A Cape Girardeau professor who traveled the state last year speaking on behalf of a vanishing artifact of American history -- the barn -- will receive the Missouri Humanities Council's highest award.

Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University, and four others will receive the Acorn Award during a ceremony Oct. 14 at the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City.

Nickell will be honored in the category of public involvement. He was cited for the series of book and great-decisions discussion groups he conducts at the university and for his work with the Smithsonian Institution's "Barn Again" traveling exhibit.

Nickell consulted on the exhibit and collaborated with Smithsonian scholars on an accompanying brochure. The exhibit was displayed in Malden, Doniphan, West Plains and Park Hills and next year will travel throughout Kansas.

People traveling across the Midwest in the middle of the next century will see virtually no barns, Nickell predicts. They are disappearing because they no longer serve the role they did in agriculture. The traditional barn is too small for modern farm machinery and too difficult to repair.

But Missouri probably has more surviving barns than any other state, Nickell says.

"They are a unique part of the American landscape," he said. "No one in the world has built barns as we have or as many as we have."

Built by communal effort and without blueprints, barns are both symptomatic of the American society that produced them and a means for understanding our agricultural past, Nickell said.

"We can't save them all and no one is recommending we do so. But some should be saved."

Nickell said he was surprised and humbled when notified of the award. "There are people working in the humanities all across the state who are much more deserving than I am -- people who are in the inner city working in much more difficult and challenging situations than I have been in."

Other recipients of 1998 Acorn Awards:

-- Lois Conley, director of the Black World History Wax Museum in St. Louis. On a shoestring budget, Conley created a narrative of African-American experience and a museum that serves as a community meeting place in north St. Louis. Her category was community heritage.

-- Tom Frillman of the YMCA of St. Louis, who was honored in the category of public involvement for taking his campaign on behalf of family literacy to day-care centers and health clinics. Media figures and Mayor Clarence Harmon have joined in to support Frillman's efforts.

-- Vickie Hamilton of Harrisonville and Carol Kieninger of Columbia, who will be honored for inspiring their students.

Hamilton created a research project on the state's one-room schoolteachers. Her students interviewed, photographed and documented the stories of the teachers, many of whom were in their 90s.

Kieninger publishes a high school literary journal of such distinction that the Missouri Review will become the co-publisher this fall.

The teachers were cited in the secondary edcuation category.

Last year Evelyn Pulliam of Kennett was one of the Acorn Award recipients. She is coordinator of public relations for the Dunklin County Library and was cited for expanding opportunities for adult learning.

She brought the library the Read from the Start program, which provides books to economically disadvantaged famiies.