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Blueprints: Falvey Library
Contents: February 2000
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New faces in Falvey Library |
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Teresa Bowden joined Falvey as a new reference librarian in December. She received a bachelor's in 1993 from Franklin and Marshall College with a biology major and sociology minor. |
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She also worked as a student assistant in the science library there, where her interest in the profession was sparked. She received her master of library and information science from the University of South Carolina in 1994. Teresa has worked as a science reference librarian for the past five years at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and hopes to receive her master of arts in sociology from the same institution soon. Teresa grew up in Georgetown, Delaware, and is a huge fan and collector of Stephen King works. Although she enjoyed Kentucky, she is very happy to be so much closer to family and friends and to have this opportunity to work with everyone at Villanova University.
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Mimi Burstein has begun a semester long internship in the Falvey Reference department to complement her course work in Drexel's Masters in Library and Information Science program. While managing the Philadelphia Guidance Center Library, she earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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by Susan Ottignon
"Where can I find a review of 'Tis, Frank McCourt's new book? I'd like to write to my congressman! What are the latest trends in geriatric health care?" The broad array of questions fielded by Falvey Library's reference librarians each day is a challenge; yet the one certainty motivating the librarians to stay connected to developments in information retrieval is their concern for quality service.
In addition to helping at the reference desk, the librarians also assist patrons utilize both electronic and print resources. The reference librarians provide group instruction on information literacy skills to diverse classes in Falvey's Griffin Instruction Room as well. Both efforts promote searchers' confidence to find the information they need.
The department consists of ten librarians, with various other responsibilities and accomplishments, who work as a team sharing their expertise with Falvey patrons. No question is too stupid to ask! (And, occasionally the answer cannot be found within Falvey.) Each librarian serves at the reference desk daily. Their mission is clear: to help each patron by resolving either simple queries or providing guidance with in-depth research. The desk is staffed 84 hours weekly, with two professional librarians available during the busiest times of the day to solve a variety of questions.
Questions may be submitted by email, too! You can have a query answered, without entering the Library and when the librarians are not available, by sending it via an electronic form, Ask a Librarian, from the Library's home page [http://www.villanova.edu/library] under Request Forms. The reference librarians check and respond to the email requests several times a day.
During the fiscal year 1998-1999 reference librarians saw the number of scheduled information literacy instructional sessions increase by 43%. The 207 scheduled sessions, reaching across all disciplines, gave students the skills to search electronic databases for articles, to explore VUCat, Falvey's online catalog, for pertinent books, to search the Internet and to understand the value of print resources.
In addition to these sessions, with the other Falvey library professionals, the reference librarians participated in Quest Strategies, a joint venture of Falvey Library and Core Humanities, to instruct approximately sixteen hundred first year students in advanced searching techniques.
An ongoing challenge remains mastering the ever increasing number of databases with a variety of search interfaces. Reference maintains and expands the information resources made accessible by Falvey Library. The increase in Web subscriptions integrates the availability to databases like Congressional Universe, Emerald and Ethnic NewsWatch with Falvey's existing database subscriptions like Lexis-Nexis and Expanded Academic Index, all of which are offered to the Villanova community. In 1998-1999 there was an 11% increase in database usage statistics and access: the grand total of searches for the fiscal year was 214,648!
With the installation of the proxy server last year Villanova patrons began to access
Falvey's Web subscriptions from off cam
pus through commercial
Internet services.
Both librarians and patrons also utilize the reference book collection to search for information. The department increased its total book collection by 552 print titles in 1998-1999, which meant a major shifting of the reference books to create space.
Reference librarians include Louise Green, head of reference, Teresa Bowden, Michael Foight, Ruth Lewis, Jacqueline Mirabile, Judy Olsen, Susan Ottignon, Darren Poley, Bente Polites, and Barbara Quintiliano. Jacqueline Smith is the department secretary and Harry Coxe assists with government documents.
With the other Falvey Library departments, Reference considers its fundamental mission to provide the most relevant and timely service to the Villanova community.
Susan Ottignon is a reference librarian. This article continues the series highlighting the many departments in Falvey Memorial Library.
by Judy Olsen
You may want to impress your Valentine with a special poem, but if meter and rhyme
are not your strengths, check out the Falvey Library homepage.
Start with VUCat, the online catalog. According to poet Lisa Sewell, assistant professor of English, some well known love poets are Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Petrarch.
You can search by author to find collected works by a particular poet. One advantage to the electronic catalog is that it guides you to the correct form of the poet's name: Who would guess that Petrarch is Petrarca, Francesco?
One great collection of love poems is Cien Sonetos de Amor (in English, One Hundred Love Sonnets) by Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, which presents each poem in Spanish and English translation, depending on how much you want to impress your Valentine.
More love sonnets can be found in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From the Portuguese. Falvey Library has the variorum edition so you can patiently explain to your Valentine how the famous poem "How Do I Love Thee?" actually had various revisions using different wording which could affect the poem's meaning!
A traditional collection of English love poems, with the transfixing title Eternal Passion in English Poetry, features poetry ranging from ballads to Yeats, while contemporary women assume a more modern stance in Dancing the Tightrope: New Love Poems by Women.
Search by these titles or by poet as author, or try the subject "love poetry" to find more love poetry collections.
Falvey Library also has both print and electronic versions of Granger's Index to Poetry. The poetry database, Columbia Granger's World of Poetry (on CD at the Reference desk), lends some interesting insights into love poetry. Many of the poems are reproduced in full, and the anthologies in which the poem appears are listed as well.
3432 poems in Granger's contain the word LOVE. To our relief, LOVE and HAPPY appear together (344 times) more than LOVE and SAD (318 times), but LOVE and DEATH occur together in 636 poems, a sobering thought. One poem, "A Ballad of Hell" by John Davidson, covers all of these bases as a happy bride is tricked into murder by her unfaithful betrothed.
Not sure what your poem means? Interpretations of poems can be found under E-Resources by Subject / English. Specific databases to use include the MLA Bibliography, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, Expanded Academic Index and Humanities Abstracts.
You can now extract an acquisitions list by month, year and department by searching
VUCat. The starting date for searching newly cataloged items in VUCat is November 1, 1999.
1. From the library's home page, click on the link to VUCat. The catalog opens in the "Basic Search" mode.
2. Click on the "Any Word(s)" button.
3. A dialog box appears. To retrieve cataloged items for a particular month, type in the month spelled out, (november), last two digits of the year (99), and the department's code (soc).* The search statement should not include spaces.
4. Click on "Search."
Below is an example that would retrieve items cataloged in November 1999 for Sociology.
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Newly cataloged items for the ancient and modern language departments may be searched by a specific language. Review the department's codes for the specific languages.* For example, to locate an item cataloged in November 1999 for the modern languages department in Spanish, the search string would use the language code for Spanish: november99mls.
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*The departmental codes can be found on the Library homepage: Click on "How Do I? / Locate Library Materials Acquired for Academic Departments." Generally the University codes are used; only Ancient and Modern Languages are exceptions.
Beilstein - Crossfire. Includes structures and properties of seven million organic substances published since 1779; gives melting and boiling points, density, solubility, molecular weight, structure, chemical name, formula, etc., and references to the primary literature. Accessible on workstations 33 -36 near the Reference desk.
ARTbibliographies Modern. Provides abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs and reviews, and dissertations. Covers artists, movements and all aspects of modern and contemporary art. Look under E-Resources by Subject / Art and Art History and Studio Art, Music and Theatre on the Falvey homepage.
Journal Citation Reports on CD-ROM - Science Edition. Gives citation data on journals and shows the highest impact journals and the most frequently used journals. Inquire at the Reference desk.
The number of Quest tutorials returned by first year students during the fall semester was 1473, plus 70 returned by transfer students, for a grand total of 1543 tutorials completed. 92% of all first year students participated in Quest through the Core Humanities Seminar program.
All of the Core Humanities seminars attended Quest Strategies hands-on sessions teaching advanced searching techniques.
In these Quest components Core Humanities Seminar students search topics they are reading about and discussing in class. (Link to Quest on the Falvey homepage.)
...that faculty can have copies of articles from journals in Falvey's collection
mailed
to their offices? (Use the request form link on the library's homepage.)
...that all University departments and units may request professional
development
information/training programs tailored to the needs of their staff?
If you have questions
or want to schedule a program contact Louise Green
at 519-4283 or Louise.Green@villanova.edu.
...that all University employees are encouraged to avail themselves of the
many
resources and services offered by Falvey - scholarly and recreational books
and
journals/magazines, and reference assistance in person, by telephone or electronically
through the "Ask a Librarian" link (Library homepage request forms)?
...that Falvey is open until 2 a.m. on Mondays? Because usage statistics indicate
that
from 30 to 120 students have been using the Library between midnight and 2 a.m.
on
Mondays, the extended hours will continue on a trial basis during second semester.
Also contributing to this issue of Blueprints: Donna Chadderton, Louise Green, James Mullins, Judy Olsen and Barbara Quintiliano. Photography was provided by Bernadette Dierkes, Steven Dixon and Lorraine Williams.
