Library Notes

Marilyn Yvonne Hansen (‘Lyn) Meyer, beloved spouse of the late Duane G. Meyer, for whom the main library on the Springfield campus of Missouri State University is named, passed away on April 20, 2020 in Dallas Texas. She was 89 years old.  The obituary published in the Springfield News-Leader highlights her amazing life of determination, creativity, and devotion. She was born in Little Rock, and grew up in Chicago.  Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Dubuque. She was…

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The MSU Alumni Association and the MSU Libraries are collaborating to start an online book discussion group for MSU alumni and friends. Debbie Branson, Craig Amason, and Tom Peters are leading this initiative.  We’ll discuss four books each year, and first up is The First Beverly Hillbilly: The Untold Story of the Creator of Rural TV Comedy, written by Ruth Henning about her life with her husband Paul, the genius behind three hit TV comedies of the Sixties: The Beverly…

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The MSU Testing Center, located on the east side of the Lower Level of Duane G. Meyer Library, will be open to MSU students during Finals Week, May 11th to 14th. The Testing Center’s hours will be Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. You will need your BearPass card to enter the building. Please use the automated card-swipe door at the main entrance on the south side of the building, near the fountain. Please wear a face…

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Wayne Glenn, the Old Record Collector, has donated his collection of over 100 recorded interviews that he conducted with various country music artists, primarily, from approximately 1986 to 2005.    The Digitization Lab of the Missouri State University Libraries plans to digitize the recordings, make transcriptions, create metadata, and make them freely available on the Internet.    Most of the interviews are on reel-to-reel tape, but a few are on cassettes. When the collection is fully processed and digitized, it…

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Environment Complete is a leading full-text database for environmental studies. It provides hundreds of top environment journals and monographs covering agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, public policy, sustainability and other related subjects. It also includes millions of records and an environmental thesaurus. This is a go-to resource for research involving any environmental topic!

Because the Missouri State University Libraries will be leaving the MOBIUS Library Consortium at the end of June, a new LSP (Library Services Platform), new agreements for some e-resources, and a new courier service are being chosen, finalized, and implemented. The MSU Libraries is in the process of entering into an agreement with MALA (Mid-America Library Alliance) to provide courier services for physical information materials, such as books, for FY21, beginning July 1, 2020.  According to the MALA website: “Located…

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Earlier this month, the Missouri State University Libraries announced that the following summer innovation grant applications from faculty and staff of the Libraries have been funded:  First FOLIO at MSU Migration (Raegan Wiechert): Will work on projects related to the migration, such as: pre-migration clean-up projects, clean-up of errors identified during test migrations, mapping projects, overseeing elements of the migration related to cataloging, receiving and providing training, attending meetings, post-migration clean-up. EDS Implementation and Online Instruction (Crystal Dicke): Will work…

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When the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly, effectively closed campus last month, students, faculty, and staff had to shelter in place and shift gears quickly to different modes of teaching, learning, research, service, and work.  To help MSU students and their families transition to remote, online learning, MSU has undertaken a massive phone effort to check up on tens of thousands of students and their families, to learn how they are doing, and whether they need additional assistance from the university. Several…

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The Missouri State University Libraries offers several digital databases in the Biography category. A stand-out among these is Biography Reference Bank.   With over 230,000 biographical profiles from a host of high quality Wilson biographical resources, including Current Biography, the World Authors Series, and the Junior Authors & Illustrators series, this is an excellent full-text resource on current celebrities, authors, historical figures, and others. Biography Reference Bank Select Edition includes profiles licensed from a number of respected reference publishers. The…

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For several years now, the Missouri State University Libraries has offered a chat reference service, enabling users to ask questions and receive prompt responses right online, while they seek, use, and create information. When the physical libraries on campus closed abruptly in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MSU Libraries expanded its hours of chat reference service and made it even easier to find and use on the Libraries’ website.  In just one month, from mid-March to mid-April,…

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