habitats – the subject for many of her works. Martha sees art as a way to capture moments of beauty in the fields, woods, and rivers, then share those colors and forms with others as a connection to the outdoors. To her, art is a way to absorb the soul-soothing and spirit-calming aspects of the natural world.
On display throughout the spring semester in the Ellis Library Bookmark Cafe.
What is your Roman Empire? If the answer is the Roman Empire, we’ve got the books for you! You can find some of our books on the Roman Empire on display in the Ellis Library colonnade. Feel free to check one out today!
What makes you feel cozy? It’s time to break out those cozy comforts and slow down for winter break. Learn how to cook comforting meals, crochet some granny squares, meditate or improve your sleep. Here is the full cozy reads book list with links to the e-books.
On October 24, 2023, Special Collections held a spooky exhibit! From 11am until 2pm, we were in Ellis 114A with as many skeletons as we could find in our collections! That exhibit is now available online for your viewing pleasure.
The exhibit includes books in five different languages, from the 15th century to the 20th century, all linked by their shared interest in skeletons. From a book of hours to Vesalius’ anatomy textbooks, from a proto-novel with Death as the main character to art history, these books are full of insights as well as bones. Modern medicine wouldn’t be where it is today if it hadn’t been for anatomists dissecting bodies to see how they worked, and the dances of the dead are an important reminder of our shared humanity, no matter where we live or what we do for a living.
Whether you missed the exhibit while it was down in 114A or whether you just want to take a second look at some of the books, we hope you enjoy the exhibit in its online form!
November is National American Indian Heritage Month and the University of Missouri Press joins in paying tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans with some of our recently published and backlist books, which are featured on one side of Ellis Library’s 2nd floor display case. These titles include historian Greg Olson’s newest book, Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present and Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean’s Inappropriation: The Contested Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, in addition to several backlist titles on different indigenous groups and archaeology in Missouri.
On the other side of the display case, we feature books by University of Missouri faculty. From the history of civil rights in Missouri, to the culture of fiddle music in the state, to a fictional journey through a 19th-century United States, these titles demonstrate the breadth and depth of current and former University of Missouri faculty interests. Some of these titles include O America: Discovery in a New Land, a historical novel by William Least Heat-Moon, volumes I and II of A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200 coedited by history professor and Kinder Institute chair, Jeff Pasley, and the three-volume history of fiddling in Missouri by professor emeritus, Howard Marshall.