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home Resources and Services Ann Campion Riley to Lead Higher Education Association for Librarians

Ann Campion Riley to Lead Higher Education Association for Librarians

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
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Story Contact: Shannon Cary, carysn@missouri.edu, 573-882-4703

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COLUMBIA, Mo. – Ann Campion Riley, associate director for access, collections and technical services at the University of Missouri, has been elected vice-president/president-elect of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) for academic librarians that has more than 12,000 members. Riley will become president-elect following the 2014 ALA annual conference in Las Vegas and will assume presidency of the association in July 2015 for a one-year term.

 “I am thrilled to have the opportunity of leading ACRL,” Riley said. “The inspiring experience of working with a future-oriented board of directors will be wonderful. Active ACRL members are all hard-workers and bring great spirits of inquiry to the organization. ACRL's current initiatives, such as promoting the value of libraries work and studying the role of research data curation in libraries, are continuing challenges. Looking for the next set of challenges won't take long as ACRL looks forward and works to engage and serve new and current members.”

“ACRL is delighted to have Ann Campion Riley join the Board as vice-president/president-elect,” said ACRL Executive Director Mary Ellen K. Davis. “Ann was a director-at-large on the ACRL Board from 2009-2013 and has a long history of service to ACRL. Her knowledge of ACRL, academic librarianship and the broader higher education environment, along with her leadership in both ACRL and other organizations, will be an asset to the board as it continues to work with members to meet their needs and to advance the plan for excellence.”

Riley’s work with state and regional associations includes serving on the Great Western Library Alliance (GWLA) Collection Development Committee (2009-present), Great Plains Network (GPN) and GWLA Advisory Council on the Management of the Lifecycle of Research Data Project (2012-present), GWLA Digital Collections Committee (2007-2010),  Missouri Library Association (MLA) Awards Committee chair (2007-2009), as MLA president (2005) and as president of the Missouri Association of College and Research Libraries (2003).

Riley’s awards include being honored as a Research Library Leadership Fellow by the Association of Research Libraries (2011–2012), and as a Global Scholar by the University of Missouri (2010). She has been awarded the “You Make a Difference Award” by Saint Louis Community College (2004). She also has been honored with participation in Leadership Chesterfield (2001), LEADERS 1999, National Institute of Leadership Development and Beta Phi Mu, and international library and information studies honor society.

Her publications and presentations include “The Community of Libraries” column in MOinfo: Newsletter of the Missouri Library Association (2005); coauthor of “Caution! Hazardous Substances: Recognizing and Deflecting Toxic Personalities in the Workplace,” presented at the ACRL National Conference in Baltimore (2007); and coauthor of “Using Staff Focus Groups to Help in Services Assessment” published in the Proceedings of the North Central Association Annual Meeting (2001).

Riley earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Arts in English from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

ACRL is the higher education association for librarians. Representing more than 11,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals, ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to help academic and research librarians learn, innovate and lead within the academic community.

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives What’s Blooming this Week: Flowering Tree Extravaganza

What’s Blooming this Week: Flowering Tree Extravaganza

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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One of the great things about Ellis Library, apart from the fact that it's the largest research library in the state, is that it's surrounded by beautiful flowering trees courtesy of the Mizzou Botanic Garden.  This week we're featuring the weeping crabapples next to the north entrance of Ellis Library, the redbuds in the lawn in front of the State Historical Society, and the dogwoods across from the northwest corner (just adjacent to that bed of tulips I wrote about last week).*

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Two of the featured trees this week are native to Missouri.  Cornus florida, or flowering dogwood, and Cercis canadensis, or Eastern redbud, grow wild throughout the eastern United States.  The dogwood is also our Missouri state tree.  Crabapples are members of the genus Malus, along with their cousins the domestic apple; various species are native to North America and Europe.  While the fruit is edible, its bitter taste and woody texture mean you probably wouldn't want to eat it. 

The illustrations featured here are by Mary Vaux Walcott, an artist who specialized in botanical illustration.  In 1925, the Smithsonian published reproductions of her watercolors of American plants in five portfolios entitled North American Wild Flowers.  Our copy was originally part of the government documents collection and is now in the closed shelf collection.  Of the dogwood, Walcott writes,

Dogwood grows abundantly in the favored regions which it inhabits.  When the tree is in bloom in early spring, the profuse blossoms appear like a crowd of great snowflakes falling through the interlaced branches.

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*While the photos of the redbuds and dogwoods are from this week, I'll admit it: the photos of the flowering crabapples were taken over a week ago. Some years, the flowers don't last long. 

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Kelli Hansen

Kelli Hansen is head of the Special Collections and Rare Books department.

home Resources and Services Mobile Whiteboards Now Available on First Floor

Mobile Whiteboards Now Available on First Floor

By E. Diane Johnson   Posted in Resources and Services
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Collaboration is easier than ever with the library’s new mobile whiteboards!

  • The whiteboards move easily to the area of the first floor where you want to work.
  • They are double-sided with magnetic surfaces and are equipped with accessory hooks for easel pad and a tray for markers and erasers.
  • Want to limit distractions? Mobile whiteboards can be positioned to provide visual screening.
  • We request that you use library-supplied markers, which you can get as simply as checking out a book. Only Dry Erase markers should be used on the whiteboards and are available for check out at the Circulation Desk.
home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Manuscript Monday: A Tiny Dutch Bifolium

Manuscript Monday: A Tiny Dutch Bifolium

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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We think this week's post counts for manuscript Monday and maybe even miniature Monday too!  This is a bifolium – a sheet folded to make two leaves, or four pages of text – from a very small prayer book in Dutch.  It was produced in the Low Countries sometime during the fourteenth century. The dimensions of each page are 72 x 76 mm, or about 2.8 x 3 inches.  

You can find more about this bifolium in the Digital Scriptorium.  It's fragment number 128 in the Fragmenta Manuscripta Collection: a group of leaves, binding waste, and other manuscript fragments assembled by John Bagford in the seventeenth century.

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home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives What’s Blooming this Week: Tulips

What’s Blooming this Week: Tulips

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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Nothing says "spring" like a cheerful tulip! This week, we're featuring a colorful planting of them from the Mizzou Botanic Garden.  These can be found on Lowry Mall, just off the northwest corner of Ellis Library.  In the photo, you're seeing the iconic dome of Jesse Hall and the windows of Tate Hall in the background.

Tulips are native to the Mediterranean and Asia, and they were introduced to Western Europe around the end of the sixteenth century.  They were (and still are) prized for their bright, showy flowers, and they became a symbol of status and luxury.  You've probably already heard about the tulip craze in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century, during which tulip bulbs sold for exorbitant sums to speculators.  The tulip market reached a bubble in 1636 and crashed in 1637. 

Unsurprisingly, tulips play a major role in one of the finest works on flowers published in the Netherlands during this period.  Crispijn van de Passe's Hortus floridus (1614) is a florilegium, a book on flowering plants that discusses their ornamental, rather than medicinal uses (as we saw last week).  Hortus floridus illustrates each plant at ground level, as it would have grown in a garden, and the plants are arranged by their bloom season.  The beautifully detailed engravings were meant to be hand-colored, with descriptions noting what colors to use.  Striped tulips, seen in the engravings below, were the most highly valued during this period.

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MERLIN catalog record

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives Monday Manuscript: Tiny stories in Charlotte Bronte’s own handwriting

Monday Manuscript: Tiny stories in Charlotte Bronte’s own handwriting

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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Happy 198th birthday to Charlotte Brontë, and happy manuscript Monday! Here's one of the most famous items in the collections: a manuscript by Charlotte herself, written at age 17.  Believe it or not, if you're on a desktop computer, the scans below are probably displayed on your monitor at larger than actual size.  The original manuscript is only about 5 inches tall. Its eight leaves contain not just one, but two short stories – "The Secret" and "Lily Hart."  What's amazing to note is that Charlotte actually edited this manuscript. If you look really closely, you can see where she's crossed out some phrases and added others. 

Can you read it?  If not, never fear: this manuscript was published by William Holtz in 1979 in facsimile and transcription, for those of us whose eyesight isn't quite as keen as Charlotte's must have been.  This manuscript also has an amazing history; see a past Mizzou Wire article for more information, or find it in the MERLIN catalog.

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home Resources and Services Instruction Librarian Goodie Bhullar Honored with MU Writing Intensive Award

Instruction Librarian Goodie Bhullar Honored with MU Writing Intensive Award

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
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Congratulations to Goodie Bhullar, who has received one of the 2014 Writing Intensive Teaching Excellence Awards in recognition of her contributions in serving on the Writing Board, coordinating library instruction for many writing intensive classes and being an excellent teacher. She was honored at a reception at the Benton Bingham Ballroom in Memorial Union on April 18th at 2:00pm.

To learn more about the award, visit http://cwp.missouri.edu/awards/WI_Excellence.php.

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives What’s Blooming this Week: Lenten Rose

What’s Blooming this Week: Lenten Rose

By Kelli Hansen   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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For this last week of Lent, our featured plant from the Mizzou Botanic Garden is helleborus orientalis, or Lenten Rose.  You'll find them blooming on the west side of Ellis Library.  The plants in the photo are just outside the entrace to Ellis Auditorium.

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Helleborus orientalis is native to Anatolia and was not introduced to European gardens until the mid-1800s.  It is grown primarily for its ornamental value. However, there are several other species in the hellebore family, and they were used medicinally in Europe for thousands of years.  In Medical Botany (London, 1790), William Woodville provides illustrations of two hellebores related to those growing on campus: Helleborus foetidus, or Bear's Foot, and Helleborus niger, or Christmas Rose.

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Woodville’s book is a work on plants, but he’s primarily interested in their medicinal uses.  Woodville writes that Helleborus niger was introduced in England in 1596, while Helleborus foetidus was “constantly used in medicine from the time of Hippocrates [and] was the only species of Hellebore known in the Materia Medica of our pharmacopoeias.”   He notes:

The smell of the recent plant is extremely fetid, and the taste is bitter, and remarkably acrid, insomuch, that when chewed, it excoriates the mouth and fauces; it commonly operates as a cathartic, sometimes as an emetic, and in large doses proves highly deleterious.  (54)

Of course, the Helleborus orientalis growing on our campus may have different properties than its cousins H. foetidus and H. niger.  It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: the information provided here is most certainly not meant to provide any form of medical advice!

Many thanks to David Massey, a research specialist at Landscape Services, and to Pete Millier, director of the Mizzou Botanic Garden, for lending their wisdom for this post.

home Resources and Services St. John’s Bible on Display in Ellis Library

St. John’s Bible on Display in Ellis Library

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
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On display in the Ellis Library Colonnade are eight prints from the Heritage edition of the St. John’s Bible. The leaves are part of a traveling exhibit from the St. John’s Project, a subsidiary of St. John’s University in Minnesota and will be on display until April 27th.  More information about the St. John’s bible can be found on their website at : http://www.saintjohnsbible.org/.

home Resources and Services Faculty Lecture Series, April 24

Faculty Lecture Series, April 24

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
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Thursday, April 24 at 2:00pm 

Ellis Library Colonnade

When the word "melodrama" is mentioned, scenes of suspenseful situations with exaggerated music and action come to mind. In the Czech lands, a different style of melodrama was exceedingly popular in the nineteenth century. Dr. Judith Mabary will provide an introduction to this genre and the contributions of its main proponent, Zdenek Fibich, to the concert version prominent in the nineteenth century. Samples will be performed by Dr. Janice Wenger from the School of Music on piano and Dr. Cheryl Black from the Department of Theatre as the reciter. Please join us for this presentation on Thursday, April 24 at 2 pm in the Ellis Library Colonnade. This event is free and open to the public.