Library News

Falvey Memorial Library employs dedicated and hardworking students to provide assistance and direction to its patrons. Among these students are seniors Jeffrey Eisenberg and Clare Oven who assist the Access Services staff by helping patrons, by checking in/out books, videos and laptop computers and by assigning study rooms. Both students also shelve books: Clare on a regular basis and Jeffrey during high-volume times.

Jeffrey Eisenberg is a New Jersey native majoring in communication with a business minor and an honors concentration. He has worked at Falvey since September 2006.  Jeffrey says he enjoys being at a job where he can interact with students, faculty and staff rather than sitting in a quiet office on campus. He also appreciates the opportunity to study during quiet times.

According to Jeffrey, he enjoys working with “a great staff” and with other students at the circulation desk. Even though it gets hectic during midterms and finals, Jeffrey still loves his job. “The library is a comfortable and friendly place to work with a very helpful staff,” Jeffrey notes.  About the library staff members, Jeffrey says he considers “them friends more than employers.”

Jeffrey is president of Thundercats, a student-led organization that provides cheap-to-free activities for Villanova students on Friday and Saturday nights. He is also a tour guide with the Blue Key Society and a retreat leader for Campus Ministry. He was in two shows with the Villanova Student Theatre and went on a Habitat for Humanity service trip in 2008.

Clare Oven is a mechanical engineering major from San Diego. She has worked at Falvey since her freshman year, 2006. Clare has always had a passion for reading, and naturally wanted to work in the library. Clare says, “Working at Falvey has been a convenient campus job. It is an easy place to get to, and I have been able to set a good work schedule for myself.” She also adds that everyone who works in the library is very friendly, nice and helpful, which fosters a great working environment.

Clare enjoys being able to help students get started navigating through all the different ways of information acquisition at Falvey. Her duties also include shelving books where she takes pleasure in spending time in a quiet atmosphere and seeing all the different types of books available. Overall, Clare has enjoyed her experience at Falvey and is truly going to miss working here when she graduates.

Clare is a member of Villanovans for Life and serves on the Engineering Student Council.

Reflecting Falvey’s mission of service to the University, this work experience equips students with practical knowledge in patron service and circulation duties, and the students who work at Falvey find this to be true.

By Akua K. Adoo, Publications & Communication intern; photographs by Natalie Tomasco

Are you interested in what numbers can tell us? Here at the library we use statistics to help us make decisions about what our patrons want to read or what services they find most useful. For instance, after installing a Self-Check-Out station near the first floor elevator, we saw that about 10% of our total circulation had taken place at that station.

Many of our users prefer online databases and electronic journals, which explains why we have about 275 databases and over 11,000 e-journals available for remote access by Villanova students, staff and faculty. Many of these items are not available to the general public, even through Google Scholar or other powerful search engines and commercial databases. These services are provided free of charge to Villanova students, staff and faculty. If any given article from a commercial provider were to cost $10 each (a conservative estimate) and 7700 patrons requested those articles (we received over 7700 Interlibrary Loan requests for articles this year), those articles would have cost library patrons $77,000.00.

Our public printers were used to print almost 2 million pages over the course of one year, more than any other public printing location on campus. Fortunately, students have print allotments that defray the cost of printing.

Not only do we count the number of times resources are used in Falvey Library, we listen to your feedback about them. If you have information that could help us improve the library, tell us in the Comments section below.

By Luisa Cywinski and Gerald Dierkes

Don’t have time to pull and photocopy a journal article at Falvey? In addition to many online e-journals and full-text databases, Falvey Memorial Library now offers document delivery services to Villanova students, staff and faculty who cannot take the time to retrieve and photocopy articles from the print collection in Falvey. Using ILLiad, the same request and delivery system that is used to satisfy requests for materials from other libraries, we are able to digitize and deliver articles from the Falvey print and microfilm collection.

The digitized articles are delivered to your ILLiad account as electronic files and can be uploaded and saved to your desktop. The files remain active for 30 days.

We will process up to five requests per day, per patron, and can usually deliver the articles within 72 hours, depending on the volume of requests. (Incomplete or incorrect requests can delay the document delivery process.)

If you have any questions, please call the Information Desk at 610-519-4270 or contact a Research Librarian at 610-519-4273 or at ref@villanova.edu. As with all interlibrary loan and document delivery requests, copyright restrictions apply.

It’s the week before midterms and you have to find a book for a paper that is due in a few days. You’ve always liked Jack Kerouac and were hoping to find The Subterraneans on the shelf. You like the way Kerouac weaves together reality and fiction and this has inspired you to write your paper in the same fashion. Unfortunately, you find that the library’s print copy is checked out.

You approach the desk to ask the librarian for help. She checks the catalog, but isn’t able to find another print copy. Suddenly, she has an idea! She suggests downloading Kerouac’s book to the library’s Kindle e-reader for you. Having never used a Kindle, you’re not sure how it works, but in the spirit of Kerouac, your adventurous nature urges you to give it a try.

The above story is true, based on a student’s real need that led to his discovery of the Kindle. Similar stories have been reported by Bartley patrons. The 14-day loan period gives patrons time to read the books and incorporate their findings into a research project or paper. The device is light (about the weight of a Kerouac paperback novel).

Be adventurous! Use the Bartley Kindle request form or the Kindle@Falvey request form to book a Kindle.

By Luisa Cywinski and Laura Hutelmyer

Bartley Business Information Center, a branch location of Falvey Memorial Library, can be found in Room 1005, Bartley Hall. The center is a convenient location for VSB students to get expert assistance with their business research problems. It is staffed Monday through Thursday by librarians and MBAs: (left to right) Merrill Stein, Dennis Lambert and Linda Hauck.

Bring your Villanova University Wildcard: to enter the library, to check out books, DVDs, CDs, library laptops and reserve readings, to use a group study room, to print, and much more…

Use the public computers for research, word processing, e-mail and other applications. Other helpful services include wireless connectivity, printing, photocopying, scanning and the library print center.

Need a late night place to study? Try the after-hours 24/7 study lounge. When the library is closed, enter by swiping your Wildcard at the exterior lounge door.

The library home page is your gateway to Falvey’s riches: resources, collections and services.

Check out the library catalog for print and web holdings: books, magazines, DVDs and videotapes, audio books, current bestsellers and more.

Where are the books? There are three floors of circulating books. Library materials have Library of Congress (LC) call numbers, not Dewey Decimal, so items are shelved alphabetically by the first letters of the call number, and then numerically (LA229.P34).

Where are the magazines, newspapers and journals? Toward the back of the main floor and shelved by LC classification. Many are online, so check the library catalog. Ask us if you need help finding articles on a topic.

Can’t find what you need? Use E-ZBorrow and interlibrary loan to borrow items not owned by Falvey (free of charge).

Need a good job? Falvey employs students in many departments, such as events, circulation, stacks management, interlibrary loan, course reserves and resource management. Call 610-519-4291 or stop by the Director’s Office on the 2nd floor.

Need help? Post a question, ask at the Information desk or call 610-519-4270.

Need help with research? Ask a research librarian, make an appointment, call 610-519-4273 or e-mail your query.

Above all, don’t hesitate to ask for assistance.

We are here to connect you to the information you need! Send us your suggestions. We are committed to your success!

Research librarian Alfred Fry photograph by Luisa Cywinski

Did you know that students may borrow DVDs and VHS tapes from the Library for three days? The collection includes independent and mainstream titles, classic and foreign-language films, academic titles and documentaries.

The DVD collection is located on the Library’s main floor. You can browse DVD titles on the shelves next to the reference collection or search for them in the catalog. Simply bring your selection to the main service counter to check it out.

To obtain a VHS tape, use the online catalog to look up its call number. Bring the title and call number to the service counter and we will retrieve it. The Library plans to relocate videotapes to the main floor, like the DVDs, at some point in the future.

You can find these titles in the library collection by using the catalog Advanced Search option. Limit format to “Video.”

Check out the circulating collection of DVDs and videotapes!

Jacqueline (Jackie) Mirabile, a long time reference librarian at Falvey, has been selected to lead the new Information and Research Assistance team. Previously the coordinator of the Research Support team, in her new role she will supervise both the research support librarians and the library information specialists, two groups who have been merged to form one team.

Her goal is to carry out the directive set by Library Director Joe Lucia to “provide accessible, flexible and authoritative library services … to satisfy the intellectual, cultural and scholarly appetites of Villanova students and faculty.”

Jackie also coordinates Falvey’s communication, education and psychology liaison team and she serves as resources editor of the library Publications & Communications team.

A Falvey librarian since 1982, Jackie noted that she has seen huge changes in technology and in the reduction of the physical presence of reference books, many of which were converted to e-books.

Have you noticed new people staffing the information desk? In response to a request from Library Director Joe Lucia, a number of people signed up to help: David Burke, metadata librarian, Resource Management team; Darren Poley, programming and outreach librarian; Susan Markley, Resource Management team leader; Anne Ford, a member of the Academic Integration team, and Chris Barr, interface and design specialist. Joe joined the others, working at the desk on Thursday afternoons.

Donna Chadderton, Gerald Dierkes, Frances (Mimi) DiLenge, Sue Connor, Patricia (Trisha) Kemp, Joanne Quinn, Ann Stango, Phylis Wright, Regina (Gina) McFadden, Ward Barnes, Jeannine Ahern and Luisa Cywinski staff the information desk as well.

The information desk library staff members serve as the front line for users’ requests, answering directional and quick reference questions. More in-depth patron queries are referred to the research consultation librarians.

Does this staffing model serve your information needs?

Intrigued by an article that appeared in the October 2008 Rolling Stone Magazine by David Lipsky about the life of the novelist David Foster Wallace, I decided to check out one of Wallace’s books. I was looking forward to having some extra reading time over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and Lipsky’s description of Wallace’s life, works and early death were enticing.

I was late leaving work that Tuesday night but made a quick trip to Falvey’s fourth floor to retrieve Wallace’s The Broom of the System (PS3573 .A425635 B7) and, on a whim, Girl with Curious Hair (PS3573 .A425635 G5).  I was especially interested in reading The Broom of the System (named after a saying from Wallace’s grandmother about the benefits of eating an apple) because Wallace had written it in 1984 to fulfill a thesis requirement for graduation from Amherst College, and it was good enough to be published as a novel in 1987. I also knew Wallace had written this following a period of depression that had caused him to withdraw from school to be institutionalized for a while.

I took the books to the first floor circulation counter, hoping not to have to wait since I was already late for a scheduled appointment. There were seven people ahead of me, doing things like checking out laptops, requesting study rooms, asking for help with microfilm and even checking out books needed to complete assignments over the long holiday weekend. I almost put my books on the counter, prepared to leave empty handed, when I spotted the SelfCheck machine. Wildcard in hand, I proceeded to the machine to see if I could save some time. (more…)