Here’s your daily dose of library-oriented speed-reads to start your day!

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TODAY IN THE LIBRARY…

Villanova Electronic Enthusiasts Club (VEEC) Club Meeting. 2:30-4:30 p.m. in the first-floor lounge. Questions? Contact: Matthew Pasquale 

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SAVE THE DATE…

Stress Relief at Falvey! Thursday, December 10 and Friday, December 11. Falvey Memorial Library will be co-sponsoring a series of events in order to help students relieve stress during finals time. Events will include an open house featuring games and free snacks and refreshments, therapy dogs, stress-relieving workshops organized by POWER (Peers Offering Wellness Education and Resources) as well as free massages courtesy of the Campus Activities Team.

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NEW MEDIA NEWS

Got time? Thankfully, you might have just enough to watch this DVD over the long holiday weekend. In fact, you would probably have time to read the book too. A brief history of time was written by Stephen Hawking and the book title was used as the title of a documentary film by Errol Morris that was released last year. It was added to the library collection last month. While the book explains Time and Space in layman’s terms, the film documents Hawking’s life and imagination. Criterion describes the film as an “adroitly crafted tale of personal adversity, professional triumph, and cosmological inquiry.”

 

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Everybody in this room loves books, right?

…so began Andy Borowitz, editor of the New Yorker‘s humor column, The Borowitz Report and emcee at the 2015 National Book Award ceremony hosted by the National Book Foundation and held in New York City this past Wednesday. Winners for this year were Adam Johnson, for this year’s prize in fiction for Fortune Smiles, a short story collection; Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the nonfiction category for Between the World and Me; Robin Coste Lewis, with the poetry award for Voyage of the Sable Venus; and Neal Shusterman, who authored the YA award for Challenger Deep. Click here for a list and short bios of each of the finalists, whittled from a wealth of 1428 submissions from publishers.  Remember you can tap Falvey’s fast and efficient EZ-Borrow or Interlibrary Loan Services to find and read ‘most anything #1 in your book.

 

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

Today is National Absurdity Day, a day to think about all the absurd things in your life and in the world. How do you celebrate National Absurdity Day? Be absurd, of course. Or you could read literature in the absurdist tradition!

 

“Let’s go.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’re waiting for Godot.”

…from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

image via Reddit

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HAVE A GREAT DAY!

If you have ideas for inclusion in The 8:30 or to Library News in general, you’re invited to send them to joanne.quinn@villanova.edu.

 

Careers in International Development Day at the Connelly Center is not your usual job fair – it’s a symposium designed for career exploration and a perfect event for students interested in pursuing careers that address global poverty and related issues. Lindsay Coates, Executive Vice President of InterAction, an alliance of 190 International Non-governmental agencies will open the day at 1:30 p.m. in the Cinema with an overview of the changes, challenges, and opportunities in the field. From 2:30-4:30 p.m. in the Villanova Room, professionals representing a variety of career paths, including the UN, USAID, Social Entrepreneurship, Impact Investing, Global Health and others will meet students in roundtable breakouts (repeating every 30 minutes) to share their professional experience and offer advice on what students need to get a foot in the door. In the Villanova Room Market Stall area, students can meet one-on-one with representatives from graduate programs, post-graduate overseas internship and volunteer opportunities and relevant VU curricular and extra-curricular programs from 2:30-4:30 p.m.

Catholic Relief Services organized and will host the event in partnership with Villanova University, the College of Nursing Center for Global and Public Health, the Villanova School of Business, the VSB Center for Global Leadership, the Career Center, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the Office of Mission and Ministry and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education.

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Dig Deeper

The library’s collection includes many books, article databases and statistical sources about international development. For the policy wonk, Columbia International Affairs Online includes full-text  case studies, policy briefs, scholarly articles and books. Public Affairs International  Service (PAIS) is an article database covering similar territory. Because international development is truly interdisciplinary, academic research on international development can be found in many specialized databases, such as  PubMed for health, EconLit for economics, and  Compendex or Inspec for engineering.

Since 1990 the United Nations has published the Human Development Report, which identifies trends in development, and the Index, which is a tool used to assess country level development in terms of life expectancy, education and income. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development publishes numerous books and statistical series on development in many dimensions all available in the OECDiLibrary. AidData.org takes a data driven approach to improving outcomes by publishing datasets, visualizations and reports.

Villanovans across the disciplines are engaged in research on various aspects of development aid. Suzanne Toton, EdD, writes about Catholic relief, world hunger and social justice. The writing of Kishor Thanawala, PhD, explores economic development and justice. Latin American Development is the area of expertise of Satya Pattnayak, PhD. Jonathan Doh, PhD, is a prolific researcher on nongovernmental organizations and global corporate responsibility. Christopher Kilby, PhD, is a thought leader on the economics of foreign aid. Ruth McDermott-Levy, PhD, is a practicing nurse, educator and researcher on international community health.

Careers in International Development Day speakers represent a variety of organizations, all with interesting web sites well worth exploring with links below:

Alliance to End Hunger
InterAction
United States Agency for International Development USAID
Doctors Without Borders
Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center
Catholic Relief Services
Uhl & Associates
TriLinc Global
Oiko Credit
Village Capital

 

Acumen
Amigos de Jesus
Augustinian Volunteers
Catholic Volunteer Network
Catholic Relief Services
Jesuit Volunteers
Maryknoll Lay Missioners
Mennonite Central Committee
Mercy Volunteer Corps
Peace Corps
Profugo
Unite for Sight

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Article by Linda Hauck, MS, MBA, business librarian and team coordinator for the Business Research team.

 

Here’s your daily dose of library-oriented speed-reads to start your day!

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SAVE THE DATE…

Reception for James & Kathryn Murphy. Thursday, November 12 at 4:30 p.m. in Speakers’ Corner. Please join us as we celebrate James and Kathryn Murphy’s planned donation of 300 signed, first-edition Irish poetry books to the Library.

The event marks the unique contributions the Murphys have made to Irish studies and also Villanova’s long standing connection with leading Irish writers, such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson. Award-winning poet and former Heimbold Chair, Moya Cannon, will present readings.

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Did you know—

All University publications, both print and online, adhere to AP style. To be consistent with University publications, Falvey’s online and print publications also adhere to AP style (see FML Style Guidelines).

AP Style evolved so as to fit the maximum amount of words in a space. That goal is the reason for the following:

Ellipses—“In general, treat an ellipsis as a three-letter word, con- structed with three periods and two spaces, as shown here” ( … ).

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NEW MEDIA NEWS

Looking for a job that doesn’t pay, but that rewards you in other ways? Consider proofreading this vintage book as part of the Distributed Proofreaders project.  You could learn How to Be a Detective while you’re on the job! Find out more on the Blue Electrode blog today!

 

 

 

 

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PHILADELPHIA: WORLD HERITAGE CITY

Did you hear the news before the weekend? Philadelphia has been designated a “World Heritage City,” the first in the United States, and will now be a city categorized with the likes of Paris, Jerusalem, and Prague. What an honor! As reported on Philly.com, the title is more than just a gold star, as it offers the potential of increased reputation and tourism.

 

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

Today in 1934, astronomer Carl Sagan was born. Last month we ran a quote celebrating Neil deGrasse Tyson’s birthday (October 5) and mentioned his praised airtime as the host of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. But did you know Carl Sagan was his predecessor as host of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage – a majorly influential piece of scientific documentary? Both deGrasse Tyson and Sagan share similar vocations as science popularizers and while Sagan has since passed, his contributions toward bringing space to the public eye live on.

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan

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HAVE A GREAT DAY!

If you have ideas for inclusion in The 8:30 or to Library News in general, you’re invited to send them to joanne.quinn@villanova.edu.

We’re pleased to announce that more than 35,000 e-books are now available through Falvey on the JSTOR platform. The Library is participating in a “demand driven acquisition” program with JSTOR, which means that all of their e-books are accessible to us and we purchase only the ones that get repeated use.

The collection includes books in all disciplines, but humanities and social science fields are particularly well represented. You’ll find a wealth of high quality scholarly sources in history, philosophy, religion, languages and literatures, sociology and political science.

Since the content is on JSTOR, you can search for book chapters at the same time as you search for journal articles and primary sources. To see only book results, click on the Books tab after entering your search:

Unlike other e-book platforms, there are no restrictions on downloading and printing JSTOR e-books. Read chapters online, or download PDFs to print or read later.

 

Currently these books can only be found by searching the JSTOR interface, but soon we’ll have records for each of them in the catalog, and chapters will appear individually in the library’s “Articles & more” search.

Titles are available from a large number of highly respected publishers, including:

· American Schools of Oriental Research
· Berghahn Books
· Boydell & Brewer
· Columbia University Press
· Cornell University Press
· Edinburgh University Press
· Fordham University Press
· Harvard University Press
· Liverpool University Press
· Manchester University Press
· Marcial Pons Ediciones de Historia S.A.
· MIT Press
· Oxbow Books
· Princeton University Press
· Purdue University Press
· Rutgers University Press
· University of California Press
· University of Massachusetts Press
· University of North Carolina Press
· University of Pennsylvania Press
· University of Virginia Press
· Yale University Press

Remember to access JSTOR through the library’s website in order to get access to these books, as well as other Falvey-only content.

We’d love to know if you have feedback on JSTOR e-books. Send your comments to: nikolaus.fogle@villanova.edu.

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Nikolaus Fogle maintains the Philosophy blog and is the Philosophy, Theology and Humanities team coordinator. Nik can be reached by email or phone at 610-519-5182.

Fall is the season when we all begin to move indoors and even pastimes get a little more ambitious – things like binge watching Game of Thrones, knitting Christmas stockings for the dog and tackling fat serious novels by Authors You Should Read come to mind. 

This fall is loaded with releases of buzzy books from authors Salman Rushdie, Elena Ferrante, John Irving and a host of celebrity authors. Fall break just may afford you time to get through one, or at least at procure it for your night table to enjoy over semester break. Some library staff have perused the fall lists and have picked their favorites. For a Booktober special, we’ll bring you their thoughts each day this week.

Fall break is a good time to catch up on reading for pleasure, rather than assigned readings. A number of interesting new works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been released this fall. As a complete escape from academia, my suggested fall break reading is fiction, a novel that is set in Italy.

The Story of the Lost Child, a novel by Elena Ferrante (translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein), was released in September. It is the fourth volume of Ferrante’s “Neapolitan novels,” tracing the lives of Elena (Lenù) Greco and Rafaella (Lila) Cerullo who were both born in Naples in 1944 and met in the first grade. The Story of the Lost Child is told by Lenù, now age 66. After time away from Naples, in this final book, Lenù is back in Naples and reunited with her childhood friend, Lila. Both are pregnant and early in the novel, they are caught in an earthquake. Ferrante’s focus is on the friendship of the two women, but she also takes a broad view of the city and its people.

While this book can be read alone, for the full history of the lives of Lenù and Lila you might read the other three books listed here in chronological order: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, and The Days of Abandonment.

Ferrante herself is a mystery; her real name is unknown and she has yet to grant a face-to-face interview.  What is known is that she is Italian, the author, who in the “Neapolitan novels,” has chronicled the life-long convoluted friendship between two women in four fascinating novels.

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Article by Alice Bampton.

 

Fall is the season when we all begin to move indoors and even pastimes get a little more ambitious – things like binge watching Game of Thrones, knitting Christmas stockings for the dog and tackling fat serious novels by Authors You Should Read come to mind. 

This fall is loaded with releases of buzzy books from authors Salman Rushdie, Elena Ferrante, John Irving and a host of celebrity authors. Fall break just may afford you time to get through one, or at least at procure it for your night table to enjoy over semester break. Some library staff have perused the fall lists and have picked their favorites. For a Booktober special, we’ll bring you their thoughts each day this week.

This isn’t the first time Patti Smith has published a book. She wrote the award-winning memoir Just Kids in 2010. Just Kids was a book about her childhood, about remembering, whereas her new book, M Train, portrays her solitary thoughts about the present-day as stations, as if they were visual tableaus of her life. The “train” stations seem to be places of meditation as well as places where Smith stopped while traveling through life.

M Train was published last week and precedes the HarperCollins 40th anniversary publication of Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, a 320-page book filled with new songs, new artwork and an updated introduction that comes out October 27.

Her book tour started on October 6 in New York City and will be coming through Philadelphia on November 6.

Will you be waiting for the M Train?

 

Additional reading:

Patti Smith Reveals Her Solitary Soul in the M Train, NPR, October 7, text & audio

Patti Smith’s ‘M Train’ is a Literary Ride Through Stations of Mourning, Observer, October 9

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By Luisa Cywinski, editorial coordinator on the Communication & Service Promotion team and team leader, Access Services.

Fall is the season when we all begin to move indoors and even pastimes get a little more ambitious – things like binge watching Game of Thrones, knitting Christmas stockings for the dog and tackling fat serious novels by Authors You Should Read come to mind. 

This fall is loaded with releases of buzzy books from authors Salman Rushdie, Elena Ferrante, John Irving and a host of celebrity authors. Fall break just may afford you time to get through one, or at least at procure it for your night table to enjoy over semester break. Some library staff have perused the fall lists and have picked their favorites. For a Booktober special, we’ll bring you their thoughts each day this week.

Sara Bareilles’ Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song was released on October 6, 2015. You might not know her name, but you probably know her music. Her breakout hit “Love Song” from her album Little Voice is still an earworm today, but she’s since released two more studio albums–Kaleidoscope Heart and The Blessed Unrest. Her most current popular song on the radio waves is “Brave,” and that’s a fitting song to soundtrack her new memoir, which early reviewers have praised as very honest, just like Bareilles’ music. Sounds Like Me is Bareilles’ first book. It is an expression of the singer-songwriter’s adventures, creatively and spiritually, as a songwriter. It’s a hodgepodge of various essays, song lyrics, photos, and memories.

If you’re looking for an easy and inspiring book for break and beyond, Sounds Like Me is a good bet. It is available on Kindle, but Bareilles reads (and sings) the audio book, available on Audible, and it is worth the listen.

“Sara Bareilles is one of my favorite humans, and in my opinion, one of the finest singers and pop music artists of our time… This book, like her songs, is like having a conversation with the lady herself.” (Ben Folds, from the book’s foreword)

The Vietnam War started in 1955 and ended 20 years later in 1975. In the midst of the War, Villanova students and faculty here in the States were not idle. Many issues of The Villanovan contained reports of their activity and responses to the War. Below are two images from the Oct. 8 and Oct. 15, 1969 issues of The Villanovan that highlight the campus response to the moratorium to end the war.

Rev. Robert J. Welsh, OSA, STD, was University president from 1967-1971 and wrote “We must work and pray that the way to a just and lasting peace may soon be found.”

As noted on the Villanova Digital Library search page, issues of The Villanovan “are fully searchable from the Library Catalog and are in PDF format for easy reading, printing and downloading. Search the fulltext in the … Digital Library search box or in the library Search tab.”

 

‘Caturday blog by Luisa Cywinski, editorial coordinator on the Communication & Service Promotion team and team leader of the Access Services team.

Here’s your daily dose of library-oriented speed-reads to start your day!

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SAVE THE DATE…

Cultural Studies Food Week–The Taste of Justice: Rhetoric and Reality. Monday-Friday, Oct. 26-30. In our annual speaker series, students will learn about the politics of food production and consumption as they relate to nutrition and other issues. Each evening’s event will include Q and A for students as well as tasty culinary treats.

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Did you know—

Need a Quiet Place to Study? This short video provides a lighthearted look at a resource the Library takes seriously:
quiet study spaces.

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NEW MEDIA NEWS

Hey, gang! Since you’ll have all kinds of time on your hands next week, why not try out some nifty chemistry projects? The Blue Electrode blog has just what you need! A book that Falvey recently contributed to Project Gutenberg, How To Do Chemical Tricks, is now available for your reading pleasure. It contains “some highly amusing and instructive tricks!” As noted in the review by resident blogger Demian Katz, “some of the experiments might still be fun to perform today (if you can figure out how to modernize the archaic terminology).”

 

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READ LOCAL!

 

You’ve heard of eating local – how about reading local?  A handful of libraries are establishing programs of one kind or another to promote local authors to their local patrons. This is, of course, a really great help to burgeoning authors–but it also highlights the ways a public library can be part of a “literary ecosystem” for a particular community.

If you’re interested in the works and writings of people in our Villanova community, check out the Community Bibliography.

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ABRE LA PUERTA A HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

It is Hispanic Heritage Month – a celebration that recognizes the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the United States. Technically a month that straddles two, HHM is celebrated each year between September 15 and October 15,and includes the anniversaries of the independence of five Latin American countries.

The term Hispanic or Latino refers to Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish cultures or origins regardless of race. According to the 2010 Census, 50.5 million Americans identify themselves as Latino or Hispanic, representing a 3% increase since 2000.

Each day this month we will reproduce one of twenty countries represented on a joint poster project sponsored by the library and the Office of Mission and Ministry. Each poster features QR codes linking to premier resources that the library has for researching Hispanic history, culture or language and more importantly, the names of the specialized subject librarians devoted to aspects of these studies. Contact Susan Ottignon (Romance Languages and Literature,) Jutta Seibert (History and Art History) or Merrill Stein (Geography and Political Science) for further research needs or assistance. Posters designed by library Communication team leader, Joanne Quinn, with the assistance of Ottignon and Stein. The library wishes to thank Christopher Janosik, PhD and the Office of Mission & Ministry for their support of this project.

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BOOKTOBER – Meet the millennial Forsythe Pendleton Jones III!

First of all, who’s willing to admit that they knew that was Jughead Jones’ real name? And sure, Archie may be listed first on the comic book marquee, but we all know Juggie is the real star of the show. Perennially cool under pressure – until something comes between him and a stack of cheeseburgers – Jug is always the aloof onlooker, the chill bystander as Arch makes a fool of himself fawning over Betty and/or Veronica. Well, now it’s official – Jughead’s causing a big wave in the comic book world by getting a modern makeover by Chip Zdarsky (Howard the Duck) and artist Erica Henderson (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl). It comes out today, Riverdale!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY
On this day in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. As most know, Schwarzenegger is a body builder gone action movie star, most well-known for his roles in The Terminator, Predator, and Conan the Barbarian. As most people may not know, Schwarzenegger lurks Reddit fitness threads and has a very cool habit of being a fitspiration for unsuspecting Redditors. Cool dude.

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

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HAVE A GREAT DAY!

If you have ideas for inclusion in The 8:30 or to Library News in general, you’re invited to send them to joanne.quinn@villanova.edu.

There was a time when Wildcat book lovers and library patrons could read about new book titles and library events in the “Library Corner” section of the Villanovan. The excerpts below are from 1949 and 1950 when library news shared a page with articles about the school radio station and the Physics club. We know that ‘Cats still read books and articles, our circulation statistics tell us that, but these days they read about new resources, books, and events on the Library’s news blog online.

(If you’re interested in book reviews, check out the “Book-tober” feature in The Eight Thirty daily blog this month. Our first review was posted on Oct. 2.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images courtesy of the Villanova University Digital Library.

‘Caturday blog post by Luisa Cywinski, editorial coordinator on the Communication & Service Promotion team and team leader of the Access Services team.