Photo courtesy of Oxford University Press.

By Laurie Ortiz Rivera

With today’s overabundance of information and misinformation, students and researchers alike can be overwhelmed in identifying what’s trustworthy, what’s up-to-date, and what’s accurate. This is the reality of many of us who want to be very well-informed on different topics.

Recently, Falvey Library subscribed to the Oxford Research Encyclopedias of Education to give access to more than 1,000 articles from a prestigious publisher Oxford University Press. The editor, George W. Noblit, wrote:

The ORE of Education provides thorough and balanced syntheses of what is known, what is disputed, and what is in progress in education research. The syntheses will be gateways to new domains of inquiry, providing provocative ideas and incisive critiques as well as addressing the broad controversies that mark education. The ORE of Education will be the singular resource for access to all that is known and all that is being thought in and about education. (Noblit, 2022).

The Oxford Research Encyclopedias covers topics in these general categories:

• Education and society
• Curriculum and pedagogy
• Education, change, and development
• Education, cultures, and ethnicities
• Educational politics and policy
• Educational theories and philosophies
• Educational administration and leadership
• Educational purposes and ideals
• Education, gender, and sexualities
• Educational systems
• Research and assessment methods
• Professional learning and development
• Cognition, emotion, and learning
• Alternative and non-formal education
• Educational history
• Globalization, economics, and education
• Languages and literacies
• Technology and Education
• Education, health, and social services

We enjoy the Encyclopedia’s capabilities to offer multimedia content and cross-links embedded so that readers can follow the rigorous standards of academic publishing. Log into our collection of Oxford Research Encyclopedias to access peer-reviewed summaries on an ever-growing list of topics.

Laurie Ortiz Rivera, PhD, is Subject Librarian for History, Art History, Education & Counseling at Falvey 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.

Marie Roman poses with Jamie Ford, author of the 2011-2012 One Book Villanova selection, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

The Falvey Memorial Library staff recently learned of the passing of Marie Roman, a beloved former Falvey Memorial Library employee, on April 21. Marie retired in 2013, after working as a Resource Management Specialist at Falvey for over 20 years.

During her time at Villanova, Marie’s trademark was her warm, welcoming nature. She cared about her fellow staff and students and invested time in getting to know their stories. Marie was also notorious for her great attention to detail, especially having formerly worked for the Philadelphia Evening & Sunday Bulletin where she met her husband of 44 years, John Roman, who was a long-time reporter for the Delaware County Daily Times.

In addition to her role as a Resource Management Specialist, Marie had a secondary assignment on Programming and Outreach Team. It was there that she assisted with events and displays, often offering thoughtful input and suggestions. In fact. In honor of the anniversary of September 11, 2001, each year Marie would arrange a special patriotic display in remembrance by the entrance of the Library. There, she would carefully place American flags, original newspapers from 2001, as well as colorful bouquets of flowers. To this day, Falvey staff still carry on Marie’s tradition of remembering the victims and heroes of September 11.

Falvey’s patriotic display inspired by Marie Roman in honor of September 11,  2001.

Marie made a lasting impact on Falvey’s staff and student employees. Some Falvey staff members reflect on their favorite memories of Marie:

Jacqueline Smith, Finance and Administration Specialist:

Marie and I would always talk about the latest episodes of PBS This Old House. She and I always wished Tommy Silva, the lead contractor on the show, would come and work on our houses!

I also felt Marie would have made a great reporter with having worked for The Bulletin and being married to a journalist. She was always aware of the “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where,” and “Why.”

Regina Duffy, Communication and Marketing Program Manager:

Marie and I spent time working together on the Programming and Outreach team during the last few years before she retired. From the time I met her, she was always so welcoming and gracious. I was always impressed with how she could carry on conversations with even the most introverted people—I am pretty sure she could get anyone talking! Marie was so good at making people feel comfortable in her presence.

Though Marie was extremely humble, I know that she was very proud of her husband John, her sons, and her granddaughter, Marissa, whom she talked about often.

I learned a lot from Marie and I will never forget her.

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

Fall break service hours:

Monday, October 14 – Friday, October 18: 9am-5pm (entrance doors and book stacks lock at 4:30pm, after-hours card access available)

Saturday, October 19: CLOSED (after-hours card access available)

Sunday, October 20: 12-8pm (entrance doors and book stacks lock at 7:30pm, after-hours card access available)

Regular semester hours resume on Monday, October 21. 24/7 areas will remain accessible to students, faculty and staff with a valid Wildcard when the service desk is closed.

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

Erica Hayes recently joined Research Services and Scholarly Engagement (RSSE) as Digital Scholarship Librarian. RSSE works to support research, teaching, and learning at Villanova University; enabling the discovery of, access to, and stewardship of a vast array of scholarly resources.

Hayes earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Chapman University in Orange, CA; a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, specializing in poetics from California State University, Long Beach; and a Master of Library Science and Master of Information Science from Indiana University, Bloomington.

She is passionate about scholarship and was an Adjunct Professor teaching English Literature and Composition courses when a colleague’s spouse, who was a Digital Humanities Librarian, introduced her to the world of digital scholarship. Encompassing a variety of subjects, digital scholarship lies at the intersection between technology and research. She is excited to collaborate with Villanova faculty and students to help bring their research to life.

“Integrating digital tools into research methods can extend traditional methods of scholarship, sharing knowledge and pedagogy beyond the page,” she says.

While at IU Bloomington, Hayes worked on several projects including the Petrarchive Project, an open access “rich-text” digital edition of Francesco Petrarca’s songbook Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. “The project proposes a new digital way of visualizing, studying, and investigating Petrarch’s work by offering a more ‘authentic’ text as well as multiple indices and tools to access the diverse strata of the work’s composition and cultural contextualization.”

Exhibit: Bird by Bird
She also worked at the Lilly Library, IU Bloomington’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library, as the Web Development Assistant, managing digital collections, Omeka online exhibits, and their website. Collaborating with faculty, Hayes assisted in developing touchscreen exhibits for the library’s special collection exhibits: One of which accompanied the permanent exhibition of John James Audubon’s double elephant folio, Birds of America. “The touchscreen exhibit featured 50 plates of North American bird species from the collection and was created to make the volumes more accessible to library visitors. The touchscreen helped make the collection more interactive while offering an opportunity for patrons to learn more about Audubon and his life,” she explains.

Before starting at Falvey Memorial Library, Hayes completed a two-year fellowship at the NC State University Libraries working in the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center and the User Experience Department. She led a variety of Digital Scholarship workshops including storytelling with GIS, georeferencing historical maps, and text and data mining.

As the Project Manager on the Immersive Scholar Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant at the NC State University Libraries, Hayes also worked with a group of scholars to create large-scale visualizations and extensible models for the James B. Hunt Jr. Library’s visualization walls. She says, “managing the grant’s workflows, I worked closely with creative residents we hosted at the NC State University Libraries on developing open source visualization projects to be shared across institutions.”

Mapping African Coinage
In her free time, Hayes enjoys traveling, experiencing new cultures, and is looking forward to exploring Philadelphia. Currently, she is also collaborating with her friend, Dr. Kacie Wills, on a digital humanities project, entitled “Exploring the Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks,” which was recently awarded a research grant from the Keats-Shelley Association of America. Sarah Sophia Banks was the sister to Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and famed botanist on the Cook Voyages. “While her life has often been overshadowed by her brother, Sarah Sophia was an avid collector of coins, medals, and tokens from around the world. It was most unusual for a woman to study numismatics during the eighteenth century and some of her coins are incredibly rare.  For our project, we are mapping the African coins detailed in her coin catalogues that are housed at the British Museum and the Royal Mint,” she says. “Our GIS map features coins from her catalogues, which connects the coin’s location of authority to their places of issue in order to display these unique coins, tokens, and medals while showing how money was being distributed during the growing British Empire.”

As she works to build a digital scholarship program at Villanova, Hayes invites the campus community to reach out and set up an appointment with her: “I can help students incorporate digital tools into their scholarship and assist faculty with developing digital pedagogy assignments in the classroom.”

Hayes’ office is in the Learning Commons of Falvey Memorial Library, room 229. Email: erica.hayes@villanova.edu.

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

Sarah Hughes recently joined Research Services and Scholarly Engagement as the Nursing and Life Sciences Librarian. Research Services and Scholarly Engagement works to support research, teaching, and learning at Villanova University; enabling the discovery of, access to, and stewardship of a vast array of scholarly resources.

A native of New Jersey, Hughes has a passion for research, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Rutgers University and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the Pratt Institute. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Communication from William Paterson University.

“I enjoyed spending time in the library as an undergrad and eventually discovered that I wanted to pursue a career that was both research oriented, but also personal, where I helped people,” she says.

Her interest in the field began when she enrolled in a medical librarianship course taught onsite at Weil Cornell Medicine in Manhattan. “I was in the same building that was being used by the doctors, residents, and nurses. It was exciting. I liked the idea that the research I was assisting the community in could be used for making advances in medicine,” Hughes says.

Furthering her knowledge of the profession, Hughes worked several internships in various hospitals and institutions, including the New York Academy of Medicine, the Manhattan VA Medical Center, and the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro. The experience she gained helped make for a smooth transition from medical librarian to academic librarian.

Hughes is familiar with academic libraries due to her work with nursing students at Dominican College and teaching library instruction courses to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at William Paterson University before transitioning to Falvey Memorial Library. Hughes knew Falvey Library was right for her when she saw that the scholarly librarian position focused exclusively on nursing and life sciences. “I have a deep respect for nurses. Working in the emergency department at Princeton, I was amazed by all of the tasks the nurses dealt with during their shifts.”

Hughes says she is excited to meet the students and faculty in the fall and encourages the Villanova community to reach out and set up an appointment. “I can assist nursing students with finding and using databases, utilizing citation management tools, and pointing them towards great evidence-based practice resources.” Faculty in the Fitzpatrick College of Nursing can also contact Hughes about research consultations. “Research is a big undertaking and takes a great amount of time—months, sometimes years. We’re exploring what tools the library can offer to help scholars in the sciences and other disciplines. Given that Villanova is R2: doctoral university, the stakes and the expectations are higher, and we need to support them.”

In her free time, Hughes enjoys going to see live music, watching foreign and documentary films, exploring new restaurants, traveling, and spending time outdoors kayaking. An avid tennis fan, she likes watching her favorite players Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

“My door is always open to students and faculty. The Fitzpatrick College of Nursing is very prestigious, so I’m thrilled to have a great group of students with which to work. There’s so many different avenues they can take once they finish their degree. I’m excited to help prepare students for their time at Villanova and beyond.”

I’m William Repetto, a second-year graduate student at Villanova University. This is the “‘Cat in the Stacks” column. I’m your ‘cat. I’ll be posting about college life, about learning and growing here at Villanova, and, of course, about the Falvey Memorial Library’s role.

It’s a short drive down Route 1, and a confusing interchange to I-76 West, then a turn south on 476 until a short drive down Lancaster Ave that brings you from La Salle University to Villanova University. Or the opportunity to expand the horizons of your history undergrad with a graduate degree in English ­– that could bring you to Villanova from La Salle as well, especially if the former offers you a very fulfilling graduate assistantship at their campus library.

Here’s me presenting our Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide idea at Pitch Day, 2017 – one of my favorite memories here at Falvey.

When I think about how far some of my fellow graduate students have traveled to be here at ’Nova, I often feel blessed to have had such a minor change in location and studies. I usually have this thought when I park my car over at the Law Garage and start my walk toward Falvey. In fact, I’ve come to see this stroll from west campus to the library as a metaphor for my experience here at Villanova.

As I set out down route 1 from La Salle, so every morning I start walking down the hill from the garage to the train station. As I started my studies here at ’Nova, so too did I feel pulled heavily downward toward readings and papers more difficult than any other I’d yet read or written. Little did I know how quickly things could change. In one very, very short year, I found myself adapted to the workload, and the downward movement leveled off.

My morning walk levels off in the halls of the underground SEPTA tunnel. In my studies, I too ended up in a strange land – albeit a much more scenic one. During the summer between my first and second years, I enrolled in the Abbey Theatre Summer Studio Program. In the course of an MA, I somehow found myself in totally unfamiliar territory – writing a play of all things. My initiation felt somehow complete.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way so far, here at Falvey and beyond.

From here began the uphill climb to the thesis and, ironically enough, the library. Every workday I reached Falvey with the same sense of pride and accomplishment that accompanied my acceptance to Villanova. This morning, as I make this walk for a final time, as I feel the weight of my thesis removed, this is a sense of accomplishment that I’ll never forget. I found my way here a determined explorer, and I arose a Wildcat.

Article by William Repetto, a graduate assistant in the Communication and Marketing Dept. at the Falvey Memorial Library. He is currently pursuing an MA in English at Villanova University.

The Highlighter is not a sentimental blog. If you have been following it from its start, you’ll notice that it’s changed in the last year. The Highlighter went from a once-every-now-and-then video tutorial to a weekly column covering topical resources available at or through Falvey. It is that time in every graduate assistant’s career, however, when I must graduate and move on, so this Highlighter will be very sentimental.

One of my favorite moments at Falvey was getting to Highlight the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide, my work on which earned me a Meyer Award, pictured here.

In the year that I took over the Highlighter, we’ve covered such topics as Octavius Catto, Advocacy Week, and Lit Fest. Bringing to light the resources we have at Falvey to deepen your experience or understanding of these topics has been a pleasure for me, but I want to mention that assembling these resources is almost never done alone; it requires, as my final highlight, an entire library village.

Let me explain the process to you. Our Comm. & Marketing Department Team Leader Joanne Quinn comes to a meeting and tells me the major events on campus or elsewhere that the Highlighter could cover for those looking to deepen their understanding, or, our Library Events and Program Coordinator Regina Duffy reminds me about an event scheduled here at the library that the Highlighter might cover beforehand by directing visitors to helpful resources.

From there, you might think that I type in a simple search and assemble all the information I find. Wrong. We actually have too many resources for that to be effective. I consult the professionals. If I need to know the depth of a particular database, I contact our subject librarians for information about the appropriateness of a particular database for connecting to an event. If I need to find a book, the access services staff can quickly locate a call number, but they also seemingly have encyclopedic knowledge about the particular locales of sometimes very specific types of information. (I have the sneaking suspicion that they might be magical beings, sent to us from the research gods.)

Here’s a photo of one half of the Comm. & Marketing Dept. taking in the Idea Accelerator’s “Way too Early For Christmas” Party, also always one of my favorites.

With my assignment collected and my information assembled. I set to work bringing the resources to you in an organized fashion, of course bothering PATW author Hunter Houtzer during the composing process. This is how I write a typical Highlighter – but not this week, not on my very last one. This week I just wanted to highlight for you the special love I’ve had in my heart, and will continue to have, for this library village that took me in two years ago.

Thank you!

Article by William Repetto, a graduate assistant in the Communication and Marketing Dept. at the Falvey Memorial Library. He has just completed his MA in English at Villanova University.

It’s the time of year when my walk to my desk in the library brings me past hordes of engineering and math students huddled around our whiteboards, teams of future nurses cramming in those long lists of anatomical terms, and scores of writers frantically “banging out” those last two, or five, or ten pages before that term paper is due.

You might expect this week’s “Highlighter” to cover the journals and databases at your disposal for end of the semester success. You would be sadly mistaken! In this week’s column, I’d like to share some of the ways that Falvey has – and will continue to – help relieve students’ end of the semester stress.

Two students pose for a photo at our holiday event’s backdrop.

At the end of my first semester working at Falvey, in fall 2016, we brought you an Open House that featured a photo backdrop, a Will D. Cat visit, and Mario Kart. Set during the holiday season, this event gave you the chance to get out and get together as a library community as the weather cooled down. Most importantly though, events like this give you some time to laugh, relax and reflect with your classmates while you dot the semester’s i’s and cross its t’s, which is why…

Three students pose for a photo at our spud-tacular tater tot bar.

… We followed that event up the following fall semester with a visit from Pals for Life and a fully loaded tater tot bar. The tater tot bar sold itself and was a big success! I personally loved the Pals for Life visit though. Few things help me relax like hanging out with pets. How can you possibly stress about anything with such cute dogs hanging out –

A collie named Cali relaxing with students.

“How in the world, William, is Falvey Memorial Library going to top that?” you might be wondering. Drum roll please! Introducing, or shall we say “reimagining,” Crunchtime! This Thursday, May 3 at noon, Falvey will host a cereal bar – pun intended – in the first floor lounge. Come out and decompress with some of your favorite cereals! Rumor even has it that there will be a new photo backdrop featuring everyone’s favorite cereal – Will D.’s.

Article by William Repetto, a graduate assistant in the Communication and Marketing Dept. at the Falvey Memorial Library. He is currently pursuing an MA in English at Villanova University.