Library Notes

The collection contains over 500 programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and the physical and life sciences. A number of re-mastered well-known series are available, such as Bronowskia’s Ascent of Man; Attenborough’s The Living Planet; James Burke’s Connections; History of Civil Rights in America; History of the U.S. Constitution; and, the entire BBC Shakespeare series. In addition, there are a series of core concept videos in the sciences, including ones for astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, and both classical…

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One of the Summer Innovation projects for 2017 involves digitizing and creating metadata for rare, historic maps of Springfield, Greene County, surrounding counties, the Ozarks region, and Missouri. Jim Coombs, Shannon Mawhiney, and student assistant Emilie Burke will be the principal participants in this project. Maps from the Civil War era will be digitized, along with street and road maps dating back to the Roaring Twenties, when Route 66 was born. Selected topographic and geologic maps also will be scanned….

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The Office of Public Affairs Support is located in the northwest quadrant of the Second Level of Duane G. Meyer Library. Mary Ann Wood is the Director. Public Affairs Support is part of the Office of the Provost. Mary Ann reports to Dr. Rachelle Darabi, Associate Provost for Student Development and Public Affairs. Public Affairs Support plans, organizes, publicizes, and produces all public events related to public affairs, such as the Public Affairs Conference, Public Affairs Convocations, and more. This…

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September 2016:  The MSU Libraries did a soft launch of BearWorks, an institutional repository (IR) for Missouri State University. Institutional repositories are  archives for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an organization. They are particularly common in research institutions and often include not only articles and reports, but also organizational documents, data sets, and even multimedia.   Graduate theses were the first records entered into BearWorks. As of spring 2017 there were over 3,000 citations with full text…

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GeoRef contains a vast amount of indexed information, including 3.8 million bibliographic records from more than 3,500 journals covering a wide spectrum of geoscience literature. Other records featured within the database include indexed books, maps, government reports, conference papers, theses, and dissertations. GeoRef is also constantly adding new material to its collection, with more than 100,000 records added annually. Subjects covered include mineralogy, hydrogeology, economic geology, hydrology, environmental geology, marine geology, engineering geology, mineralogy, geochemistry, oceanography, geophysics, and paleontology. Coverage within the database includes the geology of…

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The Ozark Jubilee Digitization Project is off to a rip-roaring start. Donations of money, new footage, and support have come from as far away as England, and as close as Springfield. Since going live last month, two of the uploaded episodes have had well over 1,000 views. The Ozark Jubilee was a live, nationally broadcast country-western variety show originating from the Jewell Theater — “the heart of the Ozarks” — in downtown Springfield from 1955 through 1960 — 297 episodes total. Many…

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Qualtrics is coming to MSU. It’s an experience management platform. According to their website, “Experience management is software for improving the experiences organizations provide to every stakeholder, whether it’s customers, employees, prospects, users, partners, suppliers, citizens, students, or investors.” Quoting from the Wikipedia article, “Qualtrics software enables users to do many kinds of online data collection and analysis including market research, customer satisfaction and loyalty, product and concept testing, employee evaluations and website feedback.” Some cost centers at MSU have…

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There will be four Sunday evening free carillon concerts again this summer, beginning at 7:00 p.m. CDT each evening. The MSU Music Department organizes this concert series, and the MSU Libraries is the host. Each concert last about an hour. Carolyn Bolden will be the carilloneur at the July 9th concert. Jerry Chesman will play on two of the remaining dates. The complete schedule is still being finalized. Here are the four dates, always the second Sunday of the month:…

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In this time when phrases like “post-truth era” and “false news” have entered the vernacular, the concept of information literacy (one of the programs of the MSU Libraries, as well as most other academic libraries) is gaining increasing attention and scrutiny. On February 27, 2017, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on this topic. Najmabadi reports that a research study conducted at Stanford University and released last November found that many college students “had trouble identifying partisan or…

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During the 2016-2017 Academic Year now ending, the MSU Libraries made good progress on several initiatives within the MSU Libraries 2020 Long Range Plan. Here are a few of the many advances: Content New Content Areas: BearWorks, MSU’s Institutional Repository, launched in FY17. Several unusual formats are being digitized, including glass plate negative photos, kinescopes, and a carved walking stick. The MOBIUS consortium agreed to provide access to the Open Textbook Network, which will commence in FY18. Digitization Lab: The…

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