Blueprints: Falvey Library

Contents: May 2000
 

• Distinguished Lecture Series: Adrian Wooldridge builds a measured defense for globalization  

• Falvey librarians promoted

• We appreciate our student employees!

• FLASH Lights: "Sitebuilder" provides access via VUCat to many more full-text journals

• Benchmark group for university libraries created

• Noteworthy

• Also contributing to this issue...

by Darren Poley

Just when the demonstrations at the World Bank/IMF were in high gear and the stock market took a plunge and recovered, Falvey Memorial Library’s Distinguished Lecture series featured a timely lecturer, Adrian Wooldridge, co-author of the book "A Future Perfect: the Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization" (Random House, 2000).

Adrian Wooldridge responds to a query from the audience.

The capacity audience who braved the rain to hear Mr. Wooldridge, the Washington correspondent for The Economist, was not disappointed. The lecture enhanced one’s understanding of globalization and gave the audience a thought-provoking perspective on its goals, impact and critics. In this highly relevant book, Mr. Wooldridge shows us how globalization is driven forward by "technology, the capital markets, and management." He and his co-author, John Micklethwait, dispel major myths of our global age.

Dr. Victoria McWilliams, associate dean of the College of Commerce and Finance, introduced Mr. Wooldridge, who holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University and who has written extensively on politics and social policy for the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Times of London, as well as The Economist. After the lecture a lively and sometimes heated question and answer period was moderated by Dr. Thomas Ricks, director of the International Studies program. Welcoming and closing remarks were made by Dr. James L. Mullins, University librarian and director of Falvey Memorial Library.

Thomas Ricks, International Studies; James L. Mullins, University librarian; Victoria McWilliams, Commerce and Finance; and Adrian Wooldridge, Falvey Memorial Library Distinguished lecturer

Adrian Wooldridge worked with Micklethwait earlier on "The Witch Doctors; Making Sense of the Management Gurus" (Random House, 1996). Their assessment of globalization, an undercurrent of the earlier work, is more broadly and deeply explored in "A Future Perfect." In his lecture, Wooldridge rather adroitly offered further insight on the impetus for the change in business and government with an emphasis on the catalysts for action in the supposed "borderless" world of the future.

In their conclusion of "A Future Perfect," the authors state, "Throughout this book, we have tried to build a measured defense of globalization." This was also the stated foundation of Mr. Wooldridge's lecture while he confirmed yet another key conclusion of the book -- individual freedoms which come as a result of renewed liberty means greater capacity and a necessity for personal and international responsibility.

Mr. Wooldridge, an "unabashed supporter" of globalization, was clear to define it as more than "walls coming down and connections being made." It is an "uneven process" and "not an accomplished fact" whose problems have been exaggerated. The way to understand globalization is not by statistics but personal experience. In Wooldridge's opinion, the greatest challenge of our time is not globalization itself, or the threat of great social upheaval ending this global era as happened in the early twentieth century. Rather, according to Wooldridge, we should fear the globalization movement losing steam. He argued that while globalization does exacerbate weaknesses in a society, it also enhances strengths, and in the end there are "more winners than losers."

As an advocate of globalization, Wooldridge stressed how the primacy of liberty has promoted the role of the individual or the small nimble company in the prosperity of an open society. This is at the core of his belief in the "hidden promise of globalization." Dr. Ricks concluded the discussion with two evocative questions concerning the process of globalization: "Who’s in control?" and "Who cleans up?"

This installment of the Falvey Memorial Library Distinguished Lecture series was co-sponsored by the College of Commerce and Finance and the Office of International Studies.

Darren Poley, a reference librarian and cataloger, is the library liaison to the political science department.

by Judy Olsen

Dr. James Mullins, University librarian, announced the promotions of Taras Ortynsky and Bente L. Polites to the rank of Library Professional III, and David Burke to the rank of Library Professional II.

Taras Ortynsky, head of Technical Services, manages cataloging and acquisitions activities for Falvey Library. He also has departmental responsibility for staffing, policies, procedures and interaction with other Library departments.  As department head, he effectively maintains appropriate bibliographic control through library record keeping. He serves as the subject liaison to the chemistry department and Russian area studies, and he holds a master’s of library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh. Previously with Bryn Mawr College as head of cataloging, Taras has been at Villanova for almost 12 years.

Bente Polites, a Falvey librarian for 13 years, enjoys a dual appointment as reference librarian and special collections librarian. She provides reference assistance to students, faculty and staff, and teaches information literacy classes. As Special Collections librarian she organizes exhibits of books from the Library's special collections and assists students, faculty, staff and visiting scholars who are using the collections. She also follows the rare book market in order to identify items that might be added to Falvey's collections.

As library liaison to the philosophy department, she works closely with faculty members to plan and build a research level collection with particular focus on 20^th century continental philosophy. She received her master’s from the Royal Danish School of Librarianship. Immediately before coming to Villanova Bente was a reference librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, and before moving to the United States, she was a reference librarian in the European Parliament in Luxembourg.

David Burke, as serials cataloger, accomplishes most of Falvey’s "odd" or unique cataloging, including all serials and periodicals, all electronic resources, theses, government documents and books in the Augustinian Historical Institute. He is the library liaison to the sociology and Peace and Justice departments. A graduate of Villanova and formerly a student employee at Falvey, David received his master’s of library science from Drexel University. He has been a librarian at Falvey for just over three years. Previously he worked for a firm contracted by the Smithsonian to catalog outdoor sculptures throughout the United States.

The ranking and promotion policy, instituted by the professional librarians at Falvey Memorial Library in the early 1990s, established a process of review by a committee of peers with approval by the University librarian and the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Candidates must demonstrate that they are meeting specified criteria, which include job performance, professional development, library/university/community service and academic/creative activity.

The criteria, which are uniquely appropriate to librarianship, measure the library professional's contribution to Villanova and to the profession. (More information on the ranking and promotion policy can be found in the May 1999 issue of Blueprints, Falvey Library’s section. See the Falvey Library home page / About Falvey / Newsletter.)

The Student Employee Appreciation Committee, Falvey Library, presented awards and gift certificates to student employees who have been with Falvey for a significant amount of time. James L. Mullins, University librarian, and Luisa Cywinski, circulation supervisor, congratulate Sara Navrocki. The reception honoring all student employees was held April 27.

A large contingent of students and staff from Instructional Media Services enjoy the end of  the year reception honoring student employees in Falvey Library.

   Researchers enjoy the convenience of online articles

For a few years, Villanovans have accessed journal articles online more often than they’ve read the print versions in the Library, enjoying the convenience of browsing articles from their own homes, dorms or offices. Over the past few years, Falvey Library has made many electronic journals directly accessible through their VUCat record, especially those in electronic journal packages, such as JSTOR, Project Muse and Emerald Library. Each of these journals has a specific URL that can take a user directly to its full-text version on the World Wide Web by clicking "Online version" in its VUCat display. From the journal’s home page, one can access all the available articles full-text.

However, many more full-text articles are available through so-called "aggregator" databases such as Lexis/Nexis. Generally, one can access the articles only through the database search engine, even with a specific article in mind. Web sites to individual journals are not provided so one cannot browse issues and articles as is possible in the Library’s periodical stacks. However, a new trend is changing this situation.

Over a year ago, ABI/Inform’s ProQuest database added the new "Sitebuilder" capability, allowing the creation of unique Web sites for each of the 800 titles (generally business-related) offering full-text articles (another thousand titles are only indexed). Over the past year, the sites were created, and their URLs were added to the Electronic Journals list on the Falvey home page and to their VUCat catalog records. David Burke and Mary Heyman, Technical Services department, and Natalie Tomasco, Laura Hutelmyer and Susan Connor, Periodical department, accomplished this project.

Now one can retrieve a Web site for these journal titles listing available issues: Clicking on an issue’s link brings a list of its articles, highlighting those with full-text. With a specific citation in hand, instead of performing a search in the database’s search engine (possibly retrieving unwanted articles), one need only find the journal’s record in VUCat and follow the links to the desired article. The links for the issues and articles are also available for bookmarking or including into an appropriate course’s Web page.

There are some differences in the VUCat displays between the ProQuest titles and the other electronic journals. In the past, ProQuest has abruptly changed its full-text holdings within a journal or even to which journals it provides access. Also, within volumes, and even individual issues, some articles may have full-text and others may not. Therefore, their VUCat records provide the hotlink but give no precise holdings statement, whereas other electronic journals have their precise holdings listed in their VUCat records. Another ProQuest inconsistency is that within a title, some articles are available only in PDF format (requiring Adobe Acrobat) and some are not. So, for any given title at any given moment, one can never be certain what issues are full-text, but articles from the latest two or three years are almost certainly accessible.

This ProQuest journal record in VUCat  provides the hotlink but gives no precise holdings statement, whereas other electronic journals have their precise holdings listed in their VUCat records.

In the near future, many of the other aggregator databases will allow subscribing libraries to create Web sites for specific titles within their catalogs. As more journals go online, they too will be made available through the Falvey home page to benefit faculty and students, and also to provide resources to participants in Villanova’s growing distance education program.

David Burke derived this article from his presentation in November at Temple University to the Association of College and Research Libraries, Delaware Valley Chapter.

   Villanova hosts inaugural meeting of University Libraries Group

What do the university libraries of Wake Forest, Southern Methodist, Carnegie Mellon, Lehigh, Marquette and Villanova have in common? Quite a bit it seems. That was the conclusion shared by sixteen university library directors who came together at the Villanova Conference Center April 13-14. This meeting was a result of an effort by University librarian James L. Mullins to bring together directors who head university libraries with similar scope, resources and mission.

After he attended a national meeting last fall in Colorado that brought together directors of research, university and college libraries, it became apparent to him that academic libraries in the "middle" did not have an identified peer group. The research university libraries are members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), while college libraries come together in the Oberlin Group. These two organizations enable member libraries to share comparative data (bench marking) and to develop cooperative programs. However, neither of these groups were a "fit" for medium sized university libraries committed to undergraduate education while supporting graduate, professional and faculty research.

In addition, the recent changes in the Standards for College Libraries, established by the national Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), call for identifying peer groups for comparison. Dr. Mullins realized the practical necessity for identifying this particular peer group of libraries at this time.

In December, Dr. Mullins contacted twenty-four libraries which have a mission similar to Villanova. Twenty-two responded with interest, and only two declined. At a preliminary meeting of eighteen library directors held at the American Library Association meeting in San Antonio in January it was determined that there was enough interest to continue the discussion: The first formal meeting of the new group would take place at Villanova in the spring.

Of the twenty-two libraries invited to the meeting at Villanova, sixteen were able to attend. The meeting focused on determining the mission of the group as well as choosing a name for the new organization, now known as the University Libraries Group (ULG). Dr. Mullins was selected as convener and will continue in this position until 2001. The next few months will be committed to the development of mission, projects, and data collection.

The new University Libraries Group met at the Villanova Conference Center in April.

Universities that have indicated interest in the University Libraries Group are American University, Baylor University, Carnegie Mellon University, Catholic University of America, College of William and Mary, DePaul University, Fordham University, Lehigh University, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, Miami University of Ohio, Northeastern University, St. John’s University, St. Louis University, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Tufts University, University of Denver, University of Richmond, Villanova University, Wake Forest University and Yeshiva University.

Susan Markley, head of the Periodical department, made a presentation on serials workflow at the Voyager Users Group meeting in Chicago April 6 - 8. Luisa Cywinski, Circulation supervisor, also presented on the use of bursar transfer software. Kathleen O’Connor, Systems librarian, attended the meeting as well. Voyager, a product of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., is the system used by Falvey Library to manage the library catalog, electronic resources, circulation of materials and many other vital functions. Luisa Cywinski was also appointed to a national task force charged with redesigning the circulation module of the Voyager system.

In April Dr. James L. Mullins, University librarian, gave a presentation to the Council of SUNY Library Directors in Lake George, New York, explaining the new Association of College and Research Libraries’ "Standards for College Libraries." Dr. Mullins served on the national ACRL committee responsible for revising the standards, an effort spanning the last four years. The SUNY Council includes all library directors of the State University of New York system.

Also contributing to this issue of Blueprints: Jacqueline Mirabile, James Mullins, Linda Saboe and Jacqueline Smith. Photographs by Instructional Media Services.

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