Visual Culture resources in Special Collections and Rare Books
Resources for Instructors in Special Collections
1. Jumpstart Your Teaching and Research in
Special Collections
401 ELLIS LIBRARY
SPECIALCOLLECTIONS@MISSOURI .EDU
HT TP: / / L IBRARY.MI SSOURI .EDU/SPECIALCOL LECTIONS/
2. Why use Special Collections in your
teaching and research?
“Undergraduates need to become an active part of the
audience for research. In a setting in which inquiry is
prized, every course in an undergraduate curriculum
should provide an opportunity for a student to succeed
through discovery-based methods. … In the humanities,
undergraduates should have the opportunity to work in
primary materials, perhaps linked to their professors’
research projects.”
The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. 2008.
Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities, 17.
3. Why use Special Collections in your
teaching and research?
Learning requires trust in the process of discovery.
University of Missouri, Core Values Statement, http://www.missouri.edu/about/values.php
cc RDECOM via Flickr
4. We can make it easy for you.
Strong and diverse collections
Experienced and knowledgeable staff
A wide range of instruction services
Support for your curriculum and objectives
6. Collection Statistics
Over 90,000 titles, around 1,000 original works of art, 200+ linear feet
of processed archival materials, 8 million microforms
Most materials are for in-house use only, but some can be checked out.
Collections are open to all users – the only qualification is a photo ID.
15. Start with your goals.
What are your learning objectives?
What do you want your students to get out
of this session?
How will this session fit with the rest of your
course?
16. Contact us.
SpecialCollections@missouri.edu
(573) 882-0076
Open Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.
No appointment needed for research!
Submit an instruction request form to
schedule a class.
17.
18. Give them an assignment.
Creative works
◦ Creative nonfiction
◦ Class exhibit
◦ Artists’ books / comic books
Short Writing Assignments
◦ Meet the Class of 1915
◦ The Changing City
◦ Nineteenth-Century Cookbook Analysis
Reflection/Observation Activities
◦ Artists’ Books
◦ Medieval Manuscripts
Information Literacy Worksheet
20. History, and much more…
Theatre Scholarship
Italian Civilization
Letterpress and the Book Arts
Medieval and Early Modern
Convents
Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology
Information and Student Success
History of Typography
Introduction to Visual Culture
History of Western Dress
History of Modern Engineering
Beginning Latin
Color Theory
Biological Sciences / Botany
Philosophy
Modern European History
Introduction to German Literature
American History since 1865
Medieval French
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jane Austen and Her
Contemporaries
Don’t lock your special collections away in neglected corners of the library — use them to teach students about the possibilities and principles of research. Such collections should be put to use as laboratories where students work hands-on with primary documents, incorporate them into original research projects, and even publish the results in institutional repositories.
Jennifer Howard, “Special Collections as Laboratories,”
Chronicle of Higher Education 16 October 2009
At MU, the Department of Special Collections and Rare Books is a vibrant laboratory for the humanities, where students and faculty are welcome to research and explore. Our collections exist to be used, and they are open to everyone.
As part of a class session in Special Collections, your students will have hands-on access to the most inspiring and intriguing materials the Libraries have to offer. They will learn research skills no database can teach them – the ability to track down sources, make connections among documents, and read evidence from both content and physical clues. Most importantly, they will discover an enthusiasm and engagement with their subject that their textbooks cannot generate.
Holdings include 10 complete medieval manuscripts, hundreds of manuscript fragments, and 27 incunabula (pre-1501 printed books), including a complete Nuremberg Chronicle and a single leaf from the Gutenberg Bible. These form an excellent resource for teaching the history of the book, and students are encouraged to touch and handle these materials. The manuscripts have been partially digitized (see Resources).
The Comic Art Collections are diverse, providing evidence of popular culture from the 1870s to the present. The collections include over 4,000 comic books, over 900 pieces of original artwork, the papers of four prominent American cartoonists, and thousands of clippings, pieces of memorabilia, and reference materials.
Artists’ books challenge our preconceptions of the form and content of a book, often featuring innovative structures, illustration techniques, subject matter, and materials. SCARaB maintains an active collecting interest in artists’ books and fine press imprints. The collection includes hundreds of exemplars, as well as a large collection of fine press ephemera.
