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In order to maintain a library collection that meets the needs of our faculty, students and community, we must periodically remove materials from the collections. We have created a list of items for possible withdrawal from the collection, and we would like your input.
We are excited to announce that Michaelle Dorsey, a senior library specialist in collection services, will be appointed as the new Special Collections librarian, focusing on preservation. Her new position will be effective September 1, 2021.
Over her years at Mizzou, Michaelle Dorsey has acquired the required education and skills for this position. In addition, she has demonstrated a rare devotion to her craft. During the aftermath of the Ellis Library fire in 2011, Michaelle stepped up to the challenge of providing leadership for the recovery effort. She received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in 2017. She has acquired additional training in book preservation techniques in addition to her master’s in library and information science from MU that makes her uniquely qualified for this position. She also received her bachelor of arts in English from Truman State University.
In addition, she can provide a strong voice for advice regarding the materials that would be best digitized, thus providing additional guidance to the Digital Services department. To quote the findings of the MU Librarians and Archivists Council Promotions Committee, “Michaelle has a wealth of experience directly tied to this new position. In fact, she has served as the head of the preservation unit for 18 years and has over 20 years of experience in the field. She has capably served on many library and university committees, and she continues to gain new knowledge through her book conservation training with James Downey.”
Thanks to Dr. Nobel Cunningham and Caroline McBride French, whose bequest gifts provided the MU Libraries with the funds for this position.
Please join the Libraries in congratulating Michaelle Dorsey on her new position and wishing her success in her new endeavors.
The Friends of the University of Missouri Libraries is proud to announce the winners of the 2021 Robert J. Stuckey Essay Contest. The first-place winner will be awarded a $1,500 scholarship and the second-place winner is awarded a $750 scholarship. The first-place winner is Ryan Copeland of Sherwood Cass R-8 in Creighton, MO for her essay entitled “Eulogy to My Childhood.” The second-place winner is Emma Behrman of Visitation Academy in St. Louis, MO for her essay entitled “The Asian Main Character.” Each teacher of these students, Johnna Mueller and Susan Shortt, will also receive a $250 award.
Each year the essay contest is open to Missouri High School students in grades 9-12, and only one entry is accepted from each school. Each entry must address one or more aspects of books or reading. Common student topics for essays include literary analyses, accounts of personal experiences and fictional short stories. Each essay should be originally composed by the student without assistance and should not have been submitted to any previous contest or have been previously published.
The Friends of the Libraries have been affiliated with the University Libraries and the University of Missouri since 1960. The Friends have administered the Robert J. Stuckey Essay Contest for the University for the past several years. The late Robert J. Stuckey was a member of the 1963 junior class of Farmington High School and had planned to attend college. He was vitally interested in current events and enjoyed reading. This annual contest is presented in memory of him.
Thank you to this year’s Stuckey Essay judges, who are all a part of our Friends of the University of Missouri Libraries council. Judges Bill Carner, Shelby Catalano, Jody Feldman and Laurie Tourtellot had their work cut out for them with 43 great essay submissions.
You can read the winning essays here.
The Missouri Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program (MoLSAMP) brings underrepresented undergraduate students, from across the state of Missouri, interested in pursuing science and science related careers to the University of Missouri campus for a 9 week summer research program. Like most things in 2020, the program changed course due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not wanting to cancel and still provide a robust research experience for their students, the program transitioned to a virtual format, a format our Mizzou librarians didn’t shy away from.
The MU branch of MoLSAMP, a National Sciences Foundation grant funded program, is house in the Access and Leadership Development Unit within the Division of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity. The program gives students, from nine partner institutions* around the state of Missouri, the opportunity to work with mentors and pursue research that most interests them. According to Dr. Terrell Morton, faculty fellow of the Mizzou branch of MoLSAMP, the program’s main purpose is to provide resources and opportunities to support students who have been historically and contemporarily kept out of STEM spaces given the various gatekeeping structures surrounding these disciplines.
After the decision was made not to cancel MoLSAMP, Dr. Terrell Morton was charged with creating a virtual research experience curriculum that was meaningful and engaging. The curriculum allowed for collaboration between University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis, providing a multi-layered, interdisciplinary virtual summer research program. This was the first ever MOLSAMP joint REU experience and comprised several coordinated educational and research activities anchored by the overarching focus on “COVID-19: It’s Impacts and Implications in Minoritized Communities. The main component of that curriculum was a research project focused on examining the intersection of COVID-19, health outcomes, and resented racial communities. With the students expected to produce a research paper on their findings, they needed to learn how to locate, synthesize and cite knowledge in the scientific literature. This is where Rachel Brekhus, humanities and social sciences librarian, and Noel Kopriva, head of the engineering library and agriculture librarian, came in.
With MoLSAMP’s previous focus on physical lab research, collaboration with librarians wasn’t previously explored. When the idea was floated to get librarians involved, Dr. Natalie Downer, the Mizzou MoLSAMP coordinator and McNair program associate director, reached out to Rachel Brekhus knowing about her work with the McNair Scholars, hoping she could provide the same support with MoLSAMP students and could recommend a second librarian to round out the team.
Working with librarians from Washington University, Rachel and Noel collaborated on weekly workshops from locating scientific literature to the publishing and peer review process. Dr. Natalie Downer says the students relied heavily on the librarians, learning how to navigate several important databases and search methods (keyword searching, fielded searching, citation searching), using Zotero for organizing and citing research sources, and visiting during virtual office hours for additional assistance. “We also spent time going over the publication and peer review processes, which are so important to understand when looking at the work on COVID-19, where the science is moving very quickly, and citations sometimes outpace peer review,” says Rachel Brekhus.
At the end of experience, MoLSAMP produced their research findings or research paper with topics that they developed and worked on over the course of the program. Noel Kopriva’s favorite part of the program was joining the students on their research journey and seeing their final products. “I liked seeing the students progress from having a nebulous idea of what they wanted to research and see how their knowledge of the relationship between COVID and race evolved over the summer. We also got to sit in on a series of practice presentations and give them feedback as they prepared for their final presentations. It was so wonderful to see how they had taken the germ of an idea and turned it into a fully developed and sophisticated presentation,” says Noel.
Special thanks to the MoLSAMP partners, Dr. Freddy Wills, Dr. NaTashua Davis, Dr. Harvey Fields for making MoLSAMP possible in 2020.
*University of Missouri – Columbia, Harris-Stowe State University, Lincoln University, Missouri State University, St. Louis Community College, Truman State University, University of Central Missouri, University of Missouri – St. Louis, and Washington University in St. Louis
June is Pride Month and to help celebrate this month of love and acceptance, here are some books available at Mizzou Libraries that tell stories of triumphs and struggles of the LGBTQ community.
These are just a few recommendations, so be sure to search the library catalog to see what else we have.
Have book recommendation? Let us know here.
Boy Meets Boy by
This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance. When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul’s not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right. This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world.
http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b5027477~S1
The Book of Salt by
A novel of Paris in the 1930s from the eyes of the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, by the author of The Sweetest Fruits. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh’s youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail. More recently, this memoir was turned into a Tony award winning musical and you can check out the book and lyrics as well.
http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b7753395~S1
Black on Both Sides by
The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives–ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials–early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films–Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.
http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b12124869~S1
A Queer History of the United States for Young People by 
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is currently celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots.
With Pride Month, we wanted to highlight a few of our guides dedicated to LGBTQ resources. These guides are updated throughout the year.
Our guide, LGBTQ Resources, provides useful resources for research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues, and for members, family, and friends of the LGBTQ community. Whether you are a student looking for help with your papers and projects or you are looking for reading recommendations, this guide is a good resource.
If you are interested in LGBTQ health resources, we have a guide that links to community and nationwide resources, as well as books & media recommendations in Mizzou Libraries and beyond.
Not everything on these guides are behind a paywall. If there is a resource you cannot access, we encourage you to look at your local and university library or local bookstore.
The Missourian Newspaper Library moved to Lee Hills Hall in 1995 with the Columbia Missourian and has served the faculty and students at the University of Missouri and the community in some capacity since 1908. The School of Journalism is reconstructing the current newsrooms and offices in Lee Hills Hall to accommodate a new converged newsroom, which will include all j-school media outlets. In May of 2021, the physical Missourian Newspaper library space was closed due to space constraints, but the Journalism and Digital Access Librarian and staff are now in the journalism library.
The Missourian Library contained thousands of clip files (articles from the newspaper that were cut out and filed) arranged by subject, business, organization, events and location. They were mainly collected in the 1980s and 1990s from the Columbia Missourian and the Columbia Tribune. There are separate file cabinets which hold biographical files of people in and around Columbia and were collected as far back as the 1920s. These files were integral to the mission of the library in providing historical information about Columbia and Boone County to the university and the community. These clip archives have been donated to the Boone County Historical Society. After learning about the files, they were enthusiastic about saving this portion of history.
The Journalism Library will continue to support researchers with access to the Missourian through microfilm (from 1908 to present) and online archives. Please contact the Journalism Library for assistance.
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and at Mizzou Libraries we are celebrating Asian and Pacific American stories and authors! Join us in celebrating these stories and authors by picking up one of these books at your Mizzou libraries!
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan:
The Joy Luck Club is a story that focuses on the relationship between mothers and daughters and the deep feelings that connect us all. We follow four Chinese women in 1949 after their recent immigration to San Francisco. As these women begin a routine of meeting up to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk with one another, the reader and the women see how between their shared history, loss, and hopeful optimism, these women share a connection and, through this connection, they create the “Joy Luck Club”. Amy Tan writes a tender and immersive story that highlights the beauty and deep feelings that connect all mothers and daughters that will hopefully leave everyone feeling understood by these characters and stories.
http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b4049057~S1
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki:
In this unforgettable novel, we follow two stories: the first takes place in Tokyo, where we meet sixteen-year-old Nao, who, after being bullied by her classmates, contemplates taking her life. However, before she does anything drastic, she wants to document her great grandmother’s eventful life as a Buddhist nun. Recording everything in her diary, Nao writes without understanding how important her words will eventually become. Across the ocean on a remote island, a novelist discovers a washed-up Hello Kitty lunchbox containing a collection of artifacts and believes it to be debris from the 2011 tsunami. However, as the story develops and these artifacts’ contents are uncovered, we learn how these two characters overlap and how their stories can hopefully help each other. http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b9598306~S1
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang:
In this action-packed graphic novel, we follow the lives of three very different characters: Jin Wang, the new kid in town, who quickly realizes he is the only Chinese-American student; a character named “Monkey King”, who is the subject of one of the oldest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of negative Chinese stereotypes, who ruins his cousin Danny’s “popular” image every year when he comes to visit. This modern fable is filled with twists and turns perfect for young adult readers or anyone curious to see how these three characters’ stories unfold. http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b5854219~S1
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri:
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth consists of eight stories that range from Seattle to India to Thailand. In these stories, we follow a diverse cast of characters as they navigate different relationships in their lives. In the titular story, a mother has just moved to a new city and watches the bond between her father and son grow, but is unaware of her own father’s secrets. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband attempting to turn a friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway finds the night taking dark and surprising turns. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the picture-perfect childhood she never had must now wrestle her guilt and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. Filled with rich stories and stunning writing, Unaccustomed Earth is a powerful piece of work you have to check out! http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b6304064~S1
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong:
Author Cathy Park Hong, daughter of Korean immigrants, didn’t understand why she grew up feeling ashamed, suspicious, and sad. Later in life, she would coin these feelings as “minor feelings” that often occur when American optimism deeply contradicts and affects your realities. Using her own story, Hong examines racial consciousness in America and unpacks each of her relationships, from her family to her feelings towards the English language. Minor Feelings is a unique and eye-opening memoir that will blow you away with Hong’s honest and critical writing! You can request a copy here: http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b13651982~S1
Danielle Gorman / English Intern / Spring 2021
From discovering new resources to tracking your impact, MU Libraries is here to support you every step of the way!
We offer a range of services covering all aspects of the Research Lifecycle, such as:
Contact your Subject Librarian for services in your area!
See more posts about Scholarly Communication issues
MU Libraries is excited to announce a transformational “Read & Publish” agreement with Cambridge University Press!
This agreement greatly expands your electronic access to Cambridge journals (the “Read”), and it waives Article Processing Charges (APCs) to make your work Open Access (the “Publish”).
Read more about the MU Read & Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press
Questions? Contact your Subject Librarian or Corrie Hutchinson, Associate University Librarian for Acquisitions, Collections, & Technical Services.