Travel and Exploration
Special Collections has a number of materials related to travel and exploration. The three largest holdings consist of around 400 travelogues and other published accounts of travel throughout Europe, approximately 100 of which focus on travel within Great Britain; around 150 titles related to travel in North and South America, including emigrants’ guides, sea expeditions, and published accounts of western expansion; and a collection of maps and atlases dating from the 16th century to the present.
How to Use the Collection
With a few exceptions, the collections can be accessed and requested through the library catalog. Finding aids for individual collections are linked on this website. Materials are available for use in the Special Collections Reading Room (room 401) during regular hours. Materials do not circulate.
Finding Aids for Travel and Exploration
Gary E. and Janet J. Venable Antiquarian Atlas & Map Collection
The Venable Collection documents the history of cartography, geography, and exploration from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century.…
John G. Neihardt Collection
Biographical Sketch John Gneisenau Neihardt (1881-1973) accepted a position at the University of Missouri-Columbia's Department of English in 1949…
Martin and Margaret Hiller Collection of Audiovisual Materials on China, 1945-1948
Biographical Sketch Martin Hiller was a captain in the Army Air Corps, the predecessor to the Air Force, and later retired as an Air…
Poster Collection
Scope and Contents The collection consists of posters from both World War I and World War II with a few tourist and other miscellaneous posters from…
Rare Book Collection
The Rare Book Collection is the default designation for materials in Special Collections that are acquired as individual items. Like Special…
William Least Heat-Moon Papers
Scope and Contents Material by Wililam Least Heat-Moon (b. 1939). Manuscripts and additional materials from the following books: PrairyErth (A…
Related Exhibits
Commercial Art: Travel Posters in Special Collections
This exhibit focuses on nine European travel posters from Spain, France, Italy, Britain, Germany, and Norway. In a century of...
Hiller Collection
The Hiller Collection documents cities, industries, farming, and everyday life in China during the second phase of the Chinese Civil...
Leaders and Heroes
Every age, every race, has its leaders and heroes. ~ Ohíye S’a (Charles A. Eastman) Libraries tend to hold those materials that...
Leaders and Heroes 2: The Arts
This exhibit was born out of a desire to showcase materials within Special Collections at the University of Missouri that...
Places in the World: Treasures from the Venable Collection
Maps tell us where we are. The most obvious way they do this is geographical, but there is also a...
The Art of Cartography: Cartes-à-figures
Cartography is the art and science of map-making. During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cartography was experiencing a peak of...
Selected Items
Hiller 09-060 : Standing lion statue on Elephant Road in Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum
Photograph of Standing lion on Stone Elephant Road in Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. Two walking people are looking at it. The photo looks little…
A Negro Explorer at the North Pole
Personal narrative of Matthew A. Henson's life up to and during his participation in Arctic explorations and search for the true North Pole.
Foot-loose in India ; adventures of a news chaser from Khyber's grim gash of death to the tiger jungles of Bengal and the Burmese battle ground of the black cobra.
312 pages : illustrations
Author's holograph note to Walter Williams inserted.