Falvey has a wide variety of primary sources in its digital collections, such as the complete archives of the New York Times, all 96,000 titles printed in England between 1473 and 1700 through Early English Books Online, 150,000 book titles published in the eighteenth century through Eighteenth Century Collections Online, both series of Early American Imprints and American Periodicals Series Online to name but a few of the more outstanding collections. Many other primary sources remain accessible only via microfilm or microfiche as well as “hidden away” in print volumes spread throughout Falvey’s sizable collection.

In short, primary sources can be anywhere and this is what makes it so confusing for our students. The Library has set up an online primary source research guide to help students with their research. The guide covers definitions and types of primary sources with numerous examples of Library of Congress subjects for primary sources. Hyperlinks take the student into the Library’s catalog and online collections. It concludes with some useful tips on how to evaluate primary sources. Students can also set up a research appointment via an online form.

Never has research based on primary sources been more accessible than today, but even today a visit to an archive is sometimes still the only means of obtaining rare and hard to find sources. The online Primary Sources Research Guide can be found via the Library’s Course & Topics Guides site as well as via the Primary Sources tab on the History Subject Guide.

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

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The electronic version of Jefferson’s papers presents unique opportunities to Villanova University faculty and students. With a few keyboard strokes interested scholars can find all letters from Jefferson to or from any of his many correspondents. A unique lookup feature for letter authors and recipients (see image below) makes it possible to limit search results to a unique person, inconsistent spelling notwithstanding. Letters that are dispersed over 35 print volumes are brought together on the screen. The full text search feature will find all instances of any word or name in a matter of seconds. Different forms of nouns and verbs are matched through stemming. For instance, fight will be matched to fights, fought, and fighting. Word stemming is also supported for French, since a significant part of Jefferson’s correspondence is in French language: a search for œil or oeil will retrieve documents with the plural form yeux. Other search features are wildcards, phrase searching, automatic “and” queries, and exact form matches. Click here for detailed search instructions.

The correspondence can also be browsed in chronological order or by print volume. Letters can be saved as jpeg files by clicking on the small icon next to the page number at the top of each page. Unfortunately, it is not possible to save search results to a folder or email them. Each document includes a reference to the print volume, a canonical URL and a recommended citation. Please note that the canonical URL lacks Villanova ldap authentication and will hence only work on campus. Please contact me if you need authenticated URLs to individual documents for your students.

At the current time Villanova University has only access to the full text of the Jefferson papers in the American Founding Era collection even though you will be able to see and search the other collections. Links to the digital collection can be found in the Library’s catalog, on the Databases A-Z list and on the history subject guide under the primary sources tab.

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

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Here is a small selection from this year’s program:

• Highlights of 2009 Website - Web 2.0 Enhancements
  Oct. 6, 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
  ICPSR Web managers will be present for a live chat/demo of the newly released ICPSR Web site (a prerecorded orientation will also be available for viewing).
• Graphical Displays of Quantitative Information
  Oct. 6, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  This session will focus on the theoretical concerns and practical issues involved in using visual displays for quantitative information. We will discuss ways to, quite literally, look at your data.
• Tools that Support Data Analysis
  Oct. 6, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
  ICPSR provides an increasing number of tools that support data analysis. This session will provide an overview of them, including: variable-level searching, the sample characteristics tool, the recode syntax tool, subsetting tools, Quick Tables, the Bibliography of Data-related Literature, and data mapping tools.
• Census 2010 & American Community Survey
  Oct. 7, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
  Discussion of new Census products and information on Census 2010 and the ACS.
• ADD-Health
  Oct. 7, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  In this session, we will describe access to and analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The session will include a description of how to use the new restricted use contract system to acquire the 33 restricted use files and the public use files.
• Using Data in Teaching (Panel)
  Oct. 8, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  This session aims to give instructors helpful hints for using data in teaching. Panelists will include social science faculty who actively use data-based activities in a wide range of courses. They will give participants a brief overview of what they do with their own students and the effects they see from these exercises, followed by a time for interaction among participants and presenters for sharing questions and ideas. Everything from tips for choosing a dataset or topic to creating and evaluating an exercise is fair game for this session.
• Online Data Analysis Tools
  Oct. 9, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
  The objective of this session is to provide participants with hands-on experience to inform them of, or broaden their knowledge of, the chief online data analysis tool used at ICPSR, Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA). Recent features of SDA include corrections to standard errors produced for studies with complex sampling designs. This session will provide an overview of the analysis programs offered by SDA and demonstrate some of the analyses that can be run using SDA, including highlights of the new features.
• Quantitative Literacy: Assessment and Enhancement (Panel)
  Oct. 9, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
  In addition to working on efforts to help instructors more easily bring data into their courses, ICPSR is involved in a project to assess the educational impact of such exercises on students’ quantitative literacy (QL) skills. This session will provide a discussion of what QL means, an overview of related student learning outcomes, and examples of assessment techniques. Panelists will include experts on QL and faculty who have designed and implemented assessment strategies to measure QL in their courses.

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Please set up a RefWorks account by clicking on the “Sign up for an Individual Account” link before you come to the workshop and download Write-N-Cite if you bring your personal laptop.

You will learn how to

• – export references from catalogs, indexes, and digital collections,
• – edit references,
• – create folders for different projects,
• – create references from scratch in RefWorks,
• – cite in Microsoft Word with Write-N-Cite (Chicago style).

Please e-mail me at jutta.seibert@villanova.edu if you would like to attend, but have not yet signed up. The workshop is close to full and there is only limited space left.

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Other helpful features are the export to RefWorks and the QuickBib options. Both can be found by clicking on the Save, Print, Email link from the results screen. QuickBib will format selected records into the citation style of your choice in a matter of seconds.

For more bells and whistles set up a My Research account with CSA. You can find a link in the upper right hand corner of the CSA interface. My Research is your gateway to research alerts via e-mail or RSS feed, a customized search interface, and groups of preferred databases. You can also save unlimited search results and search histories to your My Research account. The price? One more login and password to remember.

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There may be no room in your syllabus for a library workshop, but you feel that your students could definitely use some extra help.  A research course guide is a practical alternative.  Please take a look at some of the online course guides from previous semesters:  art history, criminal justice, history, and sociology. In the past I have often done both, research workshops and online course guides in lieu of handouts.

Last but not least, remember to order books and videos early, so that they will be available in the Library when you or your students need them.

Here is my contact information:
E-mail: jutta.seibert@villanova.edu
Phone: 610-519-7876
Office: 1st floor, Falvey Library

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The Encyclopedia is organized thematically as follows:

Vol. 1: Methodologies, Paradigms and Sources
Vol. 2: Family, Law and Politics
Vol. 3: Family, Body, Sexuality, and Health
Vol. 4: Economics, Education, Mobility and Space
Vol. 5: Practices, Interpretations and Representations
Vol. 6: Index

The treatment of concepts such as orientalism, harem, and jihad is thorough but still comprehensible to undergraduate students. Each entry includes a bibliography which traces the scholarly literature on any given topic. Cross references are hyper-linked and easy to follow. Entries can be viewed in html or pdf formats, e-mailed and/or printed. Most entries are subdivided by geographic area, but not all geographic areas are systematically covered. A search of the full text of all entries can only be done through the Advanced Search feature. The Quick Search link, which can be limited to Search this publication only, searches only the titles of entries.

Some of the letters used to transliterate Arabic names and terms are not available on standard U.S. keyboards. Two examples are the letters kāf (ﻙ) and ḥā (ﺡ), which are occasionally rendered as ß and £ respectively. Scholars with an Arabic keyboard or those who are familiar with keyboard shortcuts can enter symbols such as £ or ß or can copy and paste them from other sources into the search box. Undergraduate students who are generally not familiar with transliteration issues may not grasp the limitations of certain search terms. Transliteration is also not consistent throughout the Encyclopedia and it is advisable to try different versions in order to catch all instances of a given term, e.g., Ibn Hanbal is also transliterated as Ibn £anbal

Links to the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures can be found in the Library’s catalog, on the Gender and Women’s Studies subject guide as well as under E-Reference Resources (History, Multicultural Studies, Sociology).

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Series 1 of this collection, entitled New Readerships, consists of  women’s and children’s periodicals, as well as humor and leisure/sport magazines and chronicles the rise of modern magazine culture. Featured are women’s magazines, such as Hearth and Home and the Women’s Penny Paper, satirical titles such as Punch and Fun, magazines aimed at the young, such as Boy’s Own Paper, as well as a number of sports and leisure magazines.

Series 2 of 19th Century UK Periodicals, entitled Empire, includes the complete run of over 90 magazines. Topics range from the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807 to the first Opium Wars (1839-42) and the “scramble for Africa” in the 1880s and 1890s.

Records to all magazines in the collection will be added to the Library’s online catalog. Each record will have a link to individual titles. Links to the digital collection itself appear on the Databases A-Z list (under N), as well as on the primary sources tab of the history subject guide.

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The Encyclopedia of American Urban History, the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, and the Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods are some outstanding new titles in this collection. Among the titles previously owned in print are the Encyclopedia of Juvenile Justice, the Encyclopedia of Social Problems, and the Encyclopedia of Social Theory, to name but a few.

Direct links to individual titles or to the complete collection can be added to WebCT as well as to the Library’s course guides. Links to individual entries are another possibility. A good example is Appendix A: Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present of the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, which includes 60 pages worth of data such as  persons obtaining legal permanent resident status by region and selected country of last residence, 1820-2006.

Noteworthy features of the Sage e-reference collection are a citation tool that offers a choice of three citation styles (APA, MLA and Chicago), numerous active URLs on the further reading lists, and the option to e-mail entries to any e-mail address.

Access to these titles is available via the Library’s subject guides (sociology, criminal justice, history), the E-Reference Resources list and the Library’s catalog.

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Because the site license includes off-campus access through LDAP (Villanova email ID and password) authentication, readers who already have a personal or departmental subscription may consider canceling it now. Those who still enjoy holding the print version of the Chronicle in their hands will find it on the periodical shelves on the first floor of the Library.

For quick, convenient access to the online Chronicle, bookmark the link found in the Library’s catalog. Better yet, create an RSS feed to bring the Chronicle’s features to your browser automatically. For information on how to set up RSS feeds and download a free feed reader, check the Chronicle’s web site.

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