 |
|
|
|
Blueprints:
Falvey Library
Contents: October 2001
|
|
This
spectacular work, from the Augustiniana Collection in Falvey’s Special Collections,
was the culmination of the scientific work of Fr. Manuel Blanco, O.S.A. Fr. Blanco, born
in Spain in 1779, joined the Augustinians at the College of Vallodolid and made his
religious profession in 1795. After his ordination in 1805, at 26 age, Fr. Blanco was sent
to the Philippines, where he served as parish priest in several parts of the country.
In addition, he was Provincial Counselor,
General Treasurer of the Province, Rector Provincial and Prior of Guadalupe. Fr. Blanco
died in Guadalupe on April 1, 1845. |
Manuel Blanco, O.S.A,
author of Flora de Filipinas. |
|
Fascinated by the beauty and
variety of the Philippine flora, Fr. Blanco began to collect and study the plants found in
the different parts of the country. Fr. Blanco was strongly influenced by Linnaeus’ Systema
Vegetabilium and used Linnaeus’ system in his classification of the plants. Fr.
Blanco studied the use of plants in industry and arts, particularly focusing on the
medical merits of the different species. He also recorded the vernacular names of the
1,200 classified plants. |
An illustration from
Flora de Filipinas. |
In
1837 Fr. Blanco published his first edition of Flora de Filipinas (Manila: Lopez.
lxxxviii, 887 p.). This edition is held in Falvey’s Augustiniana Collection but is in
poor physical condition. After its publication, the book was in high demand, and Fr.
Blanco was pressed to publish a second edition which appeared in 1845.
The de luxe edition of Flora de Filipinas, currently on exhibit, was published
posthumously from 1877 to 1883 in seven volumes. Four volumes contain the text in Spanish
and Latin and three volumes contain colored lithographed plates. In an attempt to preserve
the rapidly deteriorating color plates, Falvey Library’s three plate volumes have
been disbound. The plates were cleaned and then housed in acid free wrappers by a
professional conservator. |
|
In addition to his botanical
studies, Fr. Blanco translated a medical treatise from French to the Philippine language
of Tagalog. He was also involved in the composition of maps of different areas in the
Philippines.
"Father Manuel Blanco’s Garden" is maintained at the San Augustin Monastery
in Intramuros, Philippines, and is currently open to the public. A foundation is working
to restore and preserve the garden. |
Bente Polites is a reference librarian and Special Collections librarian.
Falvey Faculty Book Talk
|
Dr. James Kirschke |
Dr. James Kirschke, associate professor, English
department, discusses his book, Not Going Home Alone, at the Falvey
Faculty Book Talk on September 13.
The book describes his experiences during Vietnam,
from infantry training to combat to life threatening injury and hospitalization. For
Kirschke, “the role of the prose writer in literature is to bear witness,” as he
depicts the “loyalty and tenacity” of his Marine Corps troops and the
hospitality and generosity of the Vietnamese village mandarin who graciously shared
breakfast and was later firebombed by the Viet Cong for that action.
Viewing Room 3 was filled to capacity with
interested students, faculty, staff and area residents. |
|
Why did he want to come to America when his wife's family had a successful spaghetti
factory back in La Fara? (De Cecco brand pasta can still be found in more discriminating
food stores.) Perhaps he just wanted the
opportunity to build a future in his own name. What information I have about my
great-grandfather Giustino Verna and his family was told to me by his daughter Teresa, my
grandmother, when I was a little girl. Without dates or documents and armed with only the
sketchy oral saga of their arrival, I turned to the Ellis Island database (http://www.ellisislandrecords.org) to see
what I else could find.
|
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE SITE
|
Result
page from "Passenger Search"
|
The
American Family History Center went online in April 2001, supported by private funds
collected by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.
The fruit of more than five million hours of often painful transcription from
original documents by volunteers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the
database contains twenty-two million names of persons processed at Ellis Island between
1892 and 1924. The information for each name has been extracted from the manifests or
passenger lists of the ships that brought these immigrants to America. |
SEARCHING THE DATABASE |
|
The "Passenger Search" is the first step in finding information in the database.
Type a last name and first name, last name and first initial, or last name only into the
search form, and choose to limit or not by gender. You may also opt to retrieve
“exact matches,” “close
matches,” or “alternative spellings.” Be prepared to recognize and even to
try spelling variations, especially when searching for names transliterated from non-Roman
alphabets. However, the popular belief that names were changed at the whim of immigration
personnel is now considered a myth by many genealogists.
Twenty-five names are displayed per screen, giving the place of origin, year of arrival,
and age on arrival for each. Click on a name
to see the passenger record. At this point, however, it is necessary to complete a
registration form and become a foundation member at no charge. Besides passenger records, you will have access to
text versions and scanned images of the ship manifests, and you will be able to store your
information in a personal online file.
THE SHIP MANIFEST
The ship manifests display an average
of fifteen to thirty-six columns of information for each passenger aboard ship, the number
of columns varying over the different years of immigration.
Personal information for each passenger includes such items as age, sex, marital
status, nationality, trade, state of health, port of departure, amount of money the
passenger took with him/her, the passenger’s ultimate destination once in the U.S.,
and sometimes even the affirmation that the passenger was not a polygamist or an
anarchist. Selected column items have been
extracted for each passenger and made available in text form, scanned from microfilm
copies since, unfortunately, the paper originals were discarded in 1935. Enlarged paper copies of the manifest images are
available for purchase from the foundation.
The manifest of the ship Victoria revealed that Giustino Verna, a 35-year-old
carter, arrived on May 29, 1899, with $30 in his pocket. He was not a polygamist (nor were
any of the other passengers aboard the Victoria) and he was planning to join his brother
Luigi who lived on South 8th Street in Philadelphia.
My great-grandmother Maria joined her husband with their children several years later. To
my amazement, their names appeared in the text version of the manifests of two different
ships that arrived in the port of New York on two different dates. Before reporting this apparent error to the
database managers, I examined the scanned image of the first manifest. The names of my family members were indeed there
– and plainly crossed out. Evidently,
my great-grandmother did not sail on the Prinzess Irene as planned. Images of passenger lists are still being created,
and I expect the Konig Albert's manifest to confirm that the rest of the Verna family
arrived on June 4, 1904.
Although many users of the Ellis Island records were discouraged by crashes during the
first month of intense server traffic, I have experienced no delays since beginning my own
fledgling genealogical research last June.
MORE ABOUT THE
ELLIS ISLAND DATABASE (available on Lexis/Nexis)
Sachs, Susan. "Ellis Island Opens Its Web Door." New York Times 17 April
2001: B1+.
Schute, Nancy. “Family History without the Dust.” U.S. News and
World Report 30
April 2001: 48.
Talalay Dardashti, Schelly. “The Golden Door.” Jerusalem Post
4 May 2001: 6+.
----. "Unlocking the Door." Jerusalem Post 1 June 2001: 6.
ON THE MYTH OF NAME CHANGES AT ELLIS ISLAND
Howells, Cyndi. Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet: Myths, Hoaxes &
Scams. <http://www.cyndislist.com/myths.htm> See
"Myth #7: Our name was changed at Ellis Island."
Barbara
Quintiliano is a reference librarian and information literacy coordinator.
|
Read and research "eBooks" with netLibrary
by Dennis Lambert
Why electronic books? Electronic books or eBooks are available twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, from anywhere. Every word in an eBook is searchable. Since eBooks
cannot be mutilated, lost, or stolen, there are no costs to replace them. They are never
misshelved. You can charge an eBook out for the length of the loan period determined by
the library (currently three days); when due, an eBook is automatically returned and made
available to all Villanova users.
Falvey Memorial Library now offers electronic books to Villanova users. In fact, there are
now 1,900 eBooks available to users, as a result of a cooperative project with the other
members of the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI).
All of our eBooks are made available through a company called netLibrary (www.netLibrary.com), which has the largest collection
of full-text books on the Internet, more than 40,000 titles. Falvey Library is one of more
than 5,500 libraries offering netLibrary eBooks to readers.
 |
To use eBooks at Falvey, simply click on
the ’books’ part of the "E-Journals, Books & Newspapers" link on
the Falvey homepage (www.library.villanova.edu).
Then click on the red and black netLibrary symbol, and then a second time, on the same
symbol, at the next screen, which takes you to a search screen for Villanova’s eBook
holdings. |
You can choose to search by title, author, subject or keywords. For example, a subject
search for "Euro," the new European Union currency, yielded three titles. A
subject search for "European Union" yielded sixteen hits.
Another way to access eBooks is to find them while searching VUCat. For example, a title
search for Understanding the Euro, by Christian Chabot (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1999), shows that Falvey has an online version and no print copy. Click on the link to the
online version to connect to the netLibrary site.
To read netLibrary eBooks, you have three choices. You may browse through a book, but
after fifteen minutes, it may be given to another user. Or you may charge out a book,
which gives you exclusive access to the book for three days. You may also download the
book so that you can read it offline without an Internet connection. The last two options
require that you set up an account with a user ID and password, but this takes only a few
minutes. The third option requires that you download reader software to your computer, but
you only need do this the first time you want to read a book offline.
Printing is allowed, but is limited. You may print one page at a time, but users who
continue to print page after page will soon see a message from netLibrary informing the
user that the text is copyrighted and to cease printing. Users who continue to print will
have their accounts disabled for a period of time by netLibrary.
Acquiring eBooks is complicated and expensive. Currently, netLibrary sells or leases
eBooks in predetermined collections or lots of at least 100 titles, which is counter to
the title by title method libraries _commonly use to select and purchase printed books. The
purchase price of an eBook is currently the print list price plus 50 per cent. Collections
may be leased, but then the library is not providing permanent access. Pricing is further
complicated by the possibility of volume discounts and special offers.
Will eBooks replace printed books? No one knows for sure. There is a clear consensus that
eBooks are used differently from their print counterparts. Researchers using eBooks read
those paragraphs, pages or chapters of works that interest them or that contain the key
words that interest them. They tend not to read the entire book, tiring from lengthy
screen exposure. Traditional paper books are more conducive to cover to cover reading. One
possible future scenario is that scholarly, academic books with be delivered to users
electronically, while popular titles will continue to exist in print. In the meantime,
Falvey Library will continue to offer eBooks to its users in order to acquaint them with
this new format.
Dennis Lambert is Collection Management and Preservation Librarian.
Also contributing to this issue of
Blueprints: Judith Olsen, Bernadette Dierkes and Jacqueline Smith.
Photography credits: Donna Blazskowski and Joe Houser.
|
|
