By Nicole Daly 

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) has done it again! With the guiding force of University of Michigan professor Libby Hemphill and in collaboration with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, they have expanded their many data collections to include SOMAR, a social media archive for researchers to find and investigate data dealing with social media. 

As of May 1, 2023, the repository only holds 5 datasets, but it is growing and will be updated frequently to add more resources. For more information on using or adding to this resource go to the Social Media Archive (SOMAR) @ ICPSR.

Similar to its hosting site, ICPSR, SOMAR allows researchers to browse for datasets by collection or keyword. Users are able to narrow their search results by social media platform, allowing them to browse for data on or about specific sites, such as Facebook. Once a user has found a study and dataset of interest they will be able open the item record to read about the study details to determine if they would like to login and download the dataset.

A reminder, Villanova is a member institution of ICPSR, allowing faculty, staff, and students access to a vast collection of datasets in the social science realm. To begin using ICPSR, a free account must be created while on campus to gain access to the full collection. Once you have created your account you will be able to use this resource, and its linked collections like SOMAR, off campus. 

For any questions, contact Social Science Librarian Nicole Daly.

This resource is available from the Falvey Library homepage, Databases A-Z list.

Nicole Daly is Communication Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library. 

By Nicole Daly 

Love Data Week 2023 is only four weeks away! 

February 13-17, 2023, marks the annual international celebration of Love Data Week! This year’s theme is “Data: Agent of Change,” focusing on inspiring significant change through data, whether large or small, ranging from policy change, structural change, and social change! If you have not participated previously, now is the time! Learn more at https://myumi.ch/ICPSRlovedata23. #LoveData23

Let’s help new and seasoned data users find data training and resources to move the needle on issues they care about. It is easy! 

Here are 10 simple ways to get involved.

1. Follow @lovedataweek on Twitter and Instagram.
2. Attend one (or more!) of the Love Data Week activities virtually from wherever you are. Check out the calendar of events. New events are still being added so check back soon!
3. Host your own event. Want it added to the calendar? Submit your events and we’ll add it! Event ideas include:

                    Data management and sharing workshop

                    Finding data demo with your favorite data archive(s)

                    Participate in ICPSR’s yearly Adopt a Dataset Program 

                    Highlight impacts of recent local data-driven research

                    Share an activity or project for teaching with data

                    Host a data-thon where teams combine, analyze or visualize datasets on a key topic

                    Pick a crowdsourced project at a site like Zooniverse and host a data contribution party 

4. Recognize colleagues for their participation in Love Data Week activities and events with a Love Data Week-specific Certificate of Participation.
5. Post your own Love Data Week activities on social media with the hashtag #lovedataweek23.
6. Use a cool Love Data Week background graphic as your Zoom background or screensaver.
7. Download, print, and share Love Data Week stickers with friends, students, and colleagues. |
8. Have a data trivia contest with your team, office, staff, classroom, students, or family – and tell us what happened. (If you’re following us on social media, you’ll be able to see our daily trivia questions during Love Data Week.)
9. Spread the word about Love Data Week 2023 to maximize participation and creative events.
10. Sign up to receive Love Data Week update emails to get the latest news on activities and posts!  

This event is hosted by ICPSR, a data repository that is available from the Falvey Library homepage, Databases A-Z list.

Nicole Daly is Communication Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

By Nicole Daly 

If you have used any of our marketing and public relations databases or serials in the past, you’ll be happy to hear that Falvey Library has expanded access to PR Week online. In the past we have maintained access to PR Week articles, but there was a publication gap, limiting access to the newest and most up to date information in the field. Now with our expanded access students, faculty, and staff will have the opportunity to create a free account for the PR Week website. Giving access to the most relevant and up to date information! 

PRWeek has been around since 1998 and offers a website for public relations and marketing professionals to easily access news and opinion pieces relevant to the field. Our subscription now includes access to Breakfast Briefings each weekday morning, US Breaking News Alerts, and a Weekly Edition,which will provide students, staff, and faculty with the latest news coverage affecting the marketing communications industry. For more information on this resource go to https://www.prweek.com/us/about_us.

To benefit from unrestricted access to PRWeek.com you must be registered with your Villanova email address and not a personal email.

How to gain access:

Already registered? As long as you are registered with your Villanova email address, all you need to do is ‘Sign out’ and ‘Sign in’ at https://www.prweek.com/login

Not registered? Activate your subscription by completing a short registration Form.

• Step 1: To create your online account using your Villanova email address, visit https://www.prweek.com/register/ . Please provide your firstname, lastname, email and password, select your region and then click “CONTINUE”

• Step 2: Subscribers will automatically receive the Breakfast Briefing, Breaking News, Weekend and Weekly Online editions; Be sure to click “REGISTER” to complete your registration and activate your account. Once logged in, you may go to My Account, sign up for other newsletters and/or update your newsletter preferences.

Online support:

Forgotten your password? Simply enter your email address at users.prweek.com/password/ and a new password will be sent to you.

For further assistance please visit the FAQ page at prweek.com/us/faq . Alternatively, you can contact the support team at subscriptions@prweek.com . 

This resource is available from the Falvey Library homepage, Databases A-Z list.

Nicole Daly is Communication Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

In accordance with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and University policies, mask wearing in all campus spaces, including Falvey Memorial Library, is now optional. For individuals who are not fully vaccinated, wearing masks indoors is still strongly recommended.

(This blog is was originally published June 9, 2017, in a slightly altered form.)

Other than “Where are the restrooms?” (through the lounge doors, to your left) and “When is Holy Grounds open?” (check the website), here are the questions most often asked by visiting alumni!

Am I able to look at past issues of The Villanovan?

Yes! The collected issues of the Villanovan and the Villanova Monthly are available here. Issues are fully searchable from the Library Catalog. The issues are viewable in your browser, with reduced quality of scanned microfilm.  For improved viewing, we recommend downloading the pdf and viewing in Adobe Acrobat.

Search the full text in the Digital Library search box or in the library Search tab.  Selected content from 1995-current in the Lexis-Nexis database is available to the Villanova community members.

Can I look at old Belle Air yearbooks?

Yes! The paper format of the yearbooks are available for browsing only during library hours.

Here is the current information on the title and holdings:

Title: Belle-air. Publisher: Villanova, Pa. : Villanova College, 1922- . Call Number: LD4834 .S75

Available Volume  Holdings: 1922, 1924-1941, 1943-2004, 2006 to present. Ask at Circulation for the specific volume.

Digital holdings ranging from 1922 through 1969 can be viewed online.

Am I still entitled to use the Library as an alum?

Yes! VU alumni are eligible for a free courtesy membership that allows borrowing privileges and on-site access to most of our online databases. To apply, simply come to the Falvey circulation desk with a photo ID. Check out the  ‘Alumni — Courtesy Membership’ and ‘Courtesy Member Borrowing’ pages for more information.

Villanova Alumni and residents of Radnor or Lower Merion townships may apply annually for borrowing privileges and on site access to subscription databases. There is no fee for these privileges.

Villanova University Catalogs

Are you on social media?

Heck yeah! We are on social media! Follow both the main library and the digital library on a wide selection of platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Shawn Proctor, MFA, is communications and marketing program manager at Falvey Memorial Library.

Just as Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, Labor Day marks its end. Now widely celebrated with picnics and trips to the shore or to the shopping mall, much of the holiday’s original meaning has been forgotten as well as, like Memorial Day, the date on which it was originally celebrated.

The first official Labor Day celebration occurred on a Tuesday; Labor Day is now commemorated on the first Monday of September. On that Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, the Central Labor Union (CLU), a New York City area local labor union organized in January 1882, held the first Labor Day parade. The parade began inauspiciously: there were numerous spectators, but only a few marchers and no band. These few were soon joined by 200 members of the Jewelers Union and their band. Next to join were a group of bricklayers and their band. Spectators joined the parade as did another 500 union men. By the end, there were at least 10,000 people, both men and women, marching. Some workmen marched in their traditional work clothes; others wore their best dress garments. Many carried signs such as “Strike with the Ballot,” “Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work” (the typical work day was much longer), “Less Work and More Pay,” and “Labor Built This Republic, Labor Shall Rule It.”

The parade ended at Reservoir Park at noon. From there most of the participants went to Wendels’ Elm Park, New York’s largest park at that time, at 92nd Street and 9th Avenue. There, together with their families, union members who had not marched in the parade and others, they enjoyed a picnic, abundant beer and cigars, and speeches by union leaders. This first Labor Day celebrated American workers and their contributions to the prosperity of the United States with a parade and picnic, setting a pattern for those that followed.

The next year, the Central Labor Union held a second Labor Day celebration; this was even larger than the first one. The following year, 1884, the CLU declared the first Monday of September as the official annual Labor Day. That year over 20,000 workers marched. By 1886 Labor Day was celebrated throughout the United States. The following year five states – Oregon, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts, and New Jersey – made Labor Day a state holiday. In 1894, during Grover Cleveland’s presidency, Senator James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota introduced a bill to make the first Monday of September, Labor Day, a legal holiday; the bill passed on June 28. The CLU originally selected a date in September to create a holiday in the long period between July 4 and Thanksgiving.

In 1968, the Senate and House of Representatives passed Public Law 90-363, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which listed legal public holidays: New Year’s Day, January 1; Washington’s Birthday (now Presidents’ Day), the third Monday in February; Memorial Day, the last Monday in May; Independence Day, July 4; Labor Day, the first Monday in September; Columbus Day, the second Monday in October; Veterans Day, the fourth Monday in October; Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November and Christmas Day, December 25. The law took effect on January 1, 1971.

The Congressional Record of May 6, 1968 explains that the law was established to benefit families: to provide three-day holidays so that families could get together, to allow more leisure time to participate in hobbies, educational and cultural activities; and to “improve commercial and industrial production by minimizing midweek holiday interruptions of production schedules and reducing employee absenteeism before and after midweek holidays.” Both labor and management supported the bill, but its passage meant that those who worked in retail businesses would not receive the holiday.

Labor Day today is mostly celebrated with travel, picnics, the beginning of football season and retailers’ Labor Day sales. However, some churches hold Labor Day services with Blessings of Tools. The tools may be anything used as part of a trade or business, even pencils and keyboards.  So while we have strayed far from the original purpose of Labor Day, vestiges of its history still remain in some of the day’s observances. How will you celebrate the holiday?

Dig Deeper:

All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life (1994). Jack Santino.

Red, White, and Blue Letter Days (2002). Matthew Dennis.

“America’s Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers’ Celebration.” Michael Kazin and Stephen J. Ross. Journal of American History 78, 4, (March 1992), 1294.

“History of Labor Day.” United States Department of Labor.

“Labor Day.” Scott Hearn. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

Article by Alice Bampton, Communication and Marketing Department, Falvey Memorial Library. 

A special guest Highlighter by Gerald Dierkes

The Library offers numerous award-winning titles of contemporary and classic fiction.  Why not check out one of these staff favorites for your winter break?

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.

Call Number: PS3615.B73 T54 2011

See a preview of this book in Google Preview.

Cold Comfort Farm by  Stella Gibbons, her classic tale, first published in 1932

Call Number: PR6013.I24 C6 2006

See a preview of this book in Google Preview.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

Call Number: PR6063.I785 T47 2010

Take a peek in this book in Google Preview.

A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books by Charles Dickens (a new edition with an introduction by Margaret Atwood, illustrations by Arthur Rackham)

Call Number: PR4557 .A1 2009

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

PR6063.A438 W65 2009

Take a peek in Google Preview.

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

PR6063.A438 B75 2012

Take a peek in this book in Google Preview.

In the Garden Of Beasts by Erik Larson

E748.D6 L37 2011

Take a peek inside using Google Preview.

This short video demonstrates one search strategy to help you find additional titles. If books have been checked out, you may be able to obtain those titles through interlibrary loan.

Also, please let us know in the “Comments” below what you recommend. Are there new fiction titles you would like us to order? Happy reading!

This time of year, every minute counts – especially with finals less than two weeks after we return from Thanksgiving holiday – hashtag: for real, dude! Fortunately, the Library has resources designed to pack a lot of information into a little bit of time. So instead of perusing Buzzfeed on the train ride home, buzz through one or two Very Short Introductions to get a head start on crunch time!

Sometimes we need background information for a speech or project. Maybe we need to become familiar with a subject before seeking in-depth, scholarly information. Sometimes, we just need a very short introduction. That’s where Oxford University Press’ “Very Short Introductions,” published since 1995, can help. Over 200 of these concise, pithy “pocket-portable introductory lectures” (Guardian Review) covering such topics as archaeology, arts & architecture, biography, business & management, economics & finance history, language & linguistics, law, literature, mathematics & sciences, medicine & health, music, sociology, philosophy, politics, psychology & neuroscience, religion & bibles and the social sciences can be found at Falvey.

Noted authors in many fields have contributed to these short successful volumes about the world. This series has spawned literary events and lectures on both sides of the Atlantic. So, are you game? Just seeking leadership, or logic? Seeking the more spiritual leadership? Try short introductions to the New Testament, Augustine, or Islam. Kant, you say? We’ve got that too. Everything from the mystical to the mind bending, consciousness to Christian ethics, from American politics to chaos theory, from relativity to Tocqueville. And we’d bet nine of out ten of you would want to shorten statistics!

However, as a prominent reviewer described one of the series titles “The brevity of this volume is both its strength and its weakness.” Judge for yourself. Find out more about “Very Short Introductions” (VSI) at You Tube. Or learn more from one of the VSI study guides at Oxford University Press.  Better yet, check one out at Falvey.

The latest editions in our collection are below with attached author biographical information. You’ll find links to our catalog listings. Click the authors’ names to find their other (longer) publications. Author specifics prove that although the introductions are short, the scholarship and authority behind them is not.

American Political History by Donald T. Critchlow (more on Critchlow)

Love by Ronald De Sousa (more on De Sousa)

Ritual by Barry Stephenson (more on Stephenson)

Exploration by Stewart Angas Weaver (more on Weaver)

The United Nations by Jussi M. Hanhimèaki (more on Hanhimèaki)

Ancient Assyria by Karen Radner (more on Radner)

Privacy by Raymond Wacks (more on Wacks)

Liberalism by Michael Freeden (more on Freeden)

The American Revolution by Robert J. Allison (more on Allison)

Myth by Robert Alan Segal (more on Segal)

Merrill Stein is team leader of the Assessment team and liaison to the Department of Political Science.

The United States celebrates its independence from Great Britain on the 4th of July, the day in 1776 on which the delegates to the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence.

We know from an article which appeared in The Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 5, 1777, that the first Independence Day anniversary was celebrated with the discharge of thirteen cannons in the port of Philadelphia in honor of the original thirteen states. The ships were decorated in red, white and blue streamers. Congress gathered for an elegant dinner to which the president and numerous other guests of honor were invited.

A captured band of Hessian musicians played suitable tunes interrupted by repeated toasts. Bonfires and fireworks lit up the evening sky, and the peals of bells closed out the day.

Not much has changed since then. Food, fireworks, parades and the national colors are still at the center of today’s celebrations, and the Glorious Fourth continues to capture the national imagination. The Library has a wealth of information in both print and electronic form for those who would like to learn more about the history of the Declaration of Independence.

On our shelves:

Andrew Burnstein’s America’s Jubilee takes a critical look at the fifty year anniversary of independence in 1826, which also happens to be the day on which two of the Declaration’s signers, frenemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, died. William Hogeland takes a close look at the nine weeks leading up to July 4, 1776, in his Declaration, and Alan Dershowitz follows the sources which influenced Jefferson’s text in America Declares Independence.

David Armitage’s The Declaration of Independence: A Global History delineates the impact of the U.S. Declaration as it resonated around the world. Armitage looks at over one hundred declarations of independence to demonstrate the global influence of the U.S. Declaration, and Alexander Tsesis’ For Liberty and Equality synthesizes the continuing impact of the Declaration on American life.

Online:

Noteworthy among Falvey’s digital primary-source collections are the American Founding Era collection which contains the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James and Dolley Madison, and Alexander Hamilton; the American State Papers with the executive and legislative documents of the first fourteen U.S. Congresses; and America’s Historical Newspapers, which includes early American newspapers back to 1690.

Happy Independence Day from the staff at Falvey Memorial Library!

Jutta Seibert is the director of Academic Integration and the history librarian. Her contact information: Jutta.Seibert@villanova.edu, office-room 228, telephone 610-519-7876.

We are committed to accuracy and will make appropriate corrections. We apologize for any errors and always welcome input about news coverage that warrants correction. Messages can be e-mailed to alice.bampton@villanova.edu or call (610)519-6997.

Falvey Memorial Library is fortunate to be able to provide access to hundreds of instructional databases for the Villanova Community. While the choices may be vast, each searchable collection presents a unique treasure trove of information. Today, in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we’d like to direct your attention to a uniquely browsable resource, the Oxford African American Studies Center. Touted as “the online authority on the African American Experience,” the Oxford AASC provides a wide array of primary source documents, educational resources and articles, and multimedia.

The database provides students, scholars and librarians with online access to the finest reference resources in African American studies. At its core, AASC features the new Encyclopedia of African American History: 1619-1895, Black Women in America, the highly acclaimed Africana, a five-volume history of the African and African American experience, and the African American National Biography project (estimated at 8 volumes). In addition to these major reference works, AASC offers other key resources from Oxford’s reference program, including the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature and selected articles from other reference works.

Feel free to contact a librarian if you’d like further help exploring and utilizing any of Falvey Memorial Library’s databases.