Electronic collections (articles, e-books, and more!) are accessible through our website 24/7. Please visit the Fall Semester FAQ Page for more details. Click here for printable calendar.

• Dec. 1–6 (Fall Semester Hours)
  • Service Hours: 9 a.m.– 5 p.m., Monday–Friday
  • Building Hours: 6 a.m.–midnight, 7 days a week

• Dec. 7–20 (Adjusted Operations Period)
  • Service Hours: 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m., Monday-Friday
  • Building Hours: 6 a.m.–midnight, 7 days a week

• Dec. 21–23 (Adjusted Operations Period)
  • Service Hours:  No service hours
  • Building Hours: Monday, Dec. 21 and Tuesday, Dec. 22, 6 a.m.–midnight; Wednesday, Dec. 23, 6 a.m.–5 p.m.

• Dec. 24–Jan. 1 (University Holiday Closure)
  • Service Hours: No service hours
  • Building Hours: Building is closed

• Jan. 2–10 (Adjusted Operations Period)
  • Service Hours: 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m., Monday–Friday
  • Building Hours: 6 a.m.–midnight, 7 days a week

• Jan. 11–Jan 24 (Pre-semester hours)
  • Service Hours: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday–Friday
  • No service hours Monday, Jan. 18
  • Building Hours: 6 a.m. –midnight 7 days a week

• Jan. 25–30 (Spring Semester Hours)
  • Service Hours: 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Monday–Friday
  • Building Hours: 24/7

A Wildcard is required to enter and a mask must be worn while visiting. Contactless pickup, printing, and self-scanning services are available during building hours.

Book Stacks Access

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Falvey West and the third and fourth floors are CLOSED for stacks browsing and study space. Villanova students, faculty and staff may request library materials for Contactless Pickup. Requests must be placed by noon on Friday, Dec. 18. Materials requested can be picked up through Dec. 23, 5 p.m. Any requests placed during the holiday closure will be ready for pickup by Jan. 5.

Scanning

For real-time updates, continue to check Falvey Library’s website and social media (@FalveyLibrary on Facebook and Twitter; @VillanovaLibrary on Instagram).

Thanksgiving may be a little more stressful this year given that finals are upon us, but like I’ve said before, balance is important, especially during finals season. Today, I want to break down a couple of different ways to structure your to-do lists and study times. Everyone studies differently, and it’s important to find the way that works best for you. This list is definitely not all-encompassing, but if you’re looking for a new study plan, this might be a good place to start looking for inspiration.

Keep your to-do list to no more than 10 things. Or five things, or three things, or whatever works best for you. When I have a list of everything that I need to accomplish and it’s over 10 items, I find myself getting overwhelmed. That’s why I keep a list of the 10 most important things that need to be done and that’s my to-do list that I tackle for the day. I have a master list of to-dos somewhere separate and then when I do my prep-work for the day, I pull that out to pick out the top 10. 

Put self-care items on your to-do list. Every day I add items like free-reading for 30 minutes, workout, and do my daily devotion to my to-do list. That helps me make self-care a priority and forces me to take a break from homework each day, while still feeling like I’m accomplishing something by crossing an item off of my to-do list. That being said, make sure everything on your to-do list isn’t self-care related because unfortunately your assignments and exams won’t complete themselves. Find the right balance for you. 

Prioritize your top three to-do items. At the top of your to-do list write down three nonnegotiables: three things that absolutely need to get done before you go to sleep at the end of the day. This helps prioritize what is the most important and helps you not procrastinate by doing other tasks, but not the paper that’s due at 11:59 p.m. When at the end of the day you’ve crossed off those three things, you know you’ve accomplished a lot and made good progress to your overall goals. 

Grow a tree to stay focused. If you haven’t heard of the app Flora before, it may be something worth checking out. Flora is a study app where you grow trees and other plants if you stay focused for a certain amount of time. If you stay focused for a certain amount of hours, or want to pay for an in-app purchase, a real tree will be planted because of your study time. If you pick up your phone and exit the app during your study time, the tree will die. This app only really works if the thought of killing even a hypothetical tree makes you upset, but I have found it to be helpful. You can also set up group focus times with your friends through the app.

Change up the scenery. I know changing the scenery can be hard when everyone is pretty much just stuck inside their houses all day everyday. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative and find different places to get work. Sort out your tasks based on things that you need to do sitting at your desk versus things that can be done curled up on the couch. Then, when you feel yourself starting to become unproductive, change scenery and try working someplace else. Sitting in a different place or having more natural light might be all you need to be productive.

Rotate tasks you’re working on. As much as I wish I had the focus to sit down and study for five hours for one exam, that’s just not the case. When my brain is scattered and cannot focus on one task for very long, I set a 20-minute timer and then just rotate down my to-do list. If I haven’t finished my top three to-dos for the day yet, I’ll rotate between the three of those things for 20 minutes each until I get one done. Usually, I’ll throw in five-minute breaks either between 20-minute sessions or when I finish a task as an added bonus. It helps me make progress on lots of my to-dos and cuts down the time I’ll need to spend on them when I go to finish them up later. 

Most importantly, listen to yourself and do what works best for you in the moment. I’ve used all of these different study tactics and organization methods depending on the semester, month, week or even hour! Just because something doesn’t work for you at one time, doesn’t mean it’s something that will never work. Be patient with yourself and find a routine that helps you crush your study goals!

Jenna Newman is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department. Current mood: Checking writing this post off my to-do list.

By Merrill Stein

Visit the National Journal (Daily), a political resource today, Election Day, and in the future. Covering politics and public policy, Falvey Memorial Library’s subscription includes a Washington daybook, House, Senate, and State hotline briefings, webinars, select research briefs, and event listings.

The National Journal (Daily) also offers at least two more resources of note for this year’s election. One is the Race Tracker 2020, which “contains data, insights, and visualizations for active national, congressional, and gubernatorial races plus historical data from recent years.” Two is the Almanac (Almanac of American Politics in print), featuring profiles of political leaders and basic demographics for the part of the country they represent.

Access this periodical resource by searching National Journal Daily in Journal Finder on the Library homepage, via the links above and in the Library catalog.

Merrill Stein is Political Science Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

Happy Halloween, Wildcats! The holidays—especially Halloween—are always fun at Falvey; Library staff continually planning new ways to celebrate. Last year, Distinctive Collections staff hosted a Halloween Open House with eerie treasures on display in the Rare Book Room including a seventeenth century exorcism manual. Their featured treat was a Prohibition-era mocktail called the St. Augustine (follow link for recipe.) Costumes weren’t mandatory, however, Falvey staff still commemorated the spooktacular day!

Library staff (left to right): Chris Hallberg, Sarah Wingo, Kallie Stahl, Laura Bang, Rebecca Oviedo, Beaudry Rae Allen, Shawn Proctor.

Reminiscing on Halloweens past and brainstorming ideas for this blog, I decided to alter a recipe I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. The original recipe was a white layer cake featured in the Prize Cook Book, part of the John Regan Five Cent Pamphlets (no. 4) Dime Novel Collection. Listing multiple fillings for the layer cake including caramel, maple sugar, apple, and chocolate, I chose to simplify the recipe and add the maple sugar filling to cinnamon rolls. Mixing a few drops of orange food coloring to the packaged frosting, I crafted a simple and tasty autumnal treat!

Below are a few images of the Prize Cook Book if you’d like to explore the cake fillings. The entire cook book is available for reading in the Villanova University Digital Library.

The recipe I used for this blog is featured in the second image above. Here are the original instructions for the maple sugar filling:

• Two cups maple sugar (cooked until it strings)
• Add beaten whites of two eggs and beat until cold

I altered the recipe using cinnamon rolls instead of layer cake:

• One (or two) cans of packaged cinnamon rolls
• Orange food coloring
• One cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp. water

Cooking instructions (maple sugar filling):

• Mix one cup of brown sugar and two tbsp. water in saucepan on stove
• Stirring constantly on low heat, bring sugar and water to a boil
• Wisk one egg white and gradually add the heated sugar to the egg white (stirring constantly)
• Let mixture cool

Cooking instructions (cinnamon rolls):

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Grease round cakepan and place rolls in pan
• Drizzle a spoonful of maple sugar filling on each roll
• Bake 15-19 minutes until golden brown
• Spread icing (add food coloring if desired)
• Option to add additional maple sugar filling in lieu of icing (or use both!)

Check out the finished product below. View the full cooking tutorial here.

Cinnamon rolls with maple syrup filling and orange icing.

Attempted to make Villanova caramel candies with leftover maple sugar filling.

Interested in Dime Novels? Explore Dime Novels and Popular Literature in the Digital Library. Save the date for Papers for the People: Dime Novel Symposium on on Wednesday, Nov, 4, and Thursday, Nov. 5, from 7:30-9:30 p.m. EST. The virtual event, hosted by Northern Illinois University and Villanova University, will feature panel discussions with notable and upcoming dime novel scholars. These conversations will focus on how dime novels can be used in the classroom and will offer regional educators, academics, and students at the graduate and undergraduate level the opportunity to learn about and discuss dime novels directly with experts in the field. Participation is free. Register here.

While this Halloween will be different at Falvey Memorial Library and Villanova University, there will still be plenty of socially distanced activities for this “Halloweekend” on campus! Hopefully the featured recipes will inspire some quarantine cooking for Halloween and the cooler months ahead. Thank you all for your dedication to the Caritas Commitment. Be well, ‘Cats!

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Jenna Newman

Starbucks and Dunkin are releasing pumpkin spice, but it’s also 90 degrees outside – what’s going on!? When does fall actually start and why does it feel earlier and earlier every year?

If you Google, “what’s the first day of fall?” it tells you Sept. 22, which is the autumnal equinox. Each year the autumnal equinox marks the astronomical beginning of fall; however, there’s also a meteorological definition of seasons that is different. The meteorological definition of seasons says that for 2020 the first day of fall is September 1! This definition of seasons is based on temperature cycles and the Gregorian calendar instead.

Is this a valid justification for all things fall?

I’m not sure about you all, but my social media feed is all about fall and has been for about three weeks now. Mid-August the consensus was that everyone was ready for fall and there were a few people already posting about decorating or watching Halloween movies. Now that Sept. 1 hit, it’s pretty much everyone, everywhere. 

If I’m being honest, writing this post right now has me craving all things pumpkin and wanting to snuggle up in a sweater or an oversized flannel. Now that I know there’s scientific backing for fall starting 21 days sooner, I’m all about it. The beginning of September is the perfect time to celebrate a new season. I guess Starbucks and Dunkin aren’t as off base as I thought.

The best part is, no matter what the season, Falvey Memorial Library is the perfect place to wear your sweaters, grab a hot drink, and settle in for a study session.

What are your thoughts? When does fall start for you and how soon is too soon? Have you been following the meteorological definition of fall without even knowing it existed?

Jenna Newman is a graduate assistant in Falvey Memorial Library and a graduate student in the Communication Department. Current mood: Craving some pumpkin spice and apple cider donuts.