Have you always wanted to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons and didn’t know where to start?
Thent his is for you! Learn to D&D will consist of 5 workshops where you can learn how to create your character, the setting, and how to play a campaign.
The first workshop in the series is D&D 101: The Basics
D&D 101: The Basics will cover everything you need as a beginner!:
How do you play D&D? And why D&D?
Brief overview of the formats and different play tools
If you’ve been into Ellis’ West Stacks any time in the past six months, you may have noticed they held fewer and fewer books. The goal of this blog post is to give a brief history of the west stacks, update you on future plans for the space, and tell you how to access the books that used to be there.
The west stacks were an addition onto the original Ellis building, and prioritized book storage rather than study space. This explains the “scary” atmosphere – librarians used to be the only ones who went into the stacks, and it was never meant to be seen by anyone else. Eventually the space opened up for public use, and grad students rented desks in the west stacks to use as private research space. This tradition was discontinued a couple years ago, and now, the space is being cleared of books so that it can be transitioned into storage space for Special Collections and Archives. As of now, the materials under the Special Collections purview are scattered around campus. Moving them to the west stacks will make them more accessible and centralized. Since the west stacks are temperature controlled, the environment will also maintain the wellbeing of these materials.
The books that used to reside in the west stacks are still accessible to you. Some of the books have been integrated into other areas of the library, in which case you can browse the shelves to find them yourself or place a request. (It’s important to note that the call number location guide on Ellis’s website has not yet been updated to reflect these changes. However, if you are looking for a book in the west stacks and can’t find it, there should be signs taped to some of the shelves which disclose the current location of these books.) Because Ellis doesn’t have unlimited space, other books that were once in the west stacks have been moved offsite, to the MU Depository. The Depository doesn’t allow visitors, but you can check these books out by placing a request and picking them up at any MU library location. To learn more about the Depository, check out this page: https://library.missouri.edu/news/ellis-library/peer-navigator-corner-the-depository.
I’ve always liked looking for books in the West Stacks, and will miss looking around. If you want to check out the west stacks (and old study cages), feel free to seize the opportunity before they’re closed off.
On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand?
From paranormal investigator and host of Kindred Spirits Adam Berry comes Goodbye Hello, which blends supernatural and psychological research to explore the paranormal and afterlife to try and help answer big questions about the end.
This fun, engrossing book takes a look at the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors. With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder.
Happy October everyone! We hope your classes are going well! For this month’s Reading Revelry, we have three sinisterly scary books to get you in the mood for Halloween.
To learn more about the books, click on the hyperlink in the title. If you have questions or issues requesting items, please contact us at (573) 882-2379.
This book is often considered the first “gothic” novel.
Despite its short length, Walpole expertly crafts an uncanny and unforgettable story about a wedding gone wrong.
In a world where animals carry a virus that makes them
poisonous and deadly for human consumption, society has moved on to a new protein source…humans. This book is NOT for the faint of heart.
This book follows Lucy, a loving wife and mother to two children. When her husband, Jake, is found to be having an affair, Lucy decides to stay with Jake on one condition: she gets to have her revenge three times.
Did you know both Ellis Library has all-gender restrooms? And for our other libraries that don’t, there are several all-gender restrooms located near them.
We want Mizzou Libraries to be a welcoming space for students of all gender identities and expressions.
The Digital Initiatives team has been working to digitize historical commencement programs in the past year. In one year, 176 programs were scanned. We uploaded 135 programs and will upload the last 41 program in the next few months. You can find the digitized collection on MOspace: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/86901
We are very proud of this project because we not only created high-quality scans as we always do, but also made efforts to improve the digital accessibility on the PDF files we created for this project. Each PDF file of the commencement programs has corrected OCR and is screen reader friendly.
What is the digitization process like for this project?
A digitization project usually starts with a planning process that defines the scope of the project, evaluates the condition of the physical items, and decides on the equipment, technical and metadata standards to be used for the project. Then, the project will be assigned to staff and students for the scanning, editing, quality controlling, and uploading processes. This project started in September 2023 with the planning process and handed over to a team of one student and 2 staff to execute the digitization workflow. Our student employee Evie worked about 12 hours per week on scanning and editing images.
Digitization workflow for commencement programs
Why invest time on improving digital accessibility of the pdfs?
Though we always take care, when possible, to provide OCR that is generally readable and searchable, certain items such as these commencement programs provide important details about Mizzou history and Mizzou alumni. Alumni, family members, and researchers often find commencement programs to be meaningful. Accuracy of the content is crucial for digitized commencement programs because users would want to search and find specific information such as student names, degree programs, awards and honors in the commencement.
How did you improve digital accessibility of PDFs?
We first use a software that automatically does OCR (optical character recognition) and then follow up with a few more manual steps to ensure digital accessibility, including:
reviewing and correcting text (particularly names)
correcting the reading order of elements on each page
adding alt-text to images when needed
Pic1-Checking for name errors in automatically generated OCR textPic2-Before and after correcting the OCR errors caused by unique fonts.Pic3-before correcting the reading order of text blocks (pay attention to #5, #10-17)Pic4-after correcting the reading order of text blocks
According to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), digital accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring that websites, tools and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. Furthermore, when digital tools are correctly designed, developed, and updated, generally all users have equal access to information and functionality.
Digital Initiatives team has been interested in learning about digital accessibility since a couple of years ago. We attended multiple webinars and training sessions and discussed how to apply what we learned into practice. The commencement programs project is a great learning experience for both staff and students, and we hope this digital collection serves all users equally.
Election Day is: Tuesday, November 5th! But before Election Day, there are things you can do to get ready for the polls.
Register to Vote and/check your voter registration
As a Mizzou student you have choices on where you can vote. You can choose to vote in your hometown by using your permanent home address or in Columbia, Missouri by using your student address. Either way, you need to make sure you are registered to vote in either place by the voter registration deadline.
Mizzou Libraries has access to many ebooks and we have an easy way for you to search for them.
Go to library.missouri.edu and type out your topic or the name of the book (put the title in quotation marks for best results) you are looking for in the search box. Click the search button (see the image below for an example).
If you get stuck or have a question, our 24/6 chat is on the right hand side of the screen. We are here for you.
Scroll down through the search results until you see Filter by Format on the left hand side. Choose Ebook. If Ebook doesn’t show up as an option, choose Show More, then click Ebook.
The University of Missouri is a large campus with an overwhelming number of resources for students, but in my opinion a few of the most essential are the Libraries. In addition to Ellis, a couple examples include the Health Sciences Library, the Journalism Library, and the Engineering Library. Last semester, myself and two other Peer Navigators created an Infographic and video guide for incoming freshmen who may not realize that these buildings even exist, and to show more of what the Libraries have to offer!
The fourteen-minute video has different sections you can jump to explaining where each library is located on campus, Ellis specific information, how to use the libraries website, how to borrow equipment like phone chargers, and highlighting other services. It also answers the most common questions we receive as Peer Navigators such as “How do I print?” The infographic gives a quick summary of all of these different topics with video timestamps so you can easily access the certain topic you need without having to watch the entire guide.
An important update occurred over the summer that I wanted to clarify relating to printing software. One of the most common questions new students tend to ask is how to go about printing in the library. Ellis offers a “Quick Print Station” where students can log into a computer and print directly from there. The “Quick Print Station” is located on the first floor, right next to the left of the staircase leading down to the cafe and the west entrance. Another printing option that’s often more popular is to download the Print Anywhere software onto your personal laptop. In our video guide, we provide a step by step explanation of how to download this software. Over the summer, a change was made and now the website students need to search is “printsmart.missouri.edu” instead of “doit.missouri.edu,” which we reference in the video. Once you get to the Print Smart page all of the following steps remain the same as before.
Here is the link to our video guide for anyone who hasn’t had the chance to view it. Physical copies of our infographic can be found on the Peer Navigator desk, please feel free to stop by and grab one for yourself or to share, and ask us any other questions you may have in person!
