Library Notes

The Bear Pantry on the Springfield campus of Missouri State University provides food and hygiene items to MSU students, staff, and faculty in need. Clients of the Bear Pantry may visit in person to select needed items, or order online for pick-up.  Recently Alex Johnson, the Director of Community-Engaged Learning, including leadership of the Bear Pantry, noted that the Bear Pantry needed more reusable tote bags for client use. The MSU Libraries responded by providing 75 book tote bags for…

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If you have a large, wide format document, map, painting, newspaper or other object you need to have scanned, the MSU Libraries soon will have a wide-format scanner.  For several years now the MSU Libraries has had a wide-format printer, capable of printing up to 44″ in width. Soon the Libraries will have a Contex Pro ScanStation 4290 HD scanner, capable of scanning things up to 42″ wide and up to one-half inch thick. Both the printer and the scanner…

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The Missouri Humanities Council (MHC) has awarded a grant of $2,500 to Missouri State University in support of the project, “Public Access to a Private Neoplatonic Library: Digitizing the Johnson Library Card Catalog.” The MHC is the only statewide agency in Missouri devoted exclusively to humanities education for citizens of all ages. It has served as a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1971. Associate Professor Andrea Miller and Assistant Professor Raegan Wiechert are co-directing the…

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“Every Expedition Begins with a Team: Cultivating a Peer Mentoring Network,” a panel session proposal made by Rachel Besara, Associate Dean of Libraries at Missouri State University, has been selected for presentation the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) 2021 Virtual Conference, to be held April 13-16, 2021. This panel will offer insight into developing your own network of mentors, how to transition from a mentee to a mentor, and offer an opportunity to participate in informal peer mentoring with a…

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On January 7, 2021, several employees of the Missouri State University Libraries attended a training session on chat and online reference services hosted by Amigos Library Services. This training was provided to staff and faculty members with a wide range of online reference experience from those with no experience to faculty with years of chat and reference experience. Jodie Borgerding, an MSU alumna, provided the training from Amigos with an agenda consisting of: an introduction to chat and online reference…

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If your New Year’s resolution is to turn more pages, the MarooNation Book Club is here to help! Read with fellow Bears and join the conversations hosted and moderated by the Missouri State University Alumni Association and the MSU Libraries. We’ll be reading four books per year and you can be part of any or all of them. The next book to be read and discussed by the MarooNation Book Club is The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. All discussions…

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DPLA, the Digital Public Library of America, is highlighting a collection focused on Black Women’s Suffrage: “The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is a collaborative project to provide digital access to materials documenting the roles and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and, more broadly, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism between the 1850s and 1960. The collection explores both the roots of women’s activism in Black communities; the ongoing struggle to secure, protect, and use…

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In order to make Meyer Library a safer, more hygienic, and more environmentally responsible place, during this pandemic and beyond, new touchless paper towel dispensers are being installed in all the public restrooms in the building. Melissa Eiken, Executive Assistant II for the MSU Libraries, is coordinating this effort, which will be completed soon.  The new dispensers replace two older models: Dispensers that required the manual depression of a lever: Known affectionately as the “one-armed bandits,” because of their similarity…

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The Annual Report of the Missouri State University Libraries for the 2019-2020 academic year is now available online. The brief report highlights and illustrates some of the major accomplishments of the faculty and staff of the MSU Libraries, as well as major gifts and exciting initiatives. Examples include:  Information about the latest publication from the Ozarks Studies Institute called Living Waters: The Springs of Missouri, written by Loring Bullard. New digital collections on various topics.  Updates on a current project…

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