Lectures listed by Date or by Lecturer
MIDCONTINENT PERSPECTIVES
was a lecture series sponsored by the Midwest Research Institute as a public service to the midcontinent region. Its purpose was to present new viewpoints on economic, political, social, and scientific issues that affect the Midwest and the nation.Midcontinent Perspectives was financed by the Kimball Fund, named for Charles N. Kimball, President of MRI from 1950 to 1975, Chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1975 to 1979, and President Emeritus until his death in 1994. Initiated in 1970, the Fund has been supported by annual contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations. Today it is the primary source of endowment income for MRI. It provides "front-end" money to start high-quality projects that might generate future research contracts of importance. It also funds public-interest projects focusing on civic or regional matters of interest.
Initiated in 1974 and continuing until 1994, the sessions of the Midcontinent Perspectives were arranged and convened by Dr. Kimball at four- to six-week intervals. Attendance was by invitation, and the audience consisted of leaders in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The lectures, in monograph form, were later distributed to several thousand individuals and institutions throughout the country who were interested in MRI and in the topics addressed.
The Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Kansas City, in cooperation with MRI, has reissued the Midcontinent Perspectives Lectures in electronic format in order to make the valuable information that they contain newly accessible and to honor the creator of the series, Dr. Charles N. Kimball.
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These documents are provided in the Portable Document Format (PDF), which is both device and resolution independent. Documents in the PDF format can be viewed, navigated, and printed using the freely available Acrobat Reader software from Adobe Systems Inc.
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Lectures listed by Date or by Lecturer
Editors note: Included in this collection are 102 lectures given over a period of 20 years. We have made every effort to provide the lectures in the form that they were originally published by including the lecture text, the questions and answers, and any graphics attached to the presentation. We have, however, changed the format from a 5x8 inch to a standard 8x11.5 inch letter size to ease the printing of the documents off-line. Moreover, to reduce the digital size of the files we have occasionally moved the graphics into separate documents called from the main text. Though not as convenient as having the images published in the body of the document, it significantly reduced download time for those few lectures that were highly illustrated.
Internal evidence suggests that there may have been 106 presentations in the series. Unfortunately we have not been able to identify the missing four documents. We would welcome any additional information on these lectures.
We wish to thank Dr. James Spigarelli, President and CEO of MRI, for his permission and support for this project. In particular we are thankful for his providing Kirk Hall, Director of MRI's Information Technology Center, to give advice and assistance in developing a search mechanism for the Lectures. Lastly, we appreciate the help of Katherine Long, Head of the Special Collections Department at the Kansas City Public Library for helping identify missing Lecture booklets.
© WHMC-KC, University of Missouri, 1998
Last revised: Wednesday, August 12, 2009
