A digitized version of the Johnson Library Card Catalog is now available online along with a finding aid. This project was funded through a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council. Missouri State University Associate Professor Andrea Miller, Assistant Professor Raegan Wiechert, Digital Archivist Shannon Mawhiney, and Haley Frizzle-Green (now Archivist with the State Historical Society of Missouri), with the support of Assistant Professor Anne Baker, carried out the grant on behalf of Missouri State University and the Johnson Library and Museum.

The Johnson Library and Museum (JLM) is a hidden jewel—a multi-generational, family library located in Osceola, Missouri, founded in 1899 by the Neoplatonic bibliophile, Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919). This collection contains the digitized versions of two card catalogs available for the library, totaling more than 20,000 cards. The first card catalog was commissioned in 1920 and covers the collection of the library’s founder. The second was commissioned in 2000 and covers some of the oldest books in the collection, as well as some volumes added in the decades after Johnson’s death. Work on transcribing the cards to enable complete optical character recognition searching of the cards is ongoing.

The son of a US senator, Thomas Moore Johnson was born in Osceola, where he served as mayor, prosecuting attorney, and school superintendent. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, which is where his interest in philosophy started. An ardent Platonist, he was actively involved in national and international philosophical and esoteric circles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He produced translations, published journals, and collected rare books. He corresponded with dozens of intellectuals and prominent figures worldwide, including Henry James Sr., Bronson Alcott, and President Grover Cleveland. Johnson was an attorney by trade, but his true passion involved the translation and dissemination of Platonic philosophy. A prodigious translator of Greek works, Johnson amassed a library of around 8,000 volumes—hundreds of which were printed in the 16th and 17th centuries and covered philosophy, religion, Greek and Latin literature, metaphysics, and intellectual history. In 1915, he was hailed by Lt. Governor William Rock Painter as “Missouri’s greatest living man.” He represents the way in which people in the Ozarks have not always been isolated from global concerns but, instead, have maintained connections to ideas that have been central to the humanities across time and space.

The collection was augmented over the years and now contains some 35,000 items. The library remains a part of the family’s history, with Johnson’s grandson, Dr. Thomas Johnson, currently serving as curator and president of the JLM board. To learn more about the JLM, visit its website.

The Missouri Humanities Council (MHC) awarded a grant of $2,500.00 to Missouri State University in support of this digitization 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. For more information about MHC’s grants program, call 314-781-9660 or 800-357-0909, or write to the MHC, 415 S. 18th St., Suite 100, St. Louis, MO 63103.