Blueprints: Falvey Library

Contents: February 2002
 

• Customized research appointments available  

• Early English Books Online: Making ‘widely accessible the fruits--and flowers and weeds--of centuries’ worth of learning’

• Falvey Favorites: Regeneration by Pat Barker

• New faces at Falvey: Ernie Walter

 

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. display in Falvey Library  

• Also contributing to this issue...
  

by Teresa Bowden

Are you assigning your students a project or paper requiring research this semester? Do you know a student who needs some guidance in the research process? Do your students use too many questionable web sites? Then you may want to refer them to our Research Appointments service.

In fact, any student, staff or faculty member may request an appointment with a Falvey reference librarian for research assistance. We provide guidance in using both print and electronic resources – databases, books, government documents, etc. And, if necessary, we go through the research process step by step. This may include choosing and/or focusing the topic, designing a search strategy for locating the best resources, and obtaining those resources, whether or not they are held in Falvey Library.

Darren Poley, reference librarian, confers with Michael Foley about a project.

During the fall semester we conducted over thirty research appointments on a variety of topics. Perhaps a few specific examples will better illustrate the purpose of this service.

For an undergraduate communications class, one student needed to prepare a five- minute oral presentation and a ten-page paper on an "upcoming medium." The student had selected ‘instant messaging’ as the focus of her project, and she needed to find resources that discussed the history, the social and economic impact and the future implications of this medium. Due to the relatively recent appearance of instant messaging, books on this topic are rare. Therefore, we concentrated on the process of locating periodical articles, using two electronic subscription databases – ABI/Inform and Expanded Academic Index.

We covered how to build an effective search statement in each database, how to select the best resources from the list of results, and how to locate the specific articles. Some articles were available online full-text, while others were available in the paper journals within the Library.

The student was introduced to the Inter-Library Loan service for articles that Falvey Library did not have. When the appointment concluded, the student left with a specific search strategy and more confidence in locating the needed materials.

In another research appointment, a new graduate student in criminal justice needed an overview of our resources in that area. We discussed using VUCat to locate our book holdings, as well as recommended electronic databases and print indexes for locating articles. He was also introduced to the standard statistical sources in the field, such as the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics and Crime in the United States, and pointed to recommended government web sites, such as the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Once again the student left with more confidence in approaching his future research projects.

Hopefully these examples illustrate the value of our Research Appointments service. Please refer your students to us if they need guidance in their research projects, or contact us yourself if you’d like an update on our resources or services. Appointments can be made by calling the Reference Desk at 519-4273. You may also find the "Research Appointment with a Librarian" link under Request Forms on the Library homepage.

Teresa Bowden is a reference librarian and liaison to the Biology department.

by Judith Olsen

Falvey Library recently began a subscription to Early English Books Online (EEBO), a major research tool for accessing important historical texts. The EEBO contains citations to almost 130,000 items printed in English between 1475 A.D., at the very beginning of the print revolution, to 1700 A.D., thus providing rich research possibilities for scholars and students interested in the late Medieval and early modern periods through the eighteen century. Included are nearly 26,000 full text entries, many of which include the publications’ illustrations.

EEBO is based on the microfilm set of Early English Books and the accompanying Pollard and Redgrave’s Short Title Catalogue, (1475-1640) and Wing’s Short Title Catalogue (1641-1700), long considered indispensable research tools in literature, philosophy, history, art history, religion, political science, the history of science, women’s studies and other disciplines in the humanities. Scholars and students alike will now have access to numerous editions of classics, the writings of lesser known authors and important letters and documents of that period. Literary scholar James Harner labels the Short Title Catalogue "the essential basis for scholarship of the period." (229)

Also included in EEBO are the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661), the collection of London publisher George Thomason who recognized the historical importance of what was being published during this tumultuous time in English history and sought to collect most of it, from broadsides to substantial treatises.

Early English Books Online allows you to find versions of the Book of _common Prayer from the sixteenth century or locate the texts concerning the controversy between the Catholic Church and Henry VIII. You can also find various editions of Shakespeare’s plays and portraits of the bard. Or you may want to look at the variety of the editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to compare the texts and illustrations. Historians will be interested in royal proclamations and military and Parliamentary documents, as well as the pamphlets and broadsides of the _common people.

Portrait from Shake-speares sonnets. Neuer before imprinted (1609). Reproduction of the original in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

A special "featured content" section lists the top 200 works in various disciplines, from art to law, geography to grammar, as identified by John Bloomberg Rissman of the University of California, Riverside. Under "mystical religion," you can find a short treatise on contemplation by Margery Kempe (b.1373), published in 1501, while the category "Civility" offers a glimpse into courtly life with the translated books from 1561 by the courtier of Count Baldassare Castiglione: "Very necessary and profitable for yonge gentilmen and gentilwomen abiding in court, palaice or place, done into English by (Sir) Thomas Hoby."

Early English Books Online allows users to download works in PDF format for off-line viewing. One can search by author, title, printer, publication date, type of illustration, and Library of Congress subject heading. Records are linked to the corresponding page images.

According to Dr. Lauren Shohet, assistant professor, English department, "With the Library's acquisition of Early English Books Online, the Villanova Community has access to the full text of everything--everything!--printed in England from 1475 to 1700. This puts the resources of the world's major English-language research archives at the fingertips of students, teachers, and scholars. Particularly as the keyword index develops, undergraduates will be able to undertake the kinds of research formerly possible only for credentialed scholars with the resources to travel to archives; faculty will be able to do initial phases of their own research here on campus, making their trips to archives more efficient. This acquisition is an important step in making a level playing field for students and faculty at medium size institutions like Villanova and Research I universities."

Dr. Scott Black, assistant professor, English department agrees: "The ESTC/EEBO has long been the best friend of scholars studying pre- and early modern books, and to have its tremendous wealth of resources now available on-line is extraordinarily exciting. If books are windows onto strange worlds, this is like having the walls ripped out, and being able to look at entire landscapes we could barely imagine. Making this material easily available to teachers and students, professional researchers and casual readers alike does more than bring vast new worlds to our attention; it lets us reconceive our assumptions about those pasts, and so rethink our own world too. This is a tool that completes the Gutenberg revolution, a resource that makes widely accessible the fruits--and flowers and weeds--of centuries’ worth of learning."

Harner, James L. Literary Research Guide. 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Assn., 1998.

Judith Olsen is the librarian liaison to the English department and a reference librarian.

Regeneration by Pat Barker. New York: Plume, 1991 (Gift of the Family of John H. Kolmer, III.) Call number: PR6052.A6488 R4 1991, 4th floor, Circulating collection

On one level, Regeneration is a novel about British poet Siegfried Sassoon’s individual protest against World War I, in which he served as an infantry officer, witnessing the deaths of many of his men. The reason for his protest: the War was a senseless slaughter. Instead of being sent to military prison for refusing to serve at the front, Sassoon is classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital for evaluation and possible cure so he can return to the trenches.

Yet Regeneration also explores larger questions: What is "sane" against the backdrop of the Great War? Soldiers now hospitalized in Craiglockhart suffer devastating mental injuries because of their war experiences: the surgeon who cannot tolerate the sight of blood, the soldier starving himself because he cannot endure food. Real poets also move in and out of this novel: Robert Graves as Sassoon’s friend and protector; Wilfred Owen as the young poet Sassoon mentors. Barker has chosen to present her narrative through the eyes of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, an actual psychiatrist and neurologist whose own research involves the regeneration of nerves. Portrayed as a compassionate, father figure, Rivers provides the optimum protagonist to contemplate the possibility, and even the value, of regenerating a human being’s nerve.

Barker’s novel, part of her World War I trilogy, which also includes Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road, won the Booker fiction prize and was made into a motion picture. I found Regeneration to be a well written and engaging fictional treatment about the poets of a historical era of special interest to me.

For a very readable nonfiction treatment of English literature and World War I, try Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. (PR 478.E8F8 1975).

Judith Olsen

Falvey Library and Instructional Media Services welcome Ernie Walter to the position of audio-visual technician. Ernie comes to Villanova from BioData Corporation where he worked as a field service representative, servicing electronic medical equipment. Ernie will be working until 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday, allowing extended media service coverage for evening classes. Ernie lives in Morton with his wife Sylvia and his son Ernest, who is seven years old. Ernie loves the mental challenge involved in playing chess and hopes to find more time in the future to devote to this hobby.

The Graphics department, Instructional Media Services, created this display for Falvey’s first floor exhibit case to commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.