By Darren Poley

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a sea change in the desire for online access to books previously only available in a physical format. Print books are still an important part of any academic library collection, but researchers have discovered the advantages of e-books.

Bloomsbury is a publisher of books in the areas of theology and religion, which has been acquiring the ability to make accessible many books, by several publishers, which were previously not available in an online format. Part of this initiative was to create the Theology and Religion Online (TARO) platform for e-books.

As with all e-books in Falvey Library’s collection, those on the TARO platform and in the modules listed below are accessible to Villanova students and faculty via Falvey’s online catalog. Each individual e-book is cataloged with a unique link to just that one book.

Nevertheless, awareness of the availability of these e-book collections is important, so those acquired from Bloomsbury for Theology and Religious Studies are in the spotlight here.

The collections which Falvey now has access on the TARO platform are:

• Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries
• Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
• Bloomsbury Religion in North America Collection
• Library of Catholic Thought
• T&T Clark Jesus Library
• T&T Clark Theology Library

It is worth noting that the Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries span over 86 volumes and is one of the most trusted and long-running scholarly commentaries series; The Library of Catholic Thought has in it the New American Bible Revised Edition and The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century online; and Bloomsbury Religion in North America covers the basics, including e-books under the heading of study skills.

In addition to TARO, Falvey now also has access to Bloomsbury’s online collections for theology books published 2013-2022, and e-book access to many books on Religion and Theology published by I.B. Tauris, such as:

• Biblical Studies & Theology Archive
• Religion & Theology 2016-2018
• Religious Studies Archive 1993-2015

Many of the online collections to which Falvey now provides access were the result of Bloomsbury working with publishers to digitize older books previously not available in the online format.

See for example:

• Religious Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Biblical Studies Landmark Texts (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)
• Christian Doctrines Archive 1988-2013
• Pauline Studies Archive 1984-2012
• Christology Archive 1982-2011
• International Critical Commentary 1901-2014

Darren G. Poley is Associate Director of Research Services and Scholarly Engagement, and Theology, Humanities & Classical Studies Librarian 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.

If you are looking for an alternative way to search PubMed (MEDLINE), check out MEDLINE via EBSCOhost.

Created by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), MEDLINE is an authoritative bibliographic database that contains citations and abstracts for biomedical and health journals used by health care professionals, nurses, clinicians, and researchers engaged in clinical care, public health, and health policy development. MEDLINE uses Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), which help for crafting a more focused search.

Nursing students and faculty are likely very familiar with searching on CINAHL via EBSCOhost. Please feel free to try searching MEDLINE on a familiar platform like EBSCOhost. A quick tutorial video is available through EBSCOhost. As always, please feel free to reach out to a librarian with any questions on searching on any of Falvey Library’s databases.

Sarah Hughes is Nursing & Life Sciences Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a key tool used by both entrepreneurs and existing organizations to launch, grow, and sustain businesses and social enterprises.  Villanova’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship coaches innovators across campus on how to work through the BMC for their ventures.

Completing a Business Model Canvas is a key requirement for competing in the Villanova’s Student Entrepreneurship Competition (VSEC), held during the spring semester, which awards over $20 thousand dollars in prize money.

The Library collaborated with Stephen Green, Assistant Director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to curate a Business Model Canvas Guide with databases, books, articles, and research tips for filling in the BMC.  When I met with Green in the IDEA Lab, he said completing the BMC is required for VSEC because it is a necessary tool for “visualizing and analyzing any ventures’ strategy.”  He remarked that “teams use the BMC to stay on track and keep each other accountable.” Determining optimal revenue or profit models, he noted, prove to be most challenging for many teams.

The Business Model Canvas Guide may be ideal for entrepreneurs with a DIY orientation. But Business Librarian, Linda Hauck, is also available for consultations for those who appreciate a personalized, targeted approach.

Talking with fellow entrepreneurs is another great way to generate ideas about how to approach populating your BMC. Nova Women Entrepreneurship Panel, held on Monday, Oct. 17, at 5 p.m. in the IDEA Lab is a great opportunity to learn from founders. You can register here.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Current news databases are used by researchers across disciplines to stay current with developments, construct meaning out of evolving events, and analyze content for political, social, cultural, and public health trends.

Having access to a wide range of local, regional, national, and international sources is key.  Falvey Library has significantly improved access to news by subscribing to Factiva, which adds over 6000 unique, full text titles to our collection, including The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Chicago Daily Herald. Transcripts of National Public Radio’s Code Switch and Fox News’ Hannity are searchable. Many foreign language publications are included as well.

The range of trade news is impressive, from Backpacker to Diabetes Week and Global Warming Focus to Oil Market Intelligence. Factiva is a Dow Jones product so the news coverage and indexing is particularly good for financial, economic, and business topics.

The search interface is flexible.  The “Free Text” search box can be used to replicate a search similar to Google; the “Search Form” provides prompts for more focused queries; and examples of advanced search commands facilitate precision searching.  When using either the “Free Text” or “Search Form” handy options for filtering results by subject, industry, region are available. Factiva’s default is to limit searches to the most recent 3 months, so researchers with a deeper time line will need to modify the date range.

Factiva’s Company/Markets tab is an added bonus. Company profiles describe the business segments, corporate family, financial results, and peers, but their real advantage is the depth and breath of company news provided.  The industry snapshots are less robust, but do rank key competitors, facilitate a deep dive into the news, and offer recent analyst reports.

Factiva compliments our other news aggregators, Access World News, Nexis Uni, and ABI Inform, and our direct subscriptions to top news such as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times.

For a full list of news sources including archives see Databases A-Z filtered by newspapers.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian 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.

Happy Pride! Falvey Memorial Library is celebrating Pride Month, and we invite you to celebrate along with us.

It is in this spirit that we encourage the community to increase awareness about LGBTQIA+ related topics, needs, and challenges.

Villanova University provides an array of resources for LGBTQIA members of our community, from VU Pride to scholarship information to Safe Zone training. We invite you to explore and discover a wealth of information there.

Similarly, in honor of Pride Month, we offer a LGBTQIA+ reading list, including a wide range of novels, poetry, non-fiction, and film. They span hundreds of years and include classics along with modern works. No list of this nature could ever be comprehensive, but we hope that this list, will serve as a starting point. 

Pride Month Recommended Reading List

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.