Next week marks the second working break of the semester and a great opportunity to stop procrastinating and sit down to write those papers. Below, I’ve compiled a handful of resources that have been lifesavers for me over the years. 

Writing Guides

These two writing guides have been recommended to me by a variety of different professors, mentors, and other students. They’ve also come in handy in a pinch while writing a paper. Rather than comb through resources online, having a writing guide next to me helps me find an easy answer. And the best part is that both are available in either Falvey’s collection or through an inter-library loan.

• Norton’s Field Guide to Writing by Richard Bullock

• The Little Seagull Handbook by Richard Bullock and Francine Weinberg

Style Guides

The worst feeling in the world is when you finally finish a research paper and then need to spend the next hour going back through, adding citations, and ensuring that it’s in the correct style. Below are links to style guides to the three most popular citation styles used in academic writing. 

• APA Style
• MLA Style
• Chicago Style

The Library’s website also has additional citation resources that you can find here.

Resources at Falvey

Falvey has a wide range of research services that are available to all students. Below are links to a couple of highlighted resources.

• Utilizing subject guides are a great way to find sources
• The Villanova Writing Center is housed within Falvey and get help with any part of the process from brainstorming to outlining to editing and walking through your final draft.

Finally, remember that Falvey is always open with quiet study and writing spaces that you can utilize to write!

Jenna Newman is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department.

The 2008 film, Cromwell in Ireland, also marketed as Cromwell: God’s Executioner, features numerous images, plates and maps from Villanova University’s Digital Library. In 2007, writers and researchers working on the script of the film were looking for archival images depicting individuals, locations, and events pertinent to the story of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland in the 4 year period from 1649 and 1653, an event in which an estimated 500,000 people, one quarter of the population of Ireland, died from war, disease and starvation making this the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the country.

After browsing through the Joseph McGarrity Collection of the Digital Library they noted several specific images that were of interest for their educational enterprise. The writers, after contacting the Digital Library staff for permission to use these images, asked for assistance in locating other images which were proving difficult to find. An extensive search of the print Joseph McGarrity Collection and the Early European Rare Book Collection found a considerable number of rare sources with plates and maps that fit the needs of the film makers. These materials were soon digitized and added to the Digital Library for use by the international film makers and for scholars studying these tragic events.

The film produced by Irish national broadcaster RTE and the UK’s History Channel aired on Irish television in September 2008 and is scheduled to be broadcast on the UK History Channel in November of this year. The film makers hope that the series will be broadcast on a North American channel such as Smithsonian Networks or the History Channel in 2009. Directed by double IFTA Award-winning director Maurice Sweeney, the cast includes a host of international stars and features commentaries by leading historians of this period of Irish history including: Micheál Ó Siochrú, John Morrill, Professor of History at University of Cambridge, Jane Ohlmeyer, Professor of History at Trinity College, Dublin, Pádraig Lenihan, Lecturer in History at University of Limerick, Nicholas Canny, Professor of History at NUI Galway, and Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at University of Bristol.

Cromwell in Ireland is presented and largely authored by Dr. Micheál Ó Siochrú, a vibrant young Irish historian who has just published a full-length study of Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland: God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland. Throughout the film, he and the other historians guide the viewer through the historical narrative and action, offering challenging new insights into the war and its legacy.

The historical figures that feature most prominently in the film are: Oliver Cromwell, England’s greatest general and a Puritan deeply inimical towards the Irish Catholic Church; Henry Ireton, his second-in-command and successor; Sir Charles Coote, his uncompromising lieutenant in Ulster; Owen Roe O’Neill, Gaelic Ireland’s greatest leader; his kinsman Hugh Dubh O’Neill; and the Marquis of Ormond, the ineffectual leader of the doomed Royalist coalition.

The film consists of 2 52 minute episodes, each episode including credits featuring the contributions of Villanova University’s Digital Library.