April 8, 2025
The University of Missouri’s division of Special Collections holds more than 100,000 items, dating from the eighth century to the modern era, and focuses on books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, posters, printed ephemera and artifacts.
This past year, the division hosted a series of field trips for every sixth grader in the Columbia Public School district — more than 1,300 students — under the theme of “Ancient Writing Technologies Lab: Cuneiform, Papyrus, Palm Leaves, Oh My!” This workshop gave students an opportunity to experience ancient writing technologies from across Africa and Asia while interacting with primary sources. Conceived in consultation with the school district’s social studies coordinator, the Special Collections staff provided hands-on activities on the history of the book to complement the school curriculum on ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China.
“It was exciting to see our primary sources utilized by a new age group,” Public Services Archivist Haley Lykins said. “The experience taught us to look beyond the walls of our academic institution for opportunities of outreach and instruction.”
The students rotated between three workstations representing the ancient world. Items from the university’s collection were included to provide a real-life example of the focus of each station and included cuneiform tablets, papyrus fragments and a facsimile palm leaf book. In addition to Special Collections, students visited Mizzou’s Museum of Art and Archaeology, Museum of Anthropology and Francis Quadrangle.
Read more from MU LibrariesRevision of article written by Clare Starkey, Haley Lykins and Kelli Hansen
