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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 Staff news MOspace and DSpace Updates

MOspace and DSpace Updates

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Staff news
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MOspace

  • MOspace celebrated a 10th birthday on July 1.  We held a celebration for library employees this month and will plan for publicity for campus this fall.
  • DOIs are coming.  MU Libraries are in the process of joining CrossRef, a DOI registration agency.  Soon, we will assign DOIs to MOspace content, making it easier for users to cite our content.

DSpace updates

  • MOspace is delivered using DSpace, an open-source repository software platform. DSpace code is undergoing a significant rewrite and the new version, DSpace 7, will include major improvements.  Of note are easier ways to customize design and functionality and an increased ability to integrate with content from other sources such as ORCID.  In addition, there will be improved searching and display features.  An exciting development is the expansion of DSpace to accommodate entities other than resources (e.g., articles, presentations, and datasets).  DSpace 7 will include options to include author profile pages, journal issue viewers, and funding agency information.  DSpace 7 is due to be released in early 2019.  Felicity Dykas serves on the DSpace 7 Outreach Grou

For more on DSpace 7 see the following resources:

  • A 2017-mid-2018 DSpace annual report is almost completed. This will be the first annual report issued and highlights a focus on increased outreach and communication with the DSpace community and potential DSpace installations.

Felicity Dykas
Head, Digital Services Department
(573) 882-4656
dykasf@missouri.edu

 

home Staff news MOspace 10th Birthday Open House

MOspace 10th Birthday Open House

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Staff news
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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 Newly Digitized Book Will Help You Explore Your Own Backyard!

Newly Digitized Book Will Help You Explore Your Own Backyard!

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Databases & Electronic Resources Resources and Services
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A newly digitized treasure added to MOspace may just give you the inspiration you need for a fun road trip! Twenty Towns: Their Histories, Town Plans, and Architecture explores twenty towns throughout Missouri. Published by the University of Missouri Extension in 1985, this book takes a look at some forgotten, unique, and beautiful histories in Missouri though photographs, road maps, and architecture.

Take a look at Caruthersville, a town that settlers attempted to settle three different times! Or Independence, founded in 1827, that is full of American history – including being the hometown of President Harry Truman! Visit and catch a show at the historic Missouri Theater in Saint Joseph, exploring the massive columns and lavishly carved ceiling.

Even if a road trip is not in the cards, thanks to Digital Services, you can view these historic towns and more by visiting MOspace! Digitizing such items allows us to explore and appreciate our rich Missouri history.

Twenty Towns: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/62993

MOspace:  https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/

home Resources and Services, Special Collections and Archives John Tinney McCutcheon Editorial Cartoons

John Tinney McCutcheon Editorial Cartoons

By Super Admin   Posted in Resources and Services Special Collections and Archives
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John Tinney McCutcheon Editorial Cartoons

The University of Missouri Digital Library contains a wealth of treasures, all freely available to anyone around the world online. One of the newest treasures is the John Tinney McCutcheon Editorial Cartoons collection.

John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949) is known as “the Dean of Cartoonists.” He traveled widely and frequently served as a correspondent during those journeys. For example, during the Spanish-American War, he was embedded with the U.S.S. McCulloch in the Philippines. McCutcheon was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for his cartoon “A Wise Economist Asks a Question” and spoke at Journalism Week here at Mizzou in 1939.

Most of the editorial cartoons in this collection are original pen and ink drawings done for the Chicago Tribune between 1903 and 1944. Social issues, economics, politics, the Great Depression, and both World Wars are just a few of the subjects McCutcheon’s cartoons speak to. Click on any of the images below to enter the Digital Library and find out more information about the cartoon.

City Pigeons
New Members of the Club
New Members of the Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why the U.S. Must Be Strictly Neutral
An Exciting Finish to the Missouri Senatorial Race
An Exciting Finish to the Missouri Senatorial Race

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The originals are located in Special Collections in Ellis Library, thanks to a generous donation from McCutcheon’s widow, Evelyn Shaw McCutcheon, in 1955. For those outside of Columbia, though, the Digital Library makes the collection available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Keep your eye on this digital collection. More images will be uploaded and additional information added soon. Additional details and a collection inventory can be found in the online guide on the Special Collections website.

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home Cycle of Success, Databases & Electronic Resources, Ellis Library Curriculum on Missouri Trees Finds Worldwide Audience through MOspace

Curriculum on Missouri Trees Finds Worldwide Audience through MOspace

By Super Admin   Posted in Cycle of Success Databases & Electronic Resources Ellis Library
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Featured Cycle of Success: Missouri River Relief

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 to submit your own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.

home Staff news Promotion: Congratulations to Charlotte Landreth

Promotion: Congratulations to Charlotte Landreth

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Staff news
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Please congratulate Charlotte Landreth on her new position with Digital Services. Charlotte will be starting her new role as a Library Information Specialist on February 5, 2018.

home Cycle of Success, Ellis Library Cycle of Success: Daniel B. Domingues da Silva Wins Center for Research Libraries’ 2017 Award for Teaching

Cycle of Success: Daniel B. Domingues da Silva Wins Center for Research Libraries’ 2017 Award for Teaching

By Super Admin   Posted in Cycle of Success Ellis Library
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Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, former Assistant Professor of History at Mizzou, won the Center for Research Libraries‘ 2017 Award for Teaching, part of their annual Primary Source Awards. Rachel Brekhus, Humanities Librarian, nominated him for his creative use of primary sources in his Writing Intensive course Fighting the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Now an assistant professor of African history at Rice University, Daniel held the same position at Mizzou from 2012 to 2017, teaching courses on the history of early and modern Africa. His research focuses on the African slave trade, especially from West Central Africa, and he has participated in several digital humanities projects such as Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and Visualizing Abolition: A Digital History of the Suppression of the African Slave Trade. Visualizing Abolition was developed here at Mizzou.

Rachel Brekhus

Daniel credits Rachel and other Mizzou librarians with playing key roles in his research and teaching. “They not only helped me secure important primary and secondary sources for my research,” he says, “but they also created study guides for my students, workshops on how to conduct research, and trained students in operating related equipment and computer softwares. They also reviewed applications and nominated students and myself to internal and external research and teaching awards.”

Humanities librarian Anne Barker provided students with valuable insights into copyright issues and the use of images. Digital services librarian Felicity Dykas trained students on scanning techniques and image specifications. In the spring of 2017, Ellis Library hosted an exhibit about the making of the Visualizing Abolition project, providing students an opportunity to showcase their work.

Anne Barker

Prior to the CRL Award for Teaching, Daniel had won teaching awards within the University of Missouri campus community and considers those awards “an important way of rewarding faculty for their teaching achievements” and letting faculty know they are on the right track. However, he says “the CRL award was something different. As a global consortium of research libraries, it meant that I was not only a good teacher among my peers at Mizzou, but that my teaching skills were also appreciated among a much larger community of scholars.”

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.

If you would like to submit your own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.

 

home Staff news MU Course Catalogs in MOspace

MU Course Catalogs in MOspace

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Staff news
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In partnership with the Registrar’s Office, Digital Services has undertaken a project to digitize and make publicly available a collection of historic University of Missouri course catalogs. The collection spans 130 years, from early volumes published in 1888 up to the present versions, which have been published digitally since 2004. The University of Missouri Course Catalog collection project has already produced 75+ catalogs which are freely and publicly available on MOspace.

The MU catalogs are great historical resources. In addition to descriptions of courses offered by the university over the years, the volumes contain maps and include news and announcements from various university departments and schools. The earliest catalogs include reports to the governor of the State of Missouri from the Board of Curators. Some catalogs include separately published volumes with lists of students and scholarships and awards.

As a sample of the historical content you can find, following are two items about the libraries:

In “Catalogue, Seventieth Report of the Curators to the Governor of the State, Announcements, 1912-1913,” page 52, you will find this information about the libraries:

“The libraries of the University are the general library; law library; medical library; engineering library; agricultural library; and collection in the Observatory, the Horticultural, Chemical, Geological, and Zoological buildings; the Lathrop collection in Academic Hall; and library of the School of Mines at Rolla. They contain in the aggregate about 142,000 volumes and pamphlets. Fourteen hundred periodicals are currently received at Columbia. The library has been enriched within the last few years by the gift of Senator George Graham Vest, who presented the library with the large collection of government documents which he made during his twenty years’ service at Washington; by the gift of Honorable Gardiner Lathrop, a member of the Board of Curators, of one thousand dollars for a department library, to be known as the “John H. Lathrop Library of English and American Literature,” and by the gift of Senator F. M. Cockrell, who presented the library with 3,400 volumes and 244 pamphlets of government documents.”

On page 11 of “Aids and Awards, 1962-63” you will learn about a Friends of the Library prize of undergraduate and professional students established in 1962:

“Friends of the Library Prize: An annual prize of $100 worth of books was established in 1962 by the Friends of the Library for the undergraduate or professional student submitting the best plan for a personal library. The University library committee has set up specific procedures for receiving applications, and judging will be based upon the significance of the works selected and the familiarity of the applicant with the chosen field, rather than on number, cost and rarity of items included.”

This project is one part of an ongoing effort by Digital Services to make books, maps, photographs, and other resources related to the University of Missouri’s history and academic legacy freely and widely available. We are adding new volumes to the University of Missouri Course Catalog collection as fast as we can digitize them, so check back often to see new additions.