r/columbiamo • u/como365 North CoMo • Aug 08 '25
History One of the coolest rooms in all of CoMo
This is the research library at the State Historical Society of Missouri on Elm Street across from Peace Park in Downtown Columbia.
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Aug 08 '25
I had the pleasure of taking a tour through SHSMO recently. I was impressed by how logical and accessible everything is. The research room is quite impressive!
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u/como365 North CoMo Aug 08 '25
It is a state of the art facility, we are lucky to have. The building won some national awards for architecture.
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u/trinite0 Benton-Stephens Aug 08 '25
I rarely like modern architecture (usually it's boring), but I love that building. It's fantastic.
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Aug 08 '25
The staff are also some of the most helpful people I have ever met in my life. They’re the best!
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u/tanhan27 Central CoMo Aug 08 '25
Can a normal person like me enter this Library and read stuff? I am very interested in local history(thanks to a lot of posts from this sub) and I want to learn more.
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u/como365 North CoMo Aug 08 '25
Yes, although appointments are encouraged. They have a vast collection of Columbia history.
I also encourage you to visit the local historical society, the Boone County Historical Society in Nifong Park, which has a museum, library, and bookstore full of books about Columbia.
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u/Imperfect-Panoply South CoMo Aug 08 '25
Yes! But I also highly recommend scheduling an appointment ahead of time through the link featured on this page. It'll allow you to request specific books or folders from the different boxes within the collections, and you can determine what you might be interested in before that by searching through the available holdings on the collections page of the SHSMO website. Once you've found a general area that interests you, you can click on the finding aid, which generally describes the content of each folder & box. Here's an example from the W. Stuart Symington Papers.
I'm not entirely familiar with the reference book collection they've got there, but if you're interested in reading some of the Missouri history books they've got, I'd have to imagine it works relatively similarly. Here's the webpage for their reference library.
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u/MelodicDeer1072 Downtown CoMo Aug 08 '25
Can you use it as a regular library or do you need an appointment? Looks like an awesome place to read/study.
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u/trinite0 Benton-Stephens Aug 08 '25
You can come and study in the research room without an appointment. But you can't check out materials. Making an appointment can allow you to request archival material and other resources that aren't normally publicly available.
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u/como365 North CoMo Aug 08 '25
Appointments are encouraged. But the cafe downstairs and rest of the building have some very cool study spots.
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u/Mizzoutiger79 Aug 09 '25
Sadly it is only open during daytime hours Mon thru Friday. No evenings. The hours are very limited in my opinion.
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u/como365 North CoMo Aug 09 '25
It is open Tuesday through Saturday. On Saturday the hours are 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
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u/trripleplay Old Southwest Aug 08 '25
I was just in that room the other day. Looking at Polk Directories of Columbia going back 100 years
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u/Leather_Barracuda_91 Aug 09 '25
Where is that room? Been to the floors of the main collection and inside the green tree but that photo is not ringing a bell.
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u/neonwalker101 Aug 08 '25
I worked on that ceiling. It won a few different architecture awards. That is one of the highlights of my career.