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Blueprints: Falvey LibraryContents: May 2001
by Barbara Quintiliano Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, the Industrial Revolution as reflected in the works of Charles Dickens, and humor according to Freud: These are some of the topics first-year students have been investigating in Quest Strategies workshops this semester, along with such perennial favorites as St. Augustine's Confessions and the parables of Jesus. As an introduction to academic journal articles and how to find them, the Quest Strategies workshops take students to a world of scholarship beyond the World Wide Web. Now in its third year, the Quest program continues the collaboration between Falvey Library and the Core Humanities Seminar program. During their first semester at Villanova, first-year and transfer students complete the Quest tutorial to learn the basics of finding information both in Falvey Library, as well as beyond a library's walls. The second component of this program, Quest Strategies, gives students a more focused experience in searching the Library's subject-specific databases. These databases, available only to the University's registered students and other members of the Villanova community, are the keys to finding in-depth scholarly analyses of topics in any academic discipline.
The current experiential format of the sessions was designed last fall by a subcommittee composed of librarians and CHS professors, under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Smith, then interim chair of Core Humanities. While today's students may already be well acquainted with Time and Fortune and fairly adept at surfing the Web, academic journals are new to most students just beginning their college careers. During the librarian's brief presentation, students learn about peer review, the evaluation process that a manuscript undergoes before being judged worthy of publication, and they are shown the instructive notes and bibliographies included in journal articles. Discussion includes the fact that Web sites are traditionally not reviewed; students have no guarantee of the quality of information they are accessing, whereas their own professors are often among the authors of substantive journal articles. Scholarly communication, currently in a state of flux, can be confusing. A growing number of peer-reviewed journals are disseminated exclusively online. Many print journals are now available in electronic format as well, and students often find hypertext links to the article they need in VUCat (Falvey's online catalog). A few journals have gone further, dropping the paper format after so many volumes, beyond which only an online version is available. Finally, some databases, including Expanded Academic Index, incorporate the full-text of the article; students are often pleasantly surprised to learn that such resources even allow them to e-mail the full text of an article to themselves. However, while more academic journals will be made accessible in electronic format in the future, Falvey Library still carries over 3,000 print subscriptions. During Quest Strategies, students retrieve journal citations and then learn how to access the journal articles they need. Students are certainly not expected to remember the names of all the databases available for searching through their Library -- and there are over 100 of them!-- nor are they expected to master searching techniques. One more important objective of the Quest Strategies session is to introduce them to the librarian as their resource person so that they will not hesitate to come to the Reference desk in the future for assistance. The 50 well-spent minutes of Quest Strategies in a student's first year can pay off in terms of greater awareness of information resources later on. According to CHS faculty member Dr. Theodore George, "The Quest Strategies sessions help students distinguish between scholarly journal sources and unevaluated Web sources, and the interactive nature of the sessions keeps them involved." Barbara Quintiliano is the information literacy coordinator.
"No walls" between the actors and
the audience: Joanna Rotte’s Acting with Adler at the Falvey Book Talk
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Dr. Rotte studied under Adler, and her notes from those years form the basis of her book. Adler was the only American acting teacher who had studied under Konstantin Stanislavsky, known for his "Method" or "System." Adler’s
teaching evolved not only from her studies with Stanislavsky but also from her personal
experiences as actor and director, including the influence of her parents who were actors
in the Yiddish theater. Adler expected her students to make the System their own and to be
in control of their own artistic development. |
She established the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in New York and later headed the acting department of the Yale School of Drama. Among the many actors who were Adler’s students are Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Melanie Griffith and Anthony Quinn.
Dr. Rotte read from her chapter on "Characterization: What the Actor Becomes." Specific techniques can bring the character alive even if the character is not similar to the actor’s natural character. After selecting the character’s type, the actor can then determine internal and external attributes. The actor needs to have an understanding of the place of action, costume and props and to build a history for them so that all become part of the personal history of the character.
The actor must determine how the character’s mind, temperament and will are different from his own. Each line of script should be examined to compare the difference between the character and the actor so that the differences can seep into the actor. The actor must determine the attitude of the character to unify the inner and outer self. After the performance, the audience should know who the character is and how he thinks.
Laurie Norton quoted Adler’s view on Brando. "When he played Stanley Kowalski, he changed everything there was to change: his neck, his feet, his teeth, his eyes, his hair... . I went to see him in the dress rehearsal, and afterwards I went backstage. But he wouldn’t see me, because he didn’t yet have that speech, that particular thing that was Stanley Kowalski, that lazy mouth."
After the audience responded with enthusiastic applause, Dr. Rotte provided an encore, a brief reading from the chapter on "Spiritual Standards." According to Adler, the actor needs to open himself to the audience; there should be no wall between the actor and the audience. The actor has a "built-in broken heart."
In the subsequent question and answer period, Dr. Rotte shared personal experiences with Stella Adler and Adler’s ex-husband, Harold Clurman, theater director and critic.
Dr. Rotte’s directing experience has been extensive. Among the plays Rotte has directed at Villanova are Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Sam Shepard’s Tooth of Crime, David Rabe’s In the Boom Boom Room, and plays by Caryl Churchill.
Jacqueline Mirabile, a reference and government documents librarian, is librarian liaison to the theatre department.
by Bill Greene
Three years ago Falvey Library staff members formed the Student Employment Appreciation Committee (SEAC). Each year, the SEAC organizes an end of year gathering, held on one of the reading days before final exams, to demonstrate the Library’s appreciation for the service the student employees have provided to fellow students, other library users and departments within the Library.
This year, on May 3, we celebrated with 25 pizzas to feed the 129 students employed by the Library. Each senior was individually recognized during a short ceremony at the beginning of the celebration. The 29 seniors will receive certificates and $20 gift certificates to Borders bookstore demonstrating the Library’s appreciation. A student must be employed by the Library for a minimum of four semesters to be eligible for these rewards.
The founding members of SEAC are Scott Brady, chair, Luisa Cywinski, Bill Greene, Kathleen O’Connor and Darren Poley.
Bill Greene is a periodical technician in the Periodical department.
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Two students confer in one of the Kolmer group study rooms while another accesses information electronically on a nearby computer workstation. |
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Comfortable couches and chairs on Falvey’s second floor provide soft seating for someone reading while another student uses the more traditional library table to write her paper. |
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Students meet, study, and eat and drink too, in Falvey Library’s Holy Grounds coffee shop. |
The Reserve Room is now processing requests for reserve reading lists for the fall
semester. Please submit your material or lists before August 1. This will allow time to
process material and to locate, order or recall books. Any lists or materials submitted
after this date may incur delays in processing. Requests may be submitted in person, via
campus mail, or over the Web.
* To submit requests via the Web, go to the Falvey home page and select 'Request Forms.'
* Guidelines for reserving materials for your courses can be found under Departments / Reserve Room.
Electronic Reserves: Please contact Linda Saboe (ext.96390) for information on how to register for the electronic reserve service. Due to time restraints, we cannot scan new readings for summer sessions, but we are able to carry over readings which have already been scanned for previous semesters.
Please go to the Library's Web page / Departments / Reserve Room to view the guidelines for requesting electronic reserves.
Spring 2001 Lists: All spring reading lists will be removed from reserve after finals week. If you would like your reading list to be carried over for summer or fall please contact the Reserve Room (ext. 94278) as soon as possible.
Also contributing to this issue of Blueprints: Laura Hutelmyer, Linda Saboe and Jacqueline Smith. Photography: Donna Blaskowski, Joe Houser and Judy Olsen.
