The history/sociology liaison team lost one of its original members – David Burke, who will devote more time to resource management and the creation and organization of metadata in Falvey’s growing digital library.

Laura Bang, a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s library science school, replaces David on the liaison team. Laura joined Falvey this past spring as a curatorial assistant in Special and Digital Collections. Originally from Santa Barbara (Ca.),  Laura received her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Bryn Mawr College. Last summer, while in graduate school, Laura worked at the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany. Laura noted that the IYL is located in a fifteenth-century castle and that her work there was her “favorite experience in library school.”

Jutta Seibert, coordinator of Academic Integration, continues as team coordinator and Alice Bampton, Visual Resources librarian, remains on the team.

The Getty announced in April that it will provide free access to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) from its Website. The Getty news release does not mention that interested scholars and students will search a static database without any indexing or abstracting of scholarly output published after 2009 unless new funding can be found in the near future.  A Biblio-File Brouhaha by Lee Rosenbaum, recently published in the Wall Street Journal, gives detailed information about the events that led to the termination of BHA.

As a result CSA no longer offers BHA as a subscription database and students and faculty have to make do without the convenient FindIt button that links to the Library’s holdings and interlibrary loan forms. The Library’s Databases A-Z list now links to the Getty Website for continued access. We hope that the new search interface hosted by the Getty will not prevent faculty and students from future use of this important research resource in art history.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.
Contributed by Alice Bampton.

Falvey patrons now have access to the online Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome which contains contributions from 500 authors. Entries cover the Bronze Age (3000 BCE) through the era of Emperor Justinian (600 CE). The Encyclopedia contains topical outlines on Rome and Greece, numerous illustrations, maps, and genealogical tables. Primary sources and annotated bibliographies of mostly English secondary titles are provided with the articles; most articles also include helpful cross-references. While the writers are usually authorities in their fields, their intended audiences are college students and educated laypersons.

Additional online resources in the field of ancient history:

• Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World
  Over 2,500 entries beginning with the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE and ending with the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 CE). The Dictionary “covers key aspects of ancient Greek and Roman life and literature…”
• Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
  Authoritative survey of ancient Greek and Roman history.
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
  The Encyclopedia focuses on dynastic Egypt, but also includes some earlier material. More than 250 scholars contributed over 600 articles accompanied by bibliographies.
• Cambridge Ancient History
  Covers ancient history from prehistory to late antiquity (3000 B.C.-600 A.D.). All 14 volumes can be searched simultaneously, individual chapters can be bookmarked or downloaded and cited references can be tracked via OpenURL, which will link to the full text in Falvey’s holdings or pre-fill an interlibrary loan form.
• Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c. 500 – 1492
  Written by a group of expert international Byzantine scholars, it “follow[s] the fortunes of the empire” chronologically from “The Earlier Empire c. 500 – c. 700” to “The Middle Empire c. 700 – 1204” and ends with “The Byzantine Lands in the Later Middle Ages 1204 – 1492.” These three parts are subdivided into chapters. Also included are a glossary, genealogical tables, lists of rulers, alternative place names, 52 maps and a bibliography.

Did you know that Oxford Reference Online includes time lines of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome? Each date and event listed on these time lines is linked to entries in relevant online Oxford reference titles.

• Ancient World
• Ancient Egypt
• Ancient Greece
• Ancient Rome

All titles are all available through the Library catalog. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.
Contributed by Alice Bampton.

Faculty and students in modern languages, history, and global studies occasionally need to watch DVDs coded for different regions and systems. While the Library has always endeavored to buy the requested films in a format that can be played on its public viewing stations, many of the titles are not produced for the mass market and not available for Region 1, the U.S.A. and Canada only. (Please click here for more information on DVD formats and region codes.)

Since faculty requested multi-region, multi-system DVD players for use in the Library in the recent faculty library survey, the Library recently outfitted one of its public viewing stations with such a DVD player.

Drop in and enjoy your movies. Headsets will be provided but popcorn is strictly B.Y.O.P. The viewing stations are located on the first floor.

The Library’s liaison librarians are ready to assist you with the purchase of foreign films for your classroom needs.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.

Falvey Memorial Library recently acquired the Ireland Collection, an interdisciplinary digital collection of journals, monographs and manuscripts from and about Ireland developed by Queen’s University of Belfast in collaboration with JSTOR. The Ireland Collection is the first regionally focused collection hosted by JSTOR.

“Rare, ceased periodicals from the early 19th century and portions of Queen’s Bunting collection in music are among the collection’s holdings, as are many journals publishing contemporary scholarship essential to the study of Ireland’s cultural and political life today. Noteworthy journals include: the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Irish Historical Studies, History Ireland, Irish Arts Review, Irish Journal of Agricultural and Food Research, and Fortnight. The collection is broad in scope, covering music, art, history, literature, archaeology, sociology, mathematics, and science, among other disciplines.” (JSTOR website)

A list of all titles included in the collection is available on the JSTOR website.

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

The overall feedback from the survey on questions relating to library services and collections was remarkably positive, but faculty respondents made many critical comments about the library facilities.

Nearly a third of Villanova’s full-time faculty participated in the survey. According to over 90% of survey respondents, library resources and services are ‘more important’ or ‘as important’ today as they were five years ago. Books (85%) and e-journals (86%) ranked at the top as ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ library resources.

An impressive 80% of survey respondents know one or more of the librarians on “their” library liaison team and the overwhelming majority of them is satisfied with the services provided by the liaison librarians. Library liaison teams, librarians, the Library’s website and colleagues are the leading sources for information about new library resources, services and events.

Faculty members are frequent visitors of Falvey’s website, but use the physical space far less frequently than undergraduate students do. Faculty would like to visit the physical building more often, but find it a very uninviting environment that does little to stimulate their intellectual endeavors. One survey respondent noted that “the place desperately needs a renovation; it’s grim, dated space, when it should be a centerpiece celebrating our teaching and research mission.”

Read a short summary of the results online. The Library will conduct follow-up focus groups with faculty during the spring semester and is still looking for interested faculty volunteers. Please contact Jutta Seibert (ext. 9-7876) if you would like to participate.

Are you interested in a library research workshop for one or more of your classes in the upcoming spring semester? If yes, then please contact me as soon as possible to schedule the workshop(s). The Library has only one classroom and it tends to get booked up quickly at the beginning of each semester. Workshops later in the semester may be more beneficial for your students who can use their new research skills for their assigned papers.

Maybe you do not have the time for a library workshop, but you feel that your students could 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. Upon request I can set up a customized online research guide for your course. In the past I have also combined research workshops with 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

It’s that time of the year again:  The fall semester is right around the corner and everybody is scrambling to finish his or her syllabus.  Please contact me as early as possible if you plan to bring your class to the Library for a research workshop, even if it will be much later in the semester.  The Library’s classroom tends to get booked quickly.  I find that research workshops are most beneficial when they are scheduled after students have picked their paper topics.

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

Falvey now offers the university community online access to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.” Widely valued for the timeliness and credibility of its news coverage, the Chronicle has won numerous awards for its coverage of political issues with impact on higher education. Popular features include the careers section with its job listings, annual salary surveys, and the scholarly productivity index, ranking 375 Ph.D. granting institutions. In addition, the online Chronicle offers exclusive daily news articles, podcasts and access to its digital archive dating back to 1995.

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.

Comments? Please let us know what you think.

You can now use the Falvey online catalog to search for contents of

• EEBO – Early English Books Online – English inprints from the 15th to the end of the 17th centuries

and

• ECCO – Eighteenth Century Collections Online – English imprints from the 18th century

For instance, searches for eebo AND bible or eebo AND london AND maps in the online catalog will retrieve a large number of titles from the EEBO collection. Results can then be further refined by author, topic or genre. Each record contains a direct link to the full text of the work.

In addition, the EEBO search interface now makes it possible to search EEBO and ECCO simultaneously. At the top of the search screen, simply check off the box “Include records from ECCO in your search.” The ECCO titles will be identified with a green logo and include direct links to the documents. The ECCO search interface also offers convenient, reciprocal access to EEBO records.

For comprehensive full text searching of these documents, use the EEBO text creation partnership, which will eventually include 25,000 titles.