From two-room schoolhouse to national prominence
Posted: May 12, 2010
Grants help preserve university’s history
The Still National Osteopathic Museum (SNOM) and International Center for Osteopathic Health History recently have received three important grants.
Missouri State Archives awards 1k
The Missouri State Archives awarded a $1,042 grant to purchase specialized equipment to help ensure that the museum’s nearly 30,000-item collection is preserved.
“The funding to purchase an additional hygrothermograph is extremely timely, as the museum has expanded its collection space by 3,000 square feet in the last few months,” said Jason Haxton, director of SNOM. “This purchase will help us measure and record the atmospheric humidity and temperature of the new space to better protect the historical collections unique to the founding of osteopathic medicine in northeast Missouri.”
NEH awards 6k
For the first time in its history, the Still National Osteopathic Museum received a monetary award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal, independent grant-making agency dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.
Haxton said the $6,000 award “gives shelving to house about 10,000 artifacts, covering about 1,500 square feet of much-needed space.”
LSTA awards 30k
A $30,577 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant primarily will be used to provide digitalized historic materials online that follow the growth of the founding institution of osteopathic medicine, and additional papers of Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., D.O., the founder of osteopathic medicine.
The digitalization project expands access to this historic collection by significantly increasing the services provided to academic scholars, physicians, researchers, students, the public, and libraries throughout Missouri and the far reaches of the Internet.
“The next stage of our work on this grant will cover the early growth and administration of the founding school in Kirksville,” Haxton said. “We will use the earliest board minutes, legal documents, and letters surrounding our university’s growth from a two-room school house into a national academic institution.”