History & Political Science

Race, Slavery and Free Blacks, a primary source collection of court petitions and slavery statutes which was originally published on microfilm by University Publications of America, has received a second lease on life as a digital collection.  It has been re-released in Proquest’s History Vault and is now called Slavery and the Law.

The collection covers the years 1777-1867 and consists of petitions to state legislatures and Southern county courts as well as state slavery statutes.  The reproductions of the handwritten petitions are accompanied by petition analysis records (PAR) to facilitate access to the document.  Each PAR contains an abstract of the petition besides dates, location, names of petitioners and defendants, the repository of the original document and subjects.  As an added bonus the collection also includes the contents of two classical scholarly works related to the subject:  Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro (1926) by Helen Catterall and James Hayden and The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (1862) by John Hurd.

Slavery and the Law is now available as a trial until November 22, 2012.
Questions or comments?  Contact me directly (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post your comments online.

Genealogical research has a passionate following outside of the academic world, a fact that is reflected in the often impressive genealogy collections of public libraries.  Now Villanova faculty members are planning to add genealogical research projects to their undergraduate history syllabi.  Welcome to the digital new world of genealogy: like in so many other areas of research, the time of dusty old books and reels of microfilm has passed and online databases have taken their place. 

Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest are two of the major genealogical research tools currently on the market.  Both are available on trial basis until March 15 to Villanova faculty and students.  Discover a wealth of genealogical materials such as U.S. census data (1790-1930), church records, county census data, immigration ship lists, passport applications, Freedman’s Bank records, Revolutionary War pension applications, even international data from the UK, Canada and Germany.

I strongly encourage you to evaluate both resources and send me feedback about their usefulness in the classroom. For more detailed information about the contents of ancestry library edition and HeritageQuest Online, please consult the comparison chart provided by Proquest.  Contact me directly (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post your comments online.

The Historical Periodicals Collection of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is currently available on trial basis.  Described as “the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1877,” the collection includes more than 7,600 magazines and journals with more than seven million digitized pages. The digitization of series 5 which extends coverage up to 1877 has just been completed.

Series 1: 1691-1820
Series 2: 1821-1837
Series 3: 1838-1852
Series 4: 1853-1865
Series 5: 1866-1877
Series 1-5: 1691-1877

Don’t miss the twelve collection overview essays which can be found on the lower right hand corner of the results screen via the Reference Shelf link.  The essays discuss the research value of the AAS periodicals collection. Included are titles such as Doing Women’s History at the American Antiquarian Society and An Overview of the American Antiquarian Society Periodicals Collection. The essay on the periodical literature in the Revolutionary War Era includes detailed descriptions of selected periodicals.

The Publications link at the top of the search screen brings up a complete title list with publication start and end dates. Search results can be limited by types of publication, document and image. The collection is available on the familiar EBSCO platform.

The trial will run until April 2.  Give the AAS Historical Periodicals Collection a try and let me know what you think.  Your feedback is important.  Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you may have.

2010 saw the publication of two important new reference works on American political history: The Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History, published in seven volumes by CQ Press, and the Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, published in two volumes by Princeton University Press. Both encyclopedias are available online through the library’s catalog.

The Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History is organized in chronological order from the colonial period to the present. The chronological organization belies the print origin of this reference work and results in multiple entries for different time periods on topics such as woman suffrage and civil rights. However, a reader interested in the early republic may choose to browse the e-Table of Contents of the second volume only.

A Reader’s Guide brings together entries on broad topics such as Elections & Electoral Politics, Wars & Foreign Policy, and Domestic Policy & Policy Issues to give some examples. Entries are between three and six pages long and can be downloaded as PDF files. Each entry includes a persistent URL for easy sharing with colleagues and students. Other options include citation tools, export links to RefWorks and EndNote, as well as email, print and download icons. Cross references are highlighted as Related Entries. Each entry includes a bibliography and suggestions for further reading. In some instances the bibliographies include web links. One such link took me to A New Nation Votes, a digital collection of election returns from 1787 to 1825, a collaborative project of the American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University. Illustrations such as photos, maps, graphs, and cartoons are part of some entries.

Explore the variety of topics covered in the Encyclopedia. Here are some sample entries to whet your appetite: public opinion polling, third parties, conservation policy, reconstruction, Election of 1928, suffrage.

Although much smaller in size, the Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History edited by Michael Kazin holds its own next to the Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History. Its entries tend to be broader in scope and are in some cases split up to cover different time periods. The entries on Women & Politics are divided into five time periods: up to 1828, 1828-1865, 1865-1920, 1920-1970, and 1970 to the present. Available through the Gale Virtual Reference Library, the Princeton Encyclopedia has the same features as the Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History. I invite you to take a closer look at the selected sample entries below: cartooning, Catholics & politics, environmental issues & politics, television & politics.

Other reference titles at Falvey, both online and in print, include The Encyclopedia of American Parties, Campaigns, and Elections, The Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, The Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior, and many more.  Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you may have.

Local book author and Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Dan Biddle teaches a course on 19th century civil rights in the Honors Program this fall.  His students are using a range of primary sources from the library’s collection.  Although much is available online, some primary sources remain hidden away on microfilm reels.  The Black Abolitionist Papers and the Papers of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society are a case in point.  For a limited time students and faculty have access to the online version of the Black Abolitionist Papers until the trial ends on October 14.  The online collection includes over 15,000 items which can be browsed by document type, name, source, location and date.  It covers the period 1830-1865 and contains the correspondence of major African American leaders, selected speeches, lectures and sermons, as well as articles from more than 200 newspapers.  Interested faculty and students are strongly encouraged to review the online version and send their feedback to Jutta Seibert.  The library will endeavor to add the Black Abolitionist Papers to its permanent collection if there is enough interest.

Biddle’s students will also be working with the African American Newspapers collection, the African American Studies Center and the American Periodicals Series to name but a few of the many digital collections available at Falvey.  Find more resources related to 19th century civil rights with the help of the library research guide Discovering 19th Century Civil Rights.  Many of you will remember Dan Biddle from the 2011 Black History Month Lecture at Falvey.  He and his co-author Murray Dubin discussed their book Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you may have.

This summer Falvey Memorial Library will start a building renovation project with the goal of transforming the Library into a more inviting and welcoming space. During the first phase of this project, the second floor will be completely gutted, except for the Special Collections room. In preparation for this phase, all current second-floor books will be relocated to the former bound-periodicals stacks, located in the Old Falvey section of the building. While this move in no way affects the American history collection, most D call numbers, with the exception of African and Australian history, will be moved into Old Falvey.
Clean-up work in Old Falvey has already started. Facilities Management staff will rehab and repaint the Old Falvey stacks to make them more inviting and conducive to shelf browsing. While the Library will do its utmost to keep its collection accessible while it is in transit, there may be some short periods of interrupted access. Be prepared for noise or messiness when you visit the Library over the summer. All heavy-duty construction should be completed before the fall semester begins.
Please feel free to contact me with any concerns that you may have.

When most people think of government documents, they think of boring, hard-to-read reports that go on for pages and pages. So you might think the American State Papers, 1789-1838 and the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 are nothing to get excited about. In actuality, however, these sets both contain a wealth of information and images that are both interesting and informative.

The American State Papers, 1789-1838 contain legislative and executive documents from the first fourteen U.S. Congresses. Reports, documents, and journals of the 15th through 103rd Congresses are available in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994. These materials cover more than just American government history – they also include fascinating glimpses of American and world history on a variety of subjects, such as botany, ethnography, travel, natural history, and lots more.

Pictures and maps are scanned from original prints; documents are now scanned from original prints as well (previously they were scanned from microfilm). In addition to the usual search parameters, the search interface allows for searching by bill or resolution number and congress number. You can also browse by subject, type of publication, personal name, act name, geographic name, and standing committee name. Researchers can export information to RefWorks and create their own personal collections on the database.

Search screen of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. (Click to see a larger version.)

Below are just a few examples of research topics using materials from these sets.

Around the World in 80 Documents: 19th-Century Publications on Europe, Africa and Asia in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set by Steve Daniel, Senior Editorial Consultant, Readex

Resolving a Stolen Past: The General Allotment Act, Individual Indian Money Accounts, and the U.S. Congressional Serial Set by Charles D. Bernholz, Professor and Government Documents Librarian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Promoting Silkworms: Using Electronic Texts and Digital Images for a Historical Exhibition by Dana Dauterman Ricciardi, Curator, Framingham Historical Society and Museum

Transcontinental Railroad Construction and Chinese Laborers in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set by Suping Lu, Professor and Liaison Librarian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Take a look and see what interesting things you can discover!

By Alice Bampton.
Falvey recently received a bequest from the estate of James L. Mason, a 1964 Villanova graduate (B.S. in Education) who died in 2009. His cousin, Gail Ciociola, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the English department, said, “[I]t comes as no surprise to me that Jim left a bequest to Villanova and, in particular, to the library. He loved the university and with his passion for reading knew there was no better way to serve it in his passing than to honor the library where he likely spent so much of his time.”

Mason’s gift was used to purchase the Christian Recorder, which began regular publication in Philadelphia in 1861.

Find the complete story on Library News.

Have you ever wondered what those cute little hearts in the library’s catalog could do for you?  Did you notice that some catalog records are tagged? Favorites and tags can be used in different ways to organize books into lists for personal use or to share them with students and colleagues.  Here is a short overview of the functionality of these catalog features.

Tags are public, which means that everybody can see them in the online catalog. The creator of a tag does not control its use in the catalog. Others may add the same tag to other records. Take a look at the his8204 tag. Anybody can add the his8204 tag to a similar or a totally unrelated title. Records with the same tag can be retrieved with a tag search, one of the search options in the catalog. Simply type h into the search box. The new search prediction feature of the online catalog will list all existing tags with an initial h, among them his8204. Tags are a social bookmarking feature and are generally used for classification purposes. Each tag represents a piece of metadata contributed by the community. I used the his8204 tag to create a list of selected ancient sources in translation. Tags are great for students collaborating on a project. Just remember that you have no editorial control over the use of a tag. This also means that the community can contribute to your list and expand it.

Use the Favorites feature if you would like to retain editorial control over your lists. You can still share your lists with students and colleagues. Just remember that only public lists can be shared. Simply copy the URL of a list and post it online or distribute it via email. Ready to create a list? Click on Add to Favorites in the record of your first title. You will be prompted to log into your catalog account. You can choose to add titles to a new or to an already existing list. Lists can be edited and records can be enriched with personal notes and tags. Here are some examples:
Academic Writing
American Political History
Contemporary Popular Music

It is easy to create new lists and add tags in the online catalog. Give it a try. To access existing lists in your personal catalog account, simply click on My Account in the top right hand corner of the library’s Web site and log into Catalog Favorites, Tags & Lists.

Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.

Did you know that the library’s catalog includes a New Items search feature, that makes it easy and convenient to browse the new books and films acquired for your department?  You can use it to browse the new titles ordered in your field.  Many of the titles ordered in the last thirty days are unavailable and have titles in all capital letters.  These items are currently on order and have not yet arrived on the book shelf.  Please note that these order records are short records and do not include call numbers or subject headings.  Available catalog facets will only work for complete records with the exception of the format facet.

Click here to browse new history titles ordered in the last thirty days
Click here to browse new art history titles ordered in the last thirty days

Visit the New Items link on a regular basis and keep up to date with new purchases in your subject area.  Feel free to contact me with any feedback and comments that you may have.