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Blueprints: Falvey Library
Contents: September 2002
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Louise Green (right) was honored at a reception in July for her service as interim library director. With Louise is Jacqueline Mirabile, reference librarian and government documents librarian. |
Michael Hoffberg has been promoted to Associate Director of Falvey Memorial Library, continuing as Head of Instructional Media Services as well. This action reflects Michael's increased leadership and advocacy roles within the Library and throughout the campus, in addition to his expanded responsibilities in directing and managing the Instructional Media Services department. Michael has also participated on numerous senior level committees and task forces related to strategic planning, Middle States accreditation, search and screen, campus technologies, classroom improvement, goal planning and space utilization.
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Michael Hoffberg, assistant director of Falvey Library and head of Instructional Media Services |
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After Michael
joined Villanova in 1995, the role of Instructional Media Services on the campus
grew significantly. The University has been continuously escalating its
requirements for multimedia classroom installations, preventative maintenance,
computer-based graphic arts and design, digital and traditional photography,
upgrading distributed digital and analog media technologies for curriculum use,
consulting on media related infrastructure needs for new building construction
and renovation, video/audio distribution, acquisitions of non-print collections,
satellite teleconferencing, as well as other media related endeavors.
To increase the safety and security of students, faculty and staff, attendants
at the entry gates to Falvey Library are now requiring all individuals coming
into the building to present a university ID (Villanova WildCard or Rosemont
College ID). Visitors should present photo identification and sign the visitors'
log.
While we realize
that this policy may pose some inconvenience, we hope that all members of the
Villanova community will understand the importance of consistency in requiring
ID checks. General questions about gaining access to Falvey Memorial Library may
be addressed to the Circulation department at 610-519-4270.
Joe Lucia, University Librarian and director of Falvey Memorial Library.
Each of us has
been told not to judge a book by its cover. Nevertheless, the topic of Falvey
Memorial Library's latest Special Collections' exhibit invites you do just that.
The exhibit is comprised of nearly fifty books which date from the 1830's to
1906, and each book was selected for its ornamental exterior.
In the early
nineteenth century, books were generally produced by publishers with just a
paper wrapper to protect the pages. Later, the owner of the book could send the
collection of pages to a bindery and get a custom binding put on the book. This
practice was largely due to the expense that publishers would have incurred from
binding books themselves, since the process had yet to be fully mechanized.
However, that all
began to change around the 1830's with the advent of case binding. This new
technique allowed publishers to use cloth bindings to protect the pages of their
books at a fraction of the cost of traditional custom binding. In this way,
unique publishers' bindings originated.
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The Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published in 1884 by Houghton, Mifflin. |
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By carefully
examining the covers in the exhibit it is possible to see social, political, and
artistic developments of the nineteenth century. Each decade was marked by its
own particular characteristics. For example, bindings that date from the time of
the Civil War tended to be somber and rather plain. This is in great contrast to
the 1880's and 1890's when the decorative art of mass book binding came into its
own. The turn of the twentieth century marked a period where there even were
artists who devoted themselves almost entirely to decorating book covers.
By the 1900's the
covers became so ornate that most designers left their initials somewhere within
the art. Unfortunately, many of these artists are difficult to identify today.
This is because their art work was largely ignored simply because decorating
book covers did not qualify as fine art.
Luckily, with
research and some outside aid, it was possible to identify all the artists in
the exhibit after 1900. One designer that has been studied more than most is
Margaret Armstrong. There are six of her works on display in this exhibit, each of
which can be readily identified by her mark, an intertwined M and A, on the
covers of the works that she designed. Fortunately, through exhibits like this
one, more designers are being recognized, and their art is being appreciated.
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On Newfound River, by Thomas Nelson Page, published by Scribner's in 1906. This cover design is by Decorative Designers, a group active from 1895 to 1931. They created over 25,000 books covers often identifiable by a monogram of two intertwined D's facing each other (lower right). |
Despite their
decorative covers, many of these books tend to be overlooked and forgotten. Two
factors may have contributed to this neglect. One is the short amount of time
that these bindings were produced, before they were replaced by less costly dust
jackets. The other reason reflects the philosophy that content is more important
than appearance. Many of these books were considered popular fiction. Once they
were read it is easily conceivable that they were discarded or simply forgotten.
Libraries often
kept these titles over the years, but again, because of their popularity they
may have undergone preservation efforts that marred or destroyed the original
binding. This was the fate of many books from the regular circulating collection
here at Falvey. Any number of publishers' bindings have been rebound or covered
with 'protective' tape that helps to hold the book together but covers the
beautiful decoration.
Falvey's Special
Collections is in good company with this exhibit. There have been a number of
other recent exhibits on these book bindings, including one at the Grolier Club
in New York, and another at Columbia University. Each of these exhibits helps to
increase scholarship, improve preservation efforts, and raise public awareness
of these books.
Bente Polites, Special Collections librarian, organized the
exhibit.
Teri Ann Incrovato assisted in Special Collections and Reference. She graduated last spring with degrees in history and art history and is currently pursuing a master's degree in museum studies at Syracuse University.
The Periodical department sadly announces the death of Betty Lane, who worked
part-time for our department almost 20 years. After retiring as a social studies
and English as a Second Language teacher at Upper Darby High School, Betty came
to Villanova, got a master's in library science, and then proceeded to work
evenings and weekends in the Periodical department, eventually switching to days
until her retirement in May 2001. She was a total delight to work with, always
smiling and cheerful, and happy to do anything that would help the patrons or
staff of the Library in their search for journal information.
Because of her love of books and her joy of working at Villanova, her family has
asked that all donations made in her memory should go to Falvey Memorial Library
for the purchase of literary books.
Susan Markley, Head of the Periodical department
"Reuters : Business Insight"
Falvey Memorial Library is pleased to announce that access to the Reuters Business Insight database is now available to the Villanova community. This
premier business research tool provides full-text marketing and industry reports
in the areas of consumer goods, energy, finance, healthcare, and technology.
Reports are available in both HTML and PDF file formats and range in length
between 200 to 300 pages.
While
some of these up-to-date reports just cover United States markets, most reports
are international in focus with a special emphasis on the European business
environment. In an age of global investment and rapid currency flows, the sage
student or interested investor is wise to be well informed of world markets.
You
can find Reuters: Business Insight via the Falvey home page (www.library.villanova.edu)
under Databases A-Z or E-Resources by Subject and then choose any business-related area.
"Bio One"
BioOne is a searchable
collection of full-text articles from peer-reviewed journals in the biological,
ecological and environmental sciences. The journals are published by American
Institute of Biological Sciences member societies and other closely related
organizations, and all articles are available in HTML and PDF formats. Some
examples of journals included are BioScience, Wetlands, American Biology
Teacher, American Zoologist and Condor.
Falvey Library is a charter
member in the development of BioOne as a member of SPARC (the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). You can access BioOne from the
library home page under E-Resources by Subject and then Biology.
Dennis Lambert, head of Collection
Development and Management, Falvey Memorial Library, is one of four co-editors
of Guide to Review of Library Collections: Preservation, Storage and
Withdrawal, second ed. (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press). This publication,
twelfth in the Collection Management and Development Guides series, was
sponsored by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS),
a division of the American Library Association. Mr. Lambert served as chair of
the group, a subcommittee of the ALCTS Publications Committee, which produced
the Guide.
In addition to the new University Librarian, Joseph Lucia, Falvey also welcomed
two new employees. Margaret Duffy has assumed the position of coordinator of
services in the library director's office. She comes from the Villanova Law
School library, where she worked for several years as an administrative
assistant.
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Theresa M. Keffer, left, joined Falvey last spring, working evenings in the Reserve Room. |
Holocaust survivor, literary scholar to deliver Distinguished Lecture |
By Louise Green
The Falvey Memorial Library Distinguished Lecture Series will feature Ruth Kluger, author of Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. The event will be held October 10 at 3:30 p.m. on the second floor, Falvey Memorial Library. Dr. Kluger will read from her autobiography and respond to questions posed by Dr. Sheryl Bowan, associate professor, communication and Dr. Paul Steege, assistant professor, history.
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Ruth Kluger was born in Vienna in 1931. In 1942, on the verge of her eleventh birthday, she was deported to the Jewish "ghetto," Theresienstadt. She would survive Auschwitz-Birkeneau and the work camp Christianstadt before the war ended. After spending two years in occupied Germany, she emigrated in 1947 to the United States, where she graduated from Hunter College, earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to become a distinguished professor of German. |
Now
professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine, she is the author of
five volumes of German literary criticism and a frequent guest professor at the
University of Gottingen.
Her memoir,
published in Germany in 1992 and subsequently translated into Dutch, French,
Italian, Spanish, Czech, and Japanese, has won eight German literary awards, and
France's prestigious Prix Memoire de la Shoah. She lives in Irvine, California. (Text from the book jacket of Still Alive: a Holocaust
Girlhood Remembered,
New York, Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 2001.)
With Falvey
Library, this Distinguished Lecture is cosponsored by the University Vice
President, Office of Mission Effectiveness, Center for Peace and
Justice Education, the departments of history, political science and women's
studies, the Honors program and Hillel.
Louise Green is associate director for public services and head of the Reference department.
Also contributing to this issue:
Teresa Bowden, Michael Foight, Michael Hoffberg, Joe Lucia, Jacqueline Mirabile,
Judith Olsen, Sue Ottignon, Bente Polites, Jacqueline Smith and Merrill Stein.
