Welcome to “The Highlighter,” where we’ll be exploring the various new and old services and resources available through the Falvey!

On Wednesday, April 11, “Much Ado About Nothing” opens at the Villanova Theatre. Falvey Memorial Library has a host of resources on Shakespeare, among them Shakespeare in Performance: Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library. You may use this resource to explore what are called prompt books – it’s right there in the title.

“Much Ado About Nothing” Banner, courtesy of VU Theatre.

What in the world is a prompt book, you might be wondering? If you are at all like me, and find the development of a play from page to production to be absolute magic, you might find that prompt books reveal the mechanisms of that magic.

According to Shakespeare in Performance, a prompt book, “is the production’s bible, containing a wealth of instructions and information alongside the basic text of the play.” In other words, prompt books contain the notes, ideas and thinkings of others who have put on the play before to help the next generation of actors understand and explore the characters, sights and sounds of the play.

For example, in one book for “Hamlet,” you might find that one actor like to hold the skull aloft during the famous “To Be or Not To Be” speech, where another might like to put it down altogether. In a third book still, you might find notes that indicate an actor likes to hold the skull differently. All of these notes help the production staff and performers create a cohesive and purposeful rendition of their show.

A photo of that famous speech, courtesy of Shakespeare in Production.

All of this is to tell you to search “Much Ado” on the database; you’ll get an insider’s look at how directors choose their staging and how performers decide their diction. Then check out “Much Ado” at VU Theatre on April 11-14 and April 17-21 at 8 p.m. or the matinee showings at 2 p.m. on April 15 and 22. You’ll end up with a ton to talk about!

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.

Welcome to another special March Madness edition of #TBT. This week’s throwback features basketball photos from 1936, 1955, 2006 and 2008!

The 1936 freshman basketball squad. They went undefeated, much like our ‘Cats will for the rest of the tournament!

Al Griffith of the 1955 men’s basketball team puts up a jump shot.

99% of winning the game is up to the players; the other 1% is up to the fans. Check out these fans from 2006.

A Scottie Reynolds photo from 2008, whose team we will be avenging with a win against Kansas this weekend.

Welcome to “The Highlighter,” where we’ll be exploring the various new and old services and resources available through the Falvey!

A very special resource lies at the center of this week’s “Highlighter” – the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide. As a part of the University’s Center for Peace & Justice Education and Campus Ministry Service Council’s Advocacy Week, Falvey Memorial Library took our newest resource guide’s mission outside the walls of the library.

Me! Staffing the Advocacy Week table. You can catch me Tuesday & Wednesday from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., first floor Connolly.

At Advocacy Week, you will find dozens of organizations campaigning for various humanitarian and activist causes. For example, our neighboring table on the first floor of Connolly yesterday were raising awareness about a petition for creating a new safe space on campus. Our work on the Diversity and Inclusion guide is not so much a cause or movement we’re advocating, but we do see our work as similar.

The Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide includes an important activist aspect. On the top left corner of the landing page, you’ll find a resource submission form – our encouragement to you to share any useful library databases you come across in your courses or elsewhere that you think should be part of the page.

Secondly, we’re using a hashtag to promote the guide, highlight diversity in the library community and contribute to the page. Using #falveyincludes on Twitter, you can add materials to the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide that you think are worthy of discussion within the community, e.g. an article, another tweet, or even a photo that calls the library and diversity to mind for you.

The landing page graphic for the new Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide

Through Advocacy Week and the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide, the Falvey staff hopes to show the profound effects that the library community can have beyond the library building itself. During Advocacy Week, we hope you’ll find out about upcoming events and initiatives here at the library that promote diversity and inclusion, and, with the guide, we hope you’ll explore these very elements of the Falvey community beyond simply this week.

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.

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 supposedly spring, ladies and gentlemen. It’s also snowing, cold, and I have yet to see anything bloom. Weeks like these can hamper our productive energies, especially because something long awaited ­– springtime – seems to be putting us off a little longer in favor of chillier climes. This week’s ’Cat in the Stacks will feature some advice about trudging through these last few cold days.

“Peek at the Week” author Hunter Houtzer hates the cold weather so much that she has been sending me this bitmoji every hour on the hour with the caption: it’s still cold.

Personally, I love the cold weather! This is not the majority opinion. Getting through these last cold days for me involves me drinking coffee and watching the snow, happily clearing the snow off my car, and settling into my desk and writing. In my mind, it’s all very picturesque.

For others, the picture is much dimmer. Cold days bring long periods stuck inside with local businesses and places to go closed down. Brightening the mood involves using mood lighting or altering settings on screens to a warmer filter. As always, though, Falvey Memorial Library offers options for those fed up with being stuck indoors.

First, you can head on over to the Falvey and hide away from the chilly weather. We’ve prioritized making our study spaces inhabitable for students, e.g. the Dugan Polk Family Reading Room and the new furniture in the First Floor Lounge. Come on in, grab yourself a soup or sandwich from Holy Grounds and watch some of those last few cold hours disappear.

While I’m flying high on the cold weather, I should let you know that we launched our new Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide last week.

Second, if stepping out again into that frigid weather has become simply unimaginable, curl up with one of our eBooks, or get done some of that research from afar using the databases. (You can even chat with a librarian using the library’s website!) You can also keep up with library happenings via Twitter or Facebook, and, while you’re at it, let us now how you’re passing the last few cold days of the semester.

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. (Graphics courtesy of Bitmoji, and Hunter and I spending hours perfecting our representations!)

Welcome to “The Highlighter,” where we’ll be exploring the various new and old services and resources available through the Falvey!

Last week, Falvey Memorial Library launched the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide. In the spirit of that launch, I would like to highlight a resource this week that shows both an example of an early attempt at diversity and inclusion and also how far we’ve come since those early forays – Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Reaching a pre-Civil War circulation of over 150,000, Godey’s Lady’s Book became a locus of American culture by publishing works by such preeminent authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The periodical was published from 1830-1898, and most of its content centered on the empowerment of women.

What fascinates me so much about this important historical document is just how different of a meaning “empowerment of women” had during the 19^th century. In one article, you’re as likely to find the phrase “women, who, weak and helpless by nature, have thus become endued with strength” as “as there is a time to be silent, so it does sometimes happen that there is a time when it becomes a duty to speak.”

In another titled “The Importance of Female Education,” you’ll find a rhetorical curiosity when an author advocates for the prioritization of female education because “The father, necessarily engaged in business the greater part of the day, cannot exert the same influence over his children as the mother, who has had the sole care of tutoring their youthful minds and is constantly with them.”

At the moment that these selections seem to promote speaking up and concentrating resources on the education of women, they also confine women to a particular, helpless, and childbearing sphere. This shows a tradition of feminism that goes back almost 200 years in the United States, but it also shows just how far we’ve come – from those perceptions remaining unchallenged to the modern #MeToo Movement and the push for equal pay.

Work for gender equality, more than the continuation of a legacy, remains important in today’s world. Become educated by reading Godey’s Lady’s Book; learn to understand by participating in Women’s History Month, and become an activist by submitting to the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide.

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.

On Wednesday, March 14, Falvey Memorial Library successfully launched its Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide. As the emcee of the Launch Party and Reception, I wanted to write a feature post here reflecting on the experience.

The day finally came after about a year of development on the page – between ideas, backend development and plans to promote the page. Throughout my afternoon preparing for the event, everybody felt very high energy here on the staff. I read and reread my notes for introducing each person but still feel I didn’t do justice to my amazing co-presenters.

The event poster, designed by Joanne Quinn.

We heard first from University Librarian and Director of Falvey Memorial Library Millicent Gaskell. She reiterated the library’s dedication to including all the various communities on campus. She also thanked English and Theatre Librarian Sarah Wingo as well as me and the entire Communication and Marketing Department, which was a huge honor.

She passed the mic off to Wingo and me to give the page a formal launch. I told the whole story of the page, from bookmark to launch party. It’s an experience I’ve loved reflecting on, and I’m sure will stick with me for years to come. Wingo talked about the significance of these resources to her and gave the audience a thorough click-through of the page.

I then had the honor of introducing Associate Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Terry Nance. Nance injected the party with a ton of pathos as she discussed the profound effect libraries had on her life while growing up as young, black woman in a predominantly black neighborhood during the mid-20th century. The sincerity of her voice and the clarity of her purpose are elements of her talk that have stuck with me in the days since, and I’m sure remains fresh on the minds of those who attended.

Terry Nance speaks at the launch party.

After Dr. Nance, various student groups took to the podium to talk about how their groups promote diversity and inclusion on campus. Their quick speeches, one after the other, created a light, welcoming atmosphere that I hope inspired our attendees to seek out more information on these groups.

All in all, the construction of the Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide has served as a transformative personal experience for me. I hope in its dynamism and community-building mission, the guide serves as a transformative space for the university community as well.

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.

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.

This week has been all about diversity here at Falvey, as we launched our new Diversity and Inclusion Resource Guide. As you know, ’Cat in the Stacks is all about connecting events here at the library with some tiny piece of personal advice. Well, I’d like to use this week’s column to talk about diversity both in terms of within a community and also as diversification within our own lives.

I helped Hunter change up her routine by inviting her over to watch hockey. Her team changed things up by beating the Flyers.

Diversity within a community isn’t important in only some abstract, distant way. The allowance of oneself to encounter voices and personalities that come from some other background is important because it enables that individual to grow. Think about it; how can people gain a truly comprehensive point of view if they surround themselves with only voices that reinforce their own way of thinking?

Being diverse has another implication though doesn’t it? As in: simply showing a degree of variety in how we approach the world. At this time in the semester, we can become stuck into a routine. We’ve figured out, or so we think, the most efficient way of doing things, and the days/weeks start passing by with increasing speed. Falling into this routine can stunt growth as well, as we begin to see the everyday through a narrower and narrower lens.

So here’s my advice for this week’s column: do something different! Talk to someone who you don’t think would share the same point of view as you. Alter your routine – even if it’s something as simple as walking a new route across campus to class. These small things can help you see the world in a new light.

The advice is my favorite part of ‘Cat! I changed things up by wearing an out of town jersey. “Why the Colorado Avalanche?” You might ask. My sister made the biggest change of them all by moving out to Colorado from Philly this week – You go, sisterski!

Here at Falvey, we are always here to help you with diversity. Whether you want to experience resources by, for or about underrepresented voices via the Diversity and Inclusion Guide, or you simply want to change things up and study in a new locale, the faculty and staff at Falvey are here for you.

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. (Graphics courtesy of Bitmoji, and Hunter and I spending hours perfecting our representations!)

Welcome to “The Highlighter,” where we’ll be exploring the various new and old services and resources available at Falvey!

Thursday, March 15 at 7:00 p.m., the President’s Lounge of the Connelly Center will play host to esteemed poet Colette Bryce as a part of the ongoing 2018 Lit Fest. The author of four poetry collections, Bryce has also spent parts of her career as a writing fellow and as an editor.

In Bryce’s writing, you’ll immediately notice a sense of melody. She once said, “Music is my central preoccupation with writing; I don’t consider any poems to be without form. Successful poems adhere to an inner music, inner forms. Formally, I write more for the ear than for the eye.”

See, or shall we say, hear for yourself, with these books by Bryce available at Falvey!

• “The Heel of Bernadette” (2000)
• “Self-portrait in the Dark” (2008)
• “The Full Indian Rope Trick” (2005)
• “The Observations of Aleksandr Svetlov” (2007)
• “Selected Poems” (2017)
• “The Whole and Rain-Domed Universe” (2014)

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.

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.

You’ll find a very special edition of a throwback Thursday below. Director of Communications & Marketing Joanne Quinn drew this particular cartoon on Dr. Seuss’ birthday, Mar. 2 (tomorrow!), way back in 2011. I came across this drawing in the catalog while I was thinking about how to piece together this week’s post. As it so turns out, this particular cartoon is as relevant now as ever to our place in the semester and our place in life.

“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose…”

“You have brains in your head,” begins the quote from our cartoon, which qualifies as one of those thoughts that seems so readily obvious that we rarely take the time to think of it. We, of course, all have brains in our heads, and, at this time in the semester as we wrap up midterms week, all of our brains can feel like mush. No matter the places you’ll go this spring break, make sure to rest those brains up and come back to us at Falvey refreshed and ready for the semester’s final weeks.

“You have feet in your shoes,” the poem continues, but those dedicated few among us going on service trips would remind us to read it as “you have shoes on your feet.” A quick visit to the Mission & Ministry website will show you that Villanova students will be going as far away as Ecuador, as nearby as Philadelphia, south to Texas or even out west to California to perform various types of volunteer work. These students embody many aspects of the Villanova mission, and we here at the Falvey wish them the best of luck on their travels this break.

“You can steer yourself in any direction you choose…” closes this selection. It also serves as an excellent mantra for your spring break meditations. Spring semester is roughly half over – and actual spring will be starting soon – so there’s still time for change. Perhaps you were hoping to be more social this semester, and you haven’t quite done that, or maybe you were reaching for higher grades and haven’t achieved them so far. Luckily, with time to go yet, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

I’ll be at my desk preparing all week, but I promise to write!

Here on ’Cat in the Stacks and at Falvey, we’ll be here to help you navigate no matter the direction you choose to steer. Keep up with us here on the blog, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook as we bring you innovative and welcoming programming and events as well as engaging content online.

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. (Graphics courtesy of Bitmoji, and Hunter and I spending hours perfecting our representations!)

Welcome to “The Highlighter,” where we’ll be exploring the various new and old services and resources available at Falvey!

This month on the Highlighter, we reviewed the various ways in which Falvey could help you celebrate Black History Month. I’ve aggregated here the different resources we highlighted, plus a couple bonuses, so that you can both reflect and remember the importance of black history throughout the rest of the year as well.

1. Black History Month Display

Black History Month display, marking the contributions of black Villanovans.

With the help of Rabia Koureissi (’19), Special Collections and Digital Library Coordinator Michael Foight and Distinctive Collections and Digital Engagement Librarian Susan Ottignon, we successfully put together a large display on the first floor, commemorating the important contributions of black Villanovans to the community.

You can still catch a glimpse of the display if you hurry into Falvey during the next week or so; Old Villanova Magazines and the scholarly materials were my favorite parts!

2. Lesley Nneka Arimah Pays Falvey a Visit

On the second full week of February, we were lucky enough to host esteemed author Lesley Nneka Arimah. Her talk at Speakers Corner drew over 70 attendees. As part of the Lit Fest, Arimah’s visit came at a perfect time for our celebration of Black History Month. Arimah’s stories, many available through the post linked above, feature the struggles of many women in the modern world but focus particularly on black women.

3. Scholarly Sources on Black History and African American Voices

Falvey maintains a number of databases that document the history of black drama, African American journalism, African American studies, and much more. On this column, I recommended African American Newspapers: The 19^th Century, The African American Studies Center Online, Black Abolitionist Papers: 1830-1865, Black Authors (Imprints from the LCP), and Black Drama. You can also browse new books on black history in the catalog.

BONUS: Octavius Catto Posts

We ran our posts on Octavius Catto way back in October, when his new statue was making headlines in Philadelphia. His life and history, however, remain relevant now in Black History Month as well. Make sure to give this two-part Highlighter a read.

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.