By Jutta Seibert

At long last, Love Data Week is here! Every year the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, better known as ICPSR, hosts Love Data Week in February and invites the academic community to adopt datasets to show their love for data-driven research.

At its core, ICPSR is a data archive that offers a range of value-added services such as online analysis, educational programs, and data management tools. Students, faculty, and staff associated with Villanova University have access to the complete menu of services and archived datasets. Questions regarding ICPSR should be directed to the University’s official ICPSR representative, Social Sciences Librarian Nicole Daly.

The sheer size of the archive is difficult to grasp for anyone not familiar with ICPSR. However, finding relevant data is amazingly easy. Search terms are matched not just to variables or dataset descriptions but also to data-related publications. Most important of all, ICPSR is not just for political scientists and sociologists, as its name may imply; humanists and historians are among the scholars who deposit qualitative as well as quantitative data. ICPSR hosts self-published replication data sets through openICPSR. Keep this in mind for the next time a research grant requires you to share your data for replication purposes.

To show my love of data I adopted the Berry Slave Value Database. Choosing one dataset from the multitude of data available on the topic of slavery was not easy. So many options and so little time. In the end it came down to a choice between Dr. Berry’s dataset, which offered historical sale and appraisal prices covering the years 1797 through 1865 from ten U.S. states, and the data archived by Drs. Fogel and Engerman, which include historical sale and appraisal prices covering the years 1775 through 1865 from eight southern states. I chose to adopt Dr. Berry’s dataset, which was submitted through the OpenICPSR program. OpenICPSR datasets can only be analyzed by downloading them from ICPSR into statistical software, whereas many of the ICPSR curated datasets can be analyzed online on the ICPSR website. The Berry Slave Value Database features research data that Dr. Berry collected for her monograph The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, In the Building of a Nation, which is available at Falvey in print as well as electronically.

Falvey staff invites you to take a closer look at what ICPSR has to offer and to adopt a dataset this week whether you are a humanist or a social scientist. For more information about ICPSR and some of the other data resources Falvey offers, join us throughout the week in one of our lunch workshops. Join us online using the hashtag #LoveData23 to see how institutions around the world are celebrating Love Data 23.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

Falvey currently offers trial access to the Art & Architecture ePortal (A&AePortal), an authoritative source of academic art and architecture books. Electronic access to art, art history, and architecture monographs and journals is a somewhat recent development. Reproduction quality of image and copyright permissions were among the major drivers for this delay. Technological changes in recent years have resulted in electronic image quality that is often superior to that in print media. Covid-19 access restrictions to print collections accelerated and incentivized the transition to e-books in art and art history.

A&AePortal is a great example of a high-quality and innovative e-book collection in this discipline. It features a collection of authoritative works on art and architecture including artist monographs, surveys, museum catalogs, and catalogues raisonnés. Most works are part of the catalog of Yale University Press publications complemented by selected books from other highly regarded university and museum presses including electronic access to the acclaimed The Image of the Black in Western Art series edited by Bindman, Gates, and Dalton and published by Belknap Press.

Falvey owns many of the works in print but some of these critical works have been lost or damaged over the years and are currently out of print. Online access offers the convenience of easy access to often oversized and weighty books. In some cases black and white images that appeared in the print publications have been replaced with high-quality color copies. The portal features a searchable image archive, citation and annotation tools, as well as a personal book shelf.

Library staff invites you to explore the A&AePortal. Trial access to the collection will end on December 30th. We are looking forward to your comments.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

This fall, Ugegbe: Jọnalụ Ụwandịigbo joined a small group of peer-reviewed academic journals published and hosted by Falvey Library. Ugegbe is published entirely in the Igbo language, one of the major languages spoken in Nigeria. It is also the only peer-reviewed journal published in Igbo and, thus, a powerful symbol of Igbo vibrance, despite the much debated UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) prediction that Igbo is a dying language. Falvey Library and its staff are proud to support this new open access publishing project, which reflects the Library’s values of openness, inclusion, and excellence.

Why did Villanova University become the home of Ugegbe? First of all, one of the editors of the journal is Chiji Akọma, Chair of the Global Interdisciplinary Studies Department and Professor of English at Villanova. Second, while Ugegbe is in many ways unique, it is not uncommon for academic journals in African languages to be published or hosted in the diaspora. The Global South remains an unequal partner in global scholarly communication networks. Factors that impinge on access include the cost of journal subscriptions, article publication fees imposed on authors, the dominance of a few languages in global research communities, and membership on editorial boards of academic journals.

So why publish an academic journal in Igbo? Given the sheer numbers of native Igbo speakers worldwide – roughly 30 million – the question should really be: Why not publish a journal in Igbo? There is ample evidence of the cognitive value of mother tongue instruction especially at the elementary and secondary levels. Yet youth in many countries, especially those with histories of colonial conquest, are expected to learn in languages other than their native tongues. Language builds community, carries cultural values, and is in many ways fundamental to one’s identity. Many nations recognize the value of instruction in the native tongue but lack the means to extend native language instruction to the university level. Ugegbe is a vital building block to create a research level platform for Igbo. But equally important, as Akọma put it, “Ugegbe is premised on the promotion of indigenous languages as complete and legitimate vehicles for communicating the cultural and intellectual production systems of these communities.”

Many Villanovans may not be aware that they are familiar with the work of one or more writers whose native tongue is Igbo but who write in English: Chinua Achebe wrote the arguably most widely read and studied African novel, Things Fall Apart (1958). He also wrote a short essay about the role of English in African literature, “English and the African Writer” (Transition 75/76 (1997): 342-49). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant, is best known for her acclaimed novel Americanah (2013), which won the National Book Critics Circle award.

Drafting this post, I looked for examples of academic journals published in African languages and was surprised how difficult an endeavor this turned out to be. Admittedly, some African languages are spoken by comparatively small populations. However, Igbo boasts roughly 30 million native speakers, about the same number as all native speakers of all Scandinavian languages put together. I soon came to realize that African languages that were actively used in scholarly communication were generally those that held “official language” status in an African country, such as Amharic in Ethiopia and Swahili in Tanzania. I found a few examples through African Journals Online (AJO). Nevertheless, the vast majority of African journals hosted on AJO is published in English, including 257 Nigerian academic journals. Academic journals in a few African languages, such as Amharic and Swahili, do exist, but they are very rare gems indeed.

Falvey’s journal hosting program currently encompasses eight academic journals. The program dates back to 2010 and utilizes the Open Journal System (OJS) platform, a free journal publishing software, created and distributed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). The contents of these journals can be freely accessed from anywhere. The driving force behind PKP and OJS is John Willinsky. OJS lays claim to being “the most widely used open source journal publishing platform in existence, with over 25,000 journals using it worldwide.” PKP also offers open source monograph and open conference publishing software. Reasons for making academic journals freely available online (open access model) are generally the same as those given for publishing open access articles in traditional journals: removing access hurdles, preserving academic freedom, increasing the diversity of participants in scholarly communications networks, and reducing market pressures on academic niche journals.

Further Reading

• Bgoya, Walter, and Mary Jay. “Publishing in Africa from Independence to the Present Day.” Research in African Literatures 44, no. 2 (2013): 17–34. https://doi-org.ezp1.villanova.edu/10.2979/reseafrilite.44.2.17
• Madiba, Mbulungeni. “Language and Academic Achievement: Perspectives on the Potential Role of Indigenous African Languages as a Lingua Academica.” Per Linguam 28, no. 2 (2012). https://doi.org/10.5785/28-2-528
• Ondari-Okemwa, E. (2007). Scholarly publishing in sub-Saharan Africa in the twenty-first century: Challenges and opportunities. First Monday, 12(10). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v12i10.1966
• Ouedraogo, Rakissouiligri Mathieu. “The Use of African Languages in Educational Systems in Africa.” IICBA Newsletter 4, no. 4 (December 2002). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231594.locale=en
• Ouane, Adama, and Christine Glanz. Why and How Africa Should Invest in African Languages and Multilingual Education: An Evidence- and Practice-based Policy Advocacy Brief. Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2010. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED540509.pdf
• Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia. “’We Spoke English to Set Ourselves Apart’: How I Rediscovered my Mother Tongue.” The Guardian, March 14, 2019. Accessed October 21, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/14/we-spoke-english-to-set-ourselves-apart-nigeria-childhood-igbo-language
• Willinsky, John. Copyright’s Broken Promise: How to Restore the Law’s Ability to Promote the Progress of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2023.
  https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/106529

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

Villanova faculty members, students, and staff who are interested in Japanese society, culture, and politics can currently explore the archive of the Japan Times, the longest running Japanese newspaper in English language. Trial access to the archive will be available until Aug. 5.

Motosado Zumoto launched the Japan Times in March of 1897 and served as its founding editor. His goal was to promote Japanese perspectives and values among Westerners and to give Japanese people the opportunity to read and discuss local and international news in English. Japanese business people, students, and foreign residents represented the bulk of the newspaper’s audience. While the Japan Times styled itself as an independent daily, there was always a measure of government influence. Prince Ito Hirobumi, a four-time prime minister of Japan, financed the paper for some time. In 1933, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs appointed Hitoshi Ashida, former ministry official, as chief editor, reducing the Times to an outlet for Imperial Japanese government propaganda.

Also included in this database is The Japan Advertiser, a competing newspaper which eventually merged with the Japan Times. The Advertiser was written by and for missionaries, diplomats, merchants, and journalists who were based in Japan. Search results can be limited by imperial period. The archive includes extras and supplements as well as images and ads. The most recent issues currently available in the archive are from 2021.

A link to the collection will be available on the Databases A-Z list until the trial ends on Aug. 5.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

You asked for it and we delivered: Falvey recently acquired permanent access to the digital archive of UK Parliamentary Papers. The archive comprises documents from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, as well as some earlier papers. The twenty-first century collection is not available to the Villanova community, but some of the papers from this period are freely available through the UK’s Parliamentary Archives.

The House of Parliament, as seen from Lambeth.
Image taken from “The Earth and Its Inhabitants. Europe. Vol. 4, The British Isles” by Élisée Reclus. New York: Appleton and Co., 1881, p. 184. Courtesy of Hathi Trust.

Research applications are endless given the scope of the archive. Its contents hold wide appeal for scholars from a range of disciplines, including political science, history, and Irish studies. They cover a vast sweep of events tracing the political discourse on matters large and small. Expect to find sessional papers, acts, bills, agreements, public petitions, and reports among the archived documents. Among the many issues and events covered figure universal suffrage, the slave trade and its abolition, the poor laws, child labor, mandatory vaccination, a long list of wars, national trade statistics on products such as cotton, coffee, tea, sugar, timber, and rubber, government funded expeditions such as the ill-fated arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin, British overseas colonies and their struggles for independence, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland to name just a few topics.

The archive offers an advanced search interface and search facets that will narrow results by date, document type, Parliament chamber, and subject. Document features, such as maps, plans, tables, graphs, and illustrations, are indexed and easy to identify. Documents can be downloaded in PDF format.

This archive does not generate document citations, but the Details view includes common and Cockton titles, date, series, document number, and a permalink; in short, all the necessary elements. I am including below a selection of documents that illustrate the broad sweep of archival sources included in this archive.

Let us know if you have any further questions or visit the ProQuest Guide to UK Parliamentary Papers. Access to the archive is provided via the Databases A-Z list and the Library’s catalog.

A Sampling of Documents from the UK Parliamentary Papers Archive

• The Belfast Agreement: An Agreement Reached at the Multi-Party Talks on Northern Ireland. Command Papers 3883, 1997/98.
  Better known as Good Friday Agreement.
• Children’s Employment Commission. First Report of the Commissioners. Mines. London: William Clowes and Sons, 1842.
• Select Committee on State of Children Employed in Manufactories of United Kingdom. Report of the Minutes of Evidence. House of Commons Papers 397, 1816.
• Reports from Protectors of Slaves in Colonies of Demerara, Berbice, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius. House of Commons Papers 262, 1830-31.
• Treaties between Great Britain and Portugal, France, Russia, Netherlands, Sardinia, Austria, Prussia, United States of America, and Saxony, 1815, on Territories, Commerce, and Slave Trade (Class B.). House of Commons Papers 2, 1816.
• Bill to prevent Spreading of Infection of Small-Pox (as amended by Committee). Bills and Acts 287, 1808.
• Vaccination Acts (repeal). A Bill to Repeal the Vaccination Acts. Bills and Acts 204, 1911.
• Papers relating to Blockade of Ports of Confederate State. Command Papers 2931, 1862.
• Account of Quantity of Refined Sugar and Sugar Candy imported into United Kingdom, 1848-68 […]. House of Commons Papers 191, 1868-69.
• Bill for Relief of H.M. Roman Catholic Subjects (as amended by Committee). Bills and Acts 104, 1829.
• An Act for making a Railway from London to Southampton. [25th July 1834.] Bills and Acts 3, 1834.

Illustration of the work performed by Margaret Hipps, age seventeen, in a UK coal mine.
Taken from “Children’s Employment Commission. First Report of the Commissioners. Mines,”
published in London by William Clowes and Sons in 1842 (fig. 19, p. 95). UK Parliamentary Papers (ProQuest)

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

Stamp commemorating
the 50th anniversary of Izvestiia.

Falvey Library recently acquired the complete digital archive of Izvestiia (Известия) from East View. Next to the Pravda, Izvestiia is likely the most widely recognized newspaper in Russia. In print since 1917, it was once the official organ of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR but has changed hands several times since the collapse of the Union. It remains a popular and widely respected news source in Russia today.

The Izvestiia digital archive offers the Villanova community a unique opportunity to explore life in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. It goes without saying that this is a Russian language archive. The search interface includes a virtual keyboard to facilitate full text searching using the Cyrillic alphabet. A standard Western keyboard can be used to enter search terms in transliterated (Romanized) Russian. Alternatively, one can also browse the archive by date. A small selection of Izvestiia articles is available in The Current Digest of the Russian Press for those looking for translations, but only back to 1949 and in some cases only in condensed format and always without illustrations. Note that The Current Digest typically lags a week or two behind actual events due to the logistics of selecting and translating news.

Izvestiia, January 24, 1924.

The coverage of the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis illustrates well the different opportunities presented by these two news archives. Izvestiia journalists covered the events extensively as they unfolded. Indeed, the paper’s no holds barred coverage, which included many explicit images, led to the ouster of its editor-in-chief Raf Shakirov. Scholars looking for translations will find a sparse selection in The Current Digest issue from September 29 of the same year, published four weeks after events started to unfold. None of the controversial images published in Izvestiia are available through The Current Digest. On the plus side, The Current Digest brings together content from a wide range of Russian news sources in translation.

East View offers a well-designed search interface which can be used to explore a single as well as multiple archives simultaneously. I already mentioned the virtual keyboard that facilitates searching in writing systems other than the Latin alphabet. Available alphabets include old Russian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The advanced search interface presents typical search features, including date limits and author and publication title search fields. Results can be sorted by publication date, relevancy, publication source, article title, word count, and author if they are indexed. The search results page includes an Excerpts toggle that reveals text excerpts with highlighted search terms for each result.

Articles of interest can be read online in their original formatting, downloaded as pdf files, or printed directly. Available citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago style formatting include persistent URLs which can be readily shared with others. Note that citation formatting needs to be reviewed as author names and article titles are often missing. For example, East View offers the following Chicago style citation for the article “Russia’s Far East Dilemma” by Natasha Doff, which appeared in the Moscow News on August 21, 2012:

“Page 1” Moscow News. 2012. https://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/72935691.

Readers can easily move from reading a single article to browsing the complete issue of a publication page by page.

East View search interface.

Unfortunately, the Izvestiia digital archive is updated only once a year. Currently, the archive includes content up to the end of December 2021. 2022 issues will be loaded in March or April of next year. A link to the archive can be found on the Library’s Databases A-Z list, in the catalog, and on the Russian area studies research guide.

Russian news sources available through Falvey Library

• Izvestiia Digital Archive, 1917- (East View)
  Offers digital access to one of the longest running Russian newspapers. The archive covers the Soviet era in its entirety as well as the collapse of the Union and the Russian Federation. Yearly updates are added in the spring of the following year.
• The Current Digest of the Russian Press, 1949- (East View)
  Presents weekly selections of Russian-language press materials, translated into English.
• Moscow News Digital Archive, 1930-2014 (East View)
  Offers access to the contents of the longest running English-language newspaper published in Russia.
• Imperial Russian Newspapers (East View)
  Presents open access to selected Russian newspapers published between 1782 and 1917.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

AMODDO, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Falvey Library expanded its history reference collection with the addition of The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History published under the umbrella of the Oxford Research Encyclopedias (ORE) project by Oxford University Press. The collection currently consists of over 450 peer-reviewed essays written by recognized experts in the field. Essays are regularly updated, and new content is continuously added to the online platform. Thomas Spear, Professor Emeritus of African History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serves as the editor in chief of the African History encyclopedia project. Scholars can search across 25 subject encyclopedias hosted on the platform or focus their search on The Encyclopedia of African History. The University currently has access to ten out of 25 encyclopedias including American, Latin American, and Asian history. A small selection of essays from all encyclopedias is freely accessible online.

For the longest time African history has been neglected by publishers. The few encyclopedias with a focus on Africa which have been published in recent decades were limited in scope. ORE offers a refreshing departure with its broad interdisciplinary approach. Essays included in The Encyclopedia of African History range from “Africa in the World: History and Historiography” by Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia to “The Zanzibar Revolution and Its Aftermath” by G. Thomas Burgess. Essays such as “Comics in Colonial Africa” by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie and “Football in Lusophone Africa” by Nuno Domingos illustrate the broad scope of the project. The shared ORE platform facilitates discovery of related content in other encyclopedias. Pertinent examples include “Colonial Rule and Its Political Legacies in Africa” by Amanda Lea Robinson and “Land Grabs: The Politics of the Land Rush Across Africa” by Pauline Peters from The Encyclopedia of Politics and “The Black Atlantic and the African Diaspora” by Walter C. Rucker and “Ancient Egyptian Religion” by Korshi Dosoo in The Encyclopedia of Religion.

While distinctly academic in nature, essays are written in a style that makes them accessible to undergraduates and mature scholars alike. Essays generally begin with a summary before offering a comprehensive overview of the topic together with its historiography. They also identify available primary sources and digital archives. Bibliographies include links to the Falvey collections. New essays are added monthly.

The Library’s Databases A-Z list includes a listing for Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Direct access to The Encyclopedia of African History is also available via the Library’s catalog.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

Scholarly monographs and peer-reviewed journal articles hold positions of trust in the academic community. This trust is grounded in the peer-review process and the editorial rigor of academic presses. Much has been written about the reliability and sustainability of peer review, but comparatively little is known about the ways in which academic communities deal with the fallout of retracted publications and the existing publishing record, particularly regarding monographs.

In 1997, a group of academic editors who were concerned about author misconduct gathered informally to discuss best practices and later formalized their collaboration with the foundation of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It has published a range of guidelines to date, including their Principles of Transparency for Scholarly Publishing, Guidance on Predatory Publishing, a Code of Conduct for Editors, and Retraction Guidelines. Many academic publishers and their editors follow the COPE retraction guidelines, which include, among others, the following reasons for retractions: the fabrication, manipulation, or falsification of sources and/or data, plagiarism, and experimental or mathematical errors.

Academic journals follow widely shared and robust practices to identify retracted journal articles. Typically, a statement of retraction preceding the article itself informs the reader about the reasons for retractions as does a “Retracted” watermark in case the reader missed the statement. For example, the article about fraternal socialism by Charles K. Armstrong, published in volume 5 of Cold War History, is clearly identified as retracted for reasons outlined in the attached statement of retraction. COPE does not recommend to delete retracted articles, as they are part of the scholarly record, may have been cited, may continue to be cited, and, indeed, scholars may want to consult them.

Unlike in the case of journals, there appear to be no standard practices for dealing with disputed monographs. While scholarly journals are published mostly in electronic format, monographs are still widely acquired in print format for library collections. Once a library acquires a print monograph it is out of the reach of its publisher. In the past, libraries inserted retraction notices into issues of print journals in their collection, but no comparable practice existed for print books. Most academic publishers simply withdrew disputed monographs from their catalog.

However, new and used copies of “retracted” books continue to be sold through the independent book trade for years to come. Recent digital publication models for monographs offer publishers an opportunity to identify “retracted” works. So far there appears to be little appetite to do so, but the recently established COPE working group to support book editors and publishers may yet address this need.

The question of what to do with “retracted” monographs is one that Falvey Library recently had to address in the case of Tyranny of the Weak by Charles K. Armstrong. The author was accused of falsification, fabrication of sources, and plagiarism. Retraction Watch and Wikipedia offer detailed accounts of the affair. In 2019, Cornell University Press, which had first published the book in 2013, withdrew the book from its print catalog, but did not issue a public statement as to why it “retracted” the work. Amazon and other book vendors continued to trade in existing print copies and JSTOR continues to offer electronic access for institutions who purchased an electronic copy.

At the time, historians in related fields of study were widely aware of the scandal through professional communication channels. After all, Armstrong was a well regarded faculty member at Columbia University and had won the prestigious John King Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association for Tyranny of the Weak in 2014. He returned the award in 2017 after first accusations of plagiarism and source fabrication surfaced in 2016.  Students and the general public continue to read and reference Tyranny of the Weak trusting in the pedigree of its author and the press that published the work. Readers can find it in well over 700 libraries according to WorldCat records. Amazon and other vendors continue to sell new and used print copies. And, once again, it can be bought in electronic format from de Gruyter. De Gruyter does not inform the public about the history of the book, but features numerous positive reviews that predate the scandal.

After weighing available options and consulting with history faculty, Falvey Library decided to keep the book in its collection but also informed readers of its history by inserting the following note into its print copy and the related catalog record: “Cornell University Press has withdrawn this book from its catalog after substantiated accusations of plagiarism and source fabrication. The Library decided to retain its copy but to alert its patrons to the issue. Details about the case can be found on Retraction Watch (https://retractionwatch.com/).” The main rationale for retention was the integrity of the academic publication record. Tyranny of the Weak is widely cited and scholars should be able to consult it. Those that consult the book here at Villanova University will find the inserted “retraction” note at the front of the book. Alas, the same cannot be said for copies requested through InterLibrary Loan.

Recommended Resources:

• Retraction Watch
• Marcus, Adam. “When ‘out of print’ really means ‘retracted.'” Retraction Watch, October 21, 2021.
• COPE Guidelines
• Jaschik, Scott. “Amid Dispute, Award Returned.” Inside Higher Ed, July 5, 2017.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Library.

By Jutta Seibert.

On Friday, April 1, the National Archives released the 1950 census in digital format. Confused? Didn’t the Census Bureau just release data from the 2020 data? Aren’t 1950 census data yesterday’s news?

Let’s take a closer look: Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution mandates a population count every ten years to determine the number of representatives and direct taxes for each state in the Union. Thus, we have a snapshot of the US population once a decade, starting in 1790. Population counts are released as soon as possible after the decennial enumeration. The summary data are published by the Census Bureau. However, names, addresses, and data units too small to preserve anonymity are not part of the publicly available data. The so-called “72-year rule” protects individual census answers for 72 years.

Last week, on April 1, 2022, 1950 census records passed the 72-year threshold and entered into the public domain.

In principle, enumerating the population to determine equitable representation is a straightforward mandate, but the census, its questionnaires, and its results have been disputed again and again. Today’s census forms are noticeably different from the 1950 census form and bear little resemblance to the forms used in 1790. Enumerating the population is a monumental and expensive undertaking, and Congress has taken advantage of its census mandate to learn more about the nation. Questions were added and dropped as they became obsolete. For example, the 1930 census captured the presence of radio sets in a household, the age at first marriage, languages spoken in a home, and English language proficiency.

Reverend Smith enumerates a Navajo family during the 1930 Census.

Other census questions were and remain contentious, such as questions about personal wealth, citizenship, and race. The 2020 census did not include a citizenship question, despite pressure by the Trump administration, but it was a standard question for many years and part of the 1950 questionnaire. Answers to questions probing individual estates were generally considered unreliable and have repeatedly been changed. Today, the home ownership questions are the last reminders of Congress’ interest in the financial well-being of the general population.

The census question probing the racial makeup of the nation has persisted throughout the Census’ history with few changes apart from the addition of “racial” categories. For the first time, the 2020 census asked people of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin to fill in their ethnic as well as racial identity. In future years the question about sex may be disputed, and other options may be added as our understanding of this category evolves. For now, only the “male” and “female” categories are recognized answers.

Keypunch operator, 1950 Census

Can we at least be sure that everyone is counted, even if we don’t agree how individuals should be counted? People have been left out of the census for many reasons. For example, American Indians were not counted until 1860 and even then, only those American Indians who had “renounced tribal rules” were enumerated. The 1850 and 1860 censuses enumerate only “free” people. The enslaved population was enumerated in separate slave schedules under the names of their enslavers. They remain to this day nameless in the census records. Other reasons for counting errors include lack of trust in the government and underpaid enumerators.

Despite their many flaws and shortcomings, census records offer unique insights into the composition of the US population and are popular among family historians who mostly access them through genealogical databases, such as Ancestry. The Villanova community has free access to Ancestry Library through Falvey Library. Alas, the complete 1950 census records will not be available in Ancestry Library until later this summer as indexing and correcting computer-generated data remains a time-consuming process. For those who cannot wait, there are the records just released by the National Archives. The digital copies of the microfilmed records offer interesting research opportunities.

Start with your grandparents or great grandparents. Was somebody in your family a residential student at Villanova College? Then take a look at the records of tract D-97, 23-216, Radnor Township, Delaware County, which have just been released. They record the resident population of the College and the Augustinian Monastery as enumerated on April 4, 1950. The College had considerably expanded after the end of the second World War, thanks to the GI bill, and counted more than 800 residential students and many more non-residential students who were counted at their place of residence. The residential student population was all male and all white, except for two Chinese students. While only a comparatively small number of foreign students were enrolled in those years, many of them hailed from Latin America and may have identified as Mexican, Chicano, Puerto Rican, or Cuban on the most recent census form. A small number of female students were enrolled at the College, but none of them lived on campus until the College of Nursing became an autonomous unit in 1953. Try to find Father Daniel Falvey, OSA, after whom the Library was named and who served as the College Librarian in 1950 among the residents of the College. Can you tell us where and when he was born? It’s on the record! Let us know if you would like to learn more about the census.

1950 Census record, Delaware County, tract D-97, 23-216.

Related resources:

• AncestryLibrary (ProQuest)
  Provides access to a range of databases with biographical information. Includes census data, vital records, directories, voter lists, immigration records, images, and more.
• 1950 Census Website (National Archives)
• 1950 Census Summary Data Report (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1951, US Census Bureau)
• United States Census Explorer (US Census Bureau)
• 2020 Census Results (US Census Bureau)
• 2020 Census Questionnaire (US Census Bureau)

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jutta Seibert

In prior decades, access to historical news sources has been revolutionized through large-scale digitization projects. Yet many of the newly created digital newspaper archives remain tied to institutional subscriptions that limit the number and types of archives academic communities can access.

Regrettably, the digitization of non-western newspapers has been neglected for many reasons, including language, writing systems, and demand. These important historical sources were collecting dust in remote storage facilities of large research libraries until 2019 when the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), recognizing the unique value of these collections, partnered with East View, a publisher specializing in Russian, Chinese, and Arabic news databases, to develop a series of digital collections that would provide “global access to a wide selection of newspapers from around the world.”

Thus the Global Press Archive was born. It currently features five open access collections, besides a few more collections that require subscriptions.

Geographic distribution of newspapers in the Global Press Archive.

East View is well known in academic circles as a provider of Russian and Chinese news sources. East View’s experience in digitizing news sources published in non-Roman scripts made them a good fit for CRL who was looking for a partner with expertise in digitizing non-Western newspapers. CRL member institutions hold rich primary source collections from all around the world, and while local interest in these sources can be low, the global communities which produced these newspapers in the first place would be given the unique opportunity to access them freely online.

CRL raised the necessary funds to create a number of open access collections of non-Western news sources and as a result five open access collections were published for the Global Press Archive project since 2019.

Gazetnyĭ mir Rossii XIX – nachala XX veka

The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection features a selection of 32 newspapers published between 1782 and 1917. Most of them are from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but some regional titles are also included. The search interface features a transliteration table and a Cyrillic keyboard to facilitate discovery. Bibliographic indexes of newspapers published in Imperial Russia are part of the collection. Some of the contents of the collection were supplied by the National Library of Russia in collaboration with CRL.

The Southeast Asian Newspapers collection comprises 118 newspapers published in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam between 1831 and 1958. Most of these news publications were short lived, and the archive will then only include a few years’ worth of issues. The newspapers were produced in a range of Southeast Asian languages including Filipino, Indonesian, Javanese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and Thai. Those unable to read any of these languages might be interested in the Arabic, French, English, Spanish, and Dutch publications that are part of this collection. A quick search for independence retrieves matches for various forms of the word, such as the Spanish independencia and the French inédependance. Most of the newspapers in the archive can only be browsed as the search interface only permits searches for words using the Roman alphabet.

The Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers collection includes about 80 newspapers, mostly from Syria and Lebanon, but also from Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Palestine. Most newspapers are in Arabic but a few papers published in English and French are also included. The collection spans from the second half of the 19th century to the early 20th century. While most of the content of this collection is freely available, access to five newspapers is limited to CRL member institutions. The search interface includes an Arabic keyboard to enter and retrieve search terms in Arabic.

Newspaper vendors in Beirut, 1956. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

El Debate, June 11, 1910.
Courtesy of Global Press Archive.

The Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers collection offers by far the greatest number of publications with nearly 1,000 newspapers from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence, and revolutionary periods (1807-1929). The newspapers are predominantly in Spanish but a few French, English, and German language titles are also included. While holdings for many of the newspapers featured in this collection are available only in short runs, the titles are often unique and, in many cases, represent the only existing record of a newspaper’s short-lived publication. The collection was digitized based on archival newspaper holdings of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, a research library at the University of Texas at Austin, considered to be the preeminent Latin American library in the United States.

The Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers collection comprises 292 newspapers spanning the period 1911-1949. All papers are in Chinese. Sadly, the collection lacks a Chinese character keyboard and can hence only be browsed as search results will be limited to ads and names that use the Roman alphabet. Newspapers from more than 20 major cities are included covering most regions of mainland China.

Open access is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries and its member institutions. A link to the Global Press Archive collection can be found under “G” on the Library’s Databases A-Z list.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.