Library Notes

This summer, the Duane G. Meyer Library hosted sessions for the Springfield Public Schools’ WINGS Explore program coordinated by Gina Wyckoff.  Fourth and fifth graders from the gifted education program worked on the theme of “Castles, Knights, Checkmate” and were encouraged to explore medieval resources at Meyer Library.  At Maps & GIS, Jim Coombs and Emilie Burke helped students to become more familiar with the geographies of medieval times with maps drawn during those times called ‘mappamundi’ and modern maps…

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Consisting of items originally stored in the Bursar’s Office vault in Carrington Hall, the Board of Governors Historical Materials (RG 2) provides 49 cubic feet of insights into the history of Missouri State University from 1905 to 1995. Property abstracts and financial records make up the majority of the collection, but it contains other material as well.  Notable items include daily activity reports for the construction of Meyer Library in 1979-1980, records of early debate societies (such as the Bentonian…

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This summer, among many other projects, Shannon Mawhiney is leading an effort to upgrade, enhance, and accelerate the abilities of the new Digitization Lab, part of Special Collections and Archives, to digitize recordings given to the MSU Libraries on VHS tapes. Like all digitization projects, the content will be preserved, and access will be expanded without further wear and tear on the original media. The VHS format was nearly ubiquitous for some time, and many collections gifted to the MSU…

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The final furniture order for the RIS Commons is being placed this week. When the furniture arrives, is assembled, and deployed, the new RIS Commons will be complete! A display board is located behind the service desk with samples, swatches, and images of what we will be getting. The furniture will include several Brody Work-Lounges, Campfire Slim Tables, round Ottomans, Bob Chairs (which people not named Bob are welcome to use), Lagunitas Personal Tables, and a high-tech, small-group workspace.

The Library of Congress recently announced that all Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will be digitized and freely available online by the year 2020.  25,000 already are available online, with 500,000 slated to be freely available online by 2020. Sanborn maps depict the location, size, and building materials used for all buildings in a city at the time the map was made. Sanborn maps are useful to historians, urban planners, genealogists, students,…

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During the month of June, CONTENTdm from OCLC has three Featured Collections of digital images in the spotlight: The Ohio Transportation Collection of the Columbus Public Library, the Strobridge Lithographing Company Circus & Theater Posters Collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, and the St. John Photograph Collection of Missouri State University. The digital images were made from the original glass plate negatives, owned by the Christian County Historical Society. The photographs probably were taken in the…

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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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