Blog Entries

It’s that time of year again! Time to make the annual trek to the County Collector’s office to pay taxes. Between the cost of this and Christmas, our bank accounts are lighter at the end of the year. As you take the time to review your bill this month, please note the taxes you pay to support Missouri River Regional Library (MRRL).

Many of our patrons may remember when the library rented the old Highway Administration building at 209 Adams Street, including the entire parking lot for patron and staff use.

Whether it be the customer service you receive in person or over the phone, to our programming offerings, or even how you search for a book in our catalog, the patron experience is something I take very seriously as the director of this library.  For many years, the way you search for materials on our catalog website has been the same.

Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen By Niki Lenz centers its story around the titular character, Bernice Buttman, the youngest child in a family of troublemakers living in a trailer park in Kansas City, Missouri. With four older brothers who only care about making mischief and a momma who only cares about getting rich and famous, Bernice has learned to take care of herself the only way she knows how: bullying others and lying.

This Place of Promise: A Historian’s Perspective on 200 Years of Missouri History

Recently I helped someone who was looking for news articles about a childhood friend. Could the library help with that?

Yes. Yes we can.

When you read the phrase “invisible library,” you might think that this post is somehow Halloween-related.

It’s always fun to create something unique and formed by your own burgeoning skills! Sometimes the hardest decision can simply be which avenue to pursue first. Even among the crafters of the world, there are so many types of art and media to learn and love and express yourself with.

Anyone with a Missouri River Regional Library card can now enjoy thousands of free videos from Kanopy, a company committed to streaming high-quality films that inspire, educate and entertain to libraries around the globe.

You will need:

(updated 3/22/22)

Last fall the front of the library had a strange sign: We are not currently accepting donations. 

We’re all aging, even if we don’t want to acknowledge or think about it.

August passed by and September is on its way out. Unbelievably, school has already been in session for several weeks. Teens are now fully committed to schedules of club meetings, study, and sports events. The life of a teen these days almost never slows down! The library has a place specifically for that, though!

Hometown boy makes good certainly characterizes Allen Eskens’ careers, both literary and legal. A mid-
Missouri native and graduate of Helias High School, Eskens’ novel, "Nothing More Dangerous", is the
library’s 2021 Capital READ. Eskens has written six books, all of which have garnered critical praise and
earned him multiple prestigious awards and nominations. At the library, reference staff field frequent
requests for his books, and the books rarely languish on the shelves.

In 1846, a large party of emigrants left Springfield, IL for a new life in California. The first part of their journey went more or less as planned, with few casualties. The farther they went, however, the more perilous their passage became. The routes at the time took groups of settlers over dangerous mountain passes, across raging rivers, and through the dry and deadly salt flats near the Great Salt Lake. Tales of shortcuts passed from party to party, but were largely theoretical and potentially more dangerous than the established routes.