Famous Hollywood Hills in California, USA. Hollywood Sign. California Photo Collection.

By Kallie Stahl 

This summer Falvey Library is going to the movies! Well, we’re using our beloved Library’s resources to research the coolest film scenes set in libraries. So grab a seat and a box of popcorn because the we’re going to look at when libraries go to Hollywood.

The Mummy (Universal Pictures). Image courtesy of IMDB.

Yes, the 1999 cinematic masterpiece starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

The Mummy has a bit of everything…adventure, horror, comedy, and romance. The film is one of the last “action-adventure” films produced before the rise of the superhero blockbuster. Not overly dramatic or serious, the show never gets too dark, offering audiences plenty of opportunities to laugh despite the ongoing conflict with the awakened mummy, Imhotep.

While The Mummy doesn’t feature an iconic library (like the University of Pennsylvania’s Fisher Fine Arts Library in the film Philadelphia), books play a crucial role throughout the movie. One of the main characters, Evelyn “Evy” Carnahan (Rachel Weisz), is a librarian and aspiring Egyptologist working in the Cairo Museum of Antiquities. The introduction to the character is a fun scene, as she accidently knocks over every bookshelf in the museum’s library.

Books drive the storyline, as Evy, her brother Jonathan (John Hannah), and Richard “Rick” O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) travel to the lost city of Hamunaptra to find the book of Amun-Ra. On their trip, Evy reads a page from the Book of the Dead, which resurrects the mummy. Not to spoil too much of the plot, but Evy’s ability to read hieroglyphs proves helpful in solving the mummy’s mystery (“Take that, Bembridge scholars!”) You can watch the movie using Falvey’s Interlibrary Loan service.

Looking for more libraries featured on film? Explore the resources below.

Libraries on film in Falvey’s collection:

• The Name of the Rose
• The Time Machine
• The Day After Tomorrow
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• All the President’s Men
• Harry Potter

More movies featuring libraries via Interlibrary Loan:

• The Music Man
• The Breakfast Club
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Se7en
• Clue
• National Treasure

Want to win a cool “Falvey Says Read” tee shirt? Email your favorite movie library to libraryevents@villanova.edu, and we’ll pick a winner at random!

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

Famous Hollywood Hills in California, USA. Hollywood Sign. California Photo Collection.

Church of San Barnaba. Photo Credit: Didier Descouens – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19918379

By Regina Duffy 

This summer Falvey Library is going to the movies! Well, we’re using our beloved Library’s resources to research the coolest film scenes set in libraries. So grab a seat and a box of popcorn because the we’re going to look at when libraries go to Hollywood.

When I think about films with fascinating libraries, something that immediately comes to mind is a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The library in this film plays a pivotal role in helping Indiana Jones reach an initial breakthrough in a mystery he’s trying to solve.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, released in 1989, is the third film in the ever-popular Indiana Jones franchise. Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford and the late great Sean Connery, it seems to be one of those films that stands the test of time. It has everything a movie-lover could possibly want—mystery, suspense, adventure, cool scenery, great action scenes, feisty dialogue, and dynamic actors who bring the characters to life on screen.

In the film, which is primarily set in 1938, Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr., (Harrison Ford) an esteemed professor and archeologist, sets out on a mission to find his father, Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery), a professor of Medieval literature, who he learns recently went missing. Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. was in Venice, searching for his obsession, the Holy Grail, and suddenly disappeared. According to the New World Encylopedia, “The Holy Grail is a mythical object or symbol associated with Jesus Christ. In earliest Grail literature, it was described as the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, and was said to possess miraculous powers.” In this film, many believe that drinking from the Holy Grail will give you eternal life, so it is a much sought-after artifact by fellow researchers, collectors, and, as it turns out, Nazis.

Setting out on his quest along with family friend Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott), Indiana uses his father’s detailed Holy Grail diary notes to lead him to Venice, Italy, where he meets a fellow researcher, Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody). There they travel to the location where his father is last seen, a picturesque library, where they follow clues to uncover an underground crypt containing vital information needed to unearth the Holy Grail. In the process they also meet members of a fanatical religious group sworn to protect the Holy Grail who tell them that Dr. Jones, Sr. is being held against his will at a castle on the German-Austrian border.

More chaos and hijinks ensue on the path to saving Indiana’s father and in pursuit of the Holy Grail, but you’ll have to watch the film to experience the full cinematic adventure!

When looking up information about this scene, I discovered to my surprise that the library is not actually a library at all! The façade of the library was a church in Venice, Italy, called the Church of San Barnaba. Today, the church features exhibits. I learned that the scenes filmed inside of the library were actually shot in a studio, not in the Church of San Barnaba. Nevertheless, the library represents a gateway to knowledge in this film, so it would make sense that this setting is utilized as one of the major vehicles of discovery for Indiana, a man who values research and education.

Fun fact: there is also an exhilarating library scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This 2008 film received mixed responses from audiences, but I still enjoy going on the nostalgic adventure. The Reading Room in this film reminds me of Falvey’s Dugan Polk Reading Room with its high ceilings.

Want to follow in the footsteps of Indiana Jones and company on their journey? Learn more about the Holy Grail, the city of Venice, and more, below!

The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief  (Richard W. Barber)

Eternal Chalice: The Enduring Legend of the Holy Grail (Juliette Wood)

Servants of the Grail: The Real-Life Characters of the Grail Legend Identified (Filip Coppens)

Venice Walks (Jo-Ann Titmarsh)

Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most Touristed City (Robert C. Davis, Garry Marvin)

The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light (Nigel Morris)

Excavating Indiana Jones: Essays on the Films and Franchise (Randy Laist)

Borrow Indiana Jones series via Interlibrary Loan:

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Indiana Jones series is also available via Disney+ for those who have a paid subscription to that streaming platform.

Be sure to check out the final movie in the series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), in theatres now.

Regina Duffy is a Communication and Marketing Program Manager at Falvey Library.

Famous Hollywood Hills in California, USA. Hollywood Sign. California Photo Collection.

Courtesy of Wikicommons: George Eastman House, Set 72157608512488080, ID 2987740376, Original title [NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY]

By Shawn Proctor

This summer Falvey Library is going to the movies! Well, we’re using our beloved Library’s resources to research the coolest film scenes set in libraries. So grab a seat and a box of popcorn because the we’re going to look at when libraries go to Hollywood.

Want to win a cool “Falvey Says Read” tee shirt? Email your favorite movie library to libraryevents@villanova.edu, and we’ll pick a winner at random!

We’re not afraid of no ghosts! But the opening scenes of Ghostbusters, the 1984 classic horror-comedy, are actually pretty scary as we follow Alice, an older librarian, down the shadowy bookshelves.

“Deep in the basement of the New York Public Library (NYPL), strange things are happening: Books float from shelf to shelf in midair, cards spew from catalog drawers, and a librarian confronts a terrifying . . . something. Enter Drs. Venkman (Bill Murray), Spengler (Harold Ramis), and Stantz (Dan Aykroyd): “paranormal studies” researchers working in, but barely tolerated by, the psychology department of Columbia University,” explains The Laughing Dead: The Horror-comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland. (Access available via ProQuest.)

While the film made use of many notable New York City landmarks, the ominous exterior of the NYPL, complete with massive marble lions, sets the tone for all of supernatural scares ahead. The pair of big cats look as if they might pounce off their pedestals right then!

Courtesy of NYPL

Did you know? The two lions are named Patience and Fortitude! And they are 112 years old, according to the NYPL!

If you want to see more images of the lions through the years, visit this NYPL Google Drive.

“(T)he screenwriters imagined that the urban setting was appropriate not only to the comic riffs of their characters (and the unflappable locals), but also to the mythology they were creating for their demons and ghouls. The buildings in New York are old and rich with history, full of ghosts and their legends,” says the book Fun City Cinema : New York City and the Movies That Made It. (Access available via ProQuest.)

“Of course, it adds to the comedy when the Ghostbusters themselves are only fractionally braver than Alice the librarian,” adds Karen Kettnich and Paul T. Jaeger in their Library Quarterly article “Libraries and Librarians Onscreen and in Library Quarterly, Part 2, Or, The Greatest Hits of the ’80s, ’90s, and Today!”

Do you still use physical media like DVDs? You can borrow a DVD set of Ghostbusters 1 & 2 via Falvey’s Interlibrary Loan service!

Throughout the movie, the exteriors were consistently New York, but you might not realize that very few of the interior sets resided on the east coast. Filming shifted to Los Angeles due to save on filming costs. The library scene is no exception.

“…the stacks of the library are the stacks of the library. Even though they’re quite particular at the great New York Public Library on 42nd Street, we didn’t think it would be a problem to move that scene [to L.A.],” Ivan Reitman told LA Weekly in 2016. “Where we made use of the great reading room [of the New York Public Library] — and we were always going to film there as soon as I walked through it and was given permission to shoot there — I said, “Well, this is incomparable, so we have to shoot here.”

As Falvey is home to the impressive Dugan Polk Family Reading Room, we can completely understand that sentiment.

Got a favorite movie that features a library? Comment below!

Falvey Library Resources Cited:

Columbia Pictures,, et al. Ghostbusters 1 & 2. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Inc., 2017.

Jason Bailey. Fun City Cinema : New York City and the Movies That Made It. Abrams, 2021.

Kettnich, Karen, and Paul T. Jaeger. “Libraries and Librarians Onscreen and in Library Quarterly, Part 2, Or, The Greatest Hits of the ’80s, ’90s, and Today!” Library Quarterly, vol. 90, no. 4, 2020, pp. 389-411, https://doi.org/10.1086/710268.

ProQuest Ebook Subscriptions, et al. The Laughing Dead: The Horror-comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Shawn Proctor is a Communication and Marketing Manager at Falvey Memorial Library.