This week the Curious ‘Cat asks Villanova students, “What’s the most surprising thing you carry in your backpack?”

Christian Cullen Lopez—“My CE notebook. It’s for business: Competitive Effectiveness.”

Marie Griffin—“I have some applesauce.”

Xiaomeng Zhong—“fruit: an apple and an orange.”

Kylie Frankowski—“I always have tissues and wipes. My friends tease me because I’m like a mom.

Daniel Craft—“A bottle of Dayquil.”

Deyjah Foster—“Piano sheet music: I have 30 pieces of piano sheet music I carry to play at cyber lounge whenever I have free time … Every now and then I carry a Japanese dictionary.”

This week the Curious ‘Cat asks Villanova students, “Name one thing that you, as a Villanova student, could not live without.”

Sam Vitale—“Whether in the Library or the individual places inside of each of the buildings, just a quiet place to study. That would be tough to live without.”

Joseph Un—“That’s really simple: a cell phone.”

Gene Alpin—“My family, the support of my family”

Evangelia Makrygiannis—“Just seeing everyone’s smiling faces around campus … if everyone was sad all the time and no one said ‘Hi’ to each other, it wouldn’t be happy.”

Joseph Splendido—“The late-night hours at the Spit [Donahue Court]. It’s really nice to study late there … around 11:00 p.m. or 12:00. It’s a good quiet place.”

Last fall, while still new to Villanova, I wrote my very first blog post about Nova, the dog I was raising for The Seeing Eye. Since some of you may be wondering what happened to Nova after she returned to The Seeing Eye last November, I thought it was time for an update.

While I anxiously waited to hear if Nova would pass her preliminary tests and be placed with a trainer, her mom, Carey, was busy with a litter of new puppies (more on that in a minute).

In the beginning of January, after what felt like an eternity, I finally heard that Nova was placed with a trainer. She sent me an update by postcard.  In April, my family and I were invited to her Town Walk, the graduation ceremony where she showed all that she learned in her months of harness training. Nova passed (!) but honestly, there was no doubt in my mind she would make the program. Nova went into the May class to wait for her human match.

The Seeing Eye’s program is similar to college; The Seeing Eye is the campus and the blind humans are the students. Classes are composed of students and canine guides waiting to be paired. Every month a new class goes to The Seeing Eye’s campus where they enter into a class with students and stay on campus in dorm-style rooms for about thirty days of training with their canine match. In June I received a letter; Nova met her match in the May class. She met her blind best friend for life! I cried the happiest of tears. I am still completely overjoyed.

Nova “rests” and poses for pictures at the completion of her Town Walk.

The letter from Nova’s trainer was the icing on the cake. Her trainer wrote “I have to thank you for everything you did to get Nova ready for her life as a Seeing Eye dog. We could not do what we do without families like you. You should be proud of Nova’s success because it stems from you. Her success wouldn’t have been possible without you. All your love and care paid off!”

Before Nova left, I wrote a letter to her future owner, a person I will never know personally. I wanted Nova’s match to know what it was like raising Nova, what she was like as a puppy, and lastly, how grateful I was to have the opportunity to raise her. I started my letter with “Dear Nova’s owner,” and ended it with four short sentences: “I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to raise this sweet girl. I am excited that Nova was chosen to be your guide. I hope she fills your days with laughter and smiles, and your heart with love. I am thrilled knowing she will provide you with the exhilarating experience of traveling with a Seeing Eye dog.”

As I mentioned earlier, momma pup Carey has been busy. She had a litter of nine puppies on Christmas Eve: another “N” litter.

Nellie is hidden somewhere in the puppy pile.

Nellie poses in front of St. Thomas of Villanova Church.

Just before Valentine’s Day, I welcomed seven week old Nellie into my life. Just like her half-sister Nova, Nellie will spend 12-15 months with me learning and growing. You may have already seen her around campus; she usually makes a weekly visit.

Here are a few helpful tips for when you come across a working dog: Do not call the guide dog’s name, make eye contact, feed or talk to a working dog in harness. It is always best to treat the dog as if he is not there. Do not pet a guide dog when he is wearing the harness. If the dog is resting without his harness, ask the owner before you pet the dog and respect the person’s decision if they say no. As a general rule of thumb, please be sure to always ask the human handling the dog, whether in a vest or harness, if it is okay to pet, interact with or even speak to the dog.

If you are interested in learning more about The Seeing Eye or puppy raising please visit The Seeing Eye’s website.

Come out to the 2015 Special Olympics Fall Festival—held the weekend of November 6, rain or shine. Stop by The Seeing Eye’s table, and meet the puppies in training.

Article by Laura Matthews, Library Events and Outreach Specialist. 

For those who don’t know, VuFind is an open-source library resource portal designed and developed for libraries right here by Villanova University’s own Falvey Memorial Library. VuFind replaces the traditional online public access catalog, enabling users to search and browse through all of a library’s resources. We are proud to say that components of this system have been implemented in institutions all over the world!

In order to continue conversations about the system, Falvey Memorial Library has been the home base of several VuFind meetings over the years. In fact, on October 12 and 13, the 2015 VuFind Summit brought to Falvey about fifteen software developers from a variety of places, including Germany and Finland, to discuss the use and future course of VuFind. This event continued some conversations begun at an even larger “community meeting” held the previous week in Germany.

A group shot of the 2015 VuFind Summit Conference attendees!

Presentations at the conference covered some unconventional uses of VuFind – for example, as a website to document a painting restoration project, and a set of genealogy databases – as well as providing tips on how best to manage the software, including a fascinating discussion on how to enable the software to run without interruption even when searching huge numbers of records under heavy load.

The planning session and subsequent “hackfest” led to some useful discussions about interoperability and reusability and suggest that future development of the software will focus on allowing VuFind to interact with a wider variety of systems and be reused in novel ways. Welcoming developers from distant places to interact in person also led to some useful knowledge sharing, particularly with regard to new features of VuFind’s underlying tools, and this exchange of knowledge will likely result in performance improvements in the next release of the package.

Demian Katz took notes at the 2015 VuFind Summit.

It is conventional programmer’s wisdom that “software is never done,” and this is certainly true of VuFind – a mature and widely used package that nonetheless always has room for growth and improvement. Regular meetings like the VuFind Summit help to re-energize that growth and keep the project alive and on track.

Contributed by Demian Katz, library technology development specialist

This week the Curious ‘Cat asks Villanova students, “What’s the most unexpected thing that’s happened to you or that you’ve seen at the Library?”

Angel Wolf—“Most of the time I just come and do my work. Nothing too eventful has happened.”

Carter Young—“They were serving oranges in a bowl at the Learning Support Services. It’s pretty surprising to me that they’d serve fruit instead of candy.”

Sterling Williams—“I was here around 11:00 last night, and that second-floor room—the common area where you can just come in and do whatever work you want—I didn’t expect that room to be almost completely full of students at 11:00 p.m. That’s something I did not expect to see. So I went all the way to the back [of the second floor] to where the couches are to just finish my work.”

Joe Ryan—“I was working on the third floor, it was pretty quiet and some kid got a phone call. And he answered it. And he was talking pretty loud, like ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be there in a second …’ The other people were like, ‘Shh. Shh!’ So he got up and left with his phone. ”

Nicole Buckley—“It was the third week of the semester, and I saw a little, cozy, quiet spot upstairs kind of hidden by that staircase over there. And you had these little tables that you could bring close to yourself while you sit on a nice, comfy couch. It was really nice for studying … like a little secret spot.”

Ellinore Folkesson—“I went to a religious diversity talk … the most surprising thing was just how intrigued I was and how interesting it was. And I didn’t expect that. I’ve been to one of the brown-bag discussions as well, about race. I think it’s amazing that they do these things.

And all the different events that you have going on are really easy to see ‘cause you advertise a lot, which is good.”

Halloween is creeping right upon us, and since it’s on a Saturday, you have very few excuses not to find a costume party or to dress up and hand out candy to little ghouls and gremlins! “But wait,” you say, “I don’t even have a costume!” You’ve come to the right blog post. Read on to see what costumes some of our esteemed librarians and library staff members have in mind for their own haunted eves!

Alice in Wonderland (with a twist) by Sarah Wingo, subject librarian for English, literature and theater

“When I was about 3 years old I was pretty into Alice in Wonderland… I was Alice that year for Halloween and my parents were Tweedledee and Tweedledum — and my mom even made a little “Tweedleda” costume for my sister, who was an infant at the time. As I’ve grown up I’ve always had a place in my heart for Alice, and this year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland, so I decided that it’s time to revisit the “role,” as it were.

Typically adult Alice costumes look ridiculous and frumpy or overly sexy, plus for the last few years I’ve been really into my costumes being scary or spooky in some way… I’m going as what I’m calling Hell Mouth/Slayer Alice. I’m going to distress the costume and spatter it with blood. I’ve already purchased a zombie flamingo on ebay (yup, that’s a thing) that I’m going to turn into a croquet mallet/weapon, and I’m also going to use makeup and makeup wax to make it look like I’ve got playing cards sticking out of my flesh as if they were thrown at me at me like ninja stars. Plus isn’t a Buffy/Alice crossover something that the world deserves?”

Bonus suggestion: “…about 5 years ago I went as post drowning zombie Ophelia.”

10 Points for Gryffindorable by Gina Duffy, Library Events and Program Coordinator

“I am attempting (key word: attempting) to put together a Harry Potter costume for my daughter Alaina. A family friend is knitting me a scarf in Gryffindor’s colors and I want to draw the famous lightning bolt and round trademark glasses on her face. I still need to gather the rest of the costume, including a wand, black cape and possibly a stuffed owl Hedwig. Harry Potter is a fairly recognizable literary character to most age groups, so I think it is a fun costume choice!”

Jane and Elizabeth Bennett by Luisa Cywinski, Access Services Team Leader

Access Services team leader Luisa Cywinski and her sister as Jane and Elizabeth Bennett.

Bonus suggestion: “The Bride of the Tomb by Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller. We have a wealth of costume ideas in the Dime Novel collection!”

Madeline! by Reds Dollymore

The stunning Reds Dollymore, grandfather of 3 Wildcats (Tracey Quinn, LAS ’12, Molly Quinn LAS ’15, Conor Quinn, VSB,) and father of library staff Joanne Quinn (LAS ’15, ’84).

More ideas for the very last minute Halloween revelers…

Put on a pair of ears and claws, draw on a nose, and be The Bear That Pursues from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Make horns, wings, and buy a bag of gold-wrapped chocolate coins and you’ll be Smaug from The Hobbit.

Wear green, paint your face red, and put on antennas to channel your inner Caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar (a built-in excuse to eat all the candy!)

Grab a friend and be Scylla and Charybdis! If you have lots of friends, get them to be your extra Scylla heads. If you have no friends, carry your own water. Bonus hydration!

Strap on a green LED headlamp, use some marine rope as a belt, and wear something with anchors on it. You are now the Green Light at the end of Daisy’s dock in The Great Gatsby. Congratulations.

And if that’s still not enough for you, check out this list of literary costumes from BuzzFeed!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone via Scholastic
Alice in Wonderland via Wikimedia Commons

Article by Michelle Callaghan, graduate assistant on the Communication and Service Promotion team. She is currently pursuing her MA in English at Villanova University.

Posted for Susan Ottignon.

Recently the Digital Library completed a digitalization project of the “Robert M. O’Reilly” papers. The collection’s subject, Dr. Robert O’Reilly, was a Philadelphia native, who held a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and had a lengthy and distinguishable career in the U. S. Army which lasted over 40 years, from 1867-1909.

The O’Reilly collection consists of over 300+ items, chronicling Dr. O’Reilly’s personal life and military career, includes his personal letters, a selection of published U.S. Army General Orders, from the United States Adjutant-General’s Office, in 1870, and his scrapbook from the 1906 International Conference for the Revision of the Geneva Convention where he was a delegate for the United States.

There are several unique certificates, in this collection, given to O’Reilly signifying his succession in military rank; the certificates are sizable and elaborate in design and signed and countersigned by the President and Secretary of War. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War under Lincoln and Johnson, signed O’Reilly’s first certificate, with his appointment as a Medical Cadet, in January, 1864. Several certificates display the signatures of Presidents Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt authorizing O’Reilly’s promotion in rank; in most cases the certificate had a stamped Presidential signature, and were countersigned by the Secretary of War as well as recorded in the Adjutant General’s Office.

The Collection is owned by the American Catholic Historical Society and held at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center in Wynnewood, PA. Be certain to check out the Center’s blog, by Amanda McKnight, entitled, “Robert M. O’Reilly, Surgeon General” which provides a summary of Robert O’Reilly’s life and career.

If you are interested in more information on the role of a Medical Cadet during the Civil War, 1861-1865, I suggest reading this blog: Schmidt, Jim. “Medical Department #36 – Medical Cadets.” Civil War Medicine (and Writing): A blog on Civil War-era medicine and my own historical research and writing. 11 October 2010. Accessed 13 July 2015.

Printed. Military Commission Certificate, To: Robert O’Reilly, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Army Signed: Andrew Johnson, President of the United States and Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, July 24, 1867.

Printed. Military Promotion of Rank Certificate, To: Brigadier General Robert O’Reilly, Surgeon General, U. S. Army Signed: Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States and Elihu Root, Secretary of War, December 2, 1902.

A panel of four elite Villanova University scholars participated in a discussion on “The Global and the Interdisciplinary: ‘Education and Privilege’” on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Falvey Memorial Library’s Speakers’ Corner. The panel, co-sponsored by The Global Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies and Falvey Memorial Library, determined the reasons why current issues of race and identity exist in society and also explored ways in which we can take action to challenge the status quo.

Panelists included Jerusha Conner, PhD, Department of Education and Counseling; Carol Anthony, MA, Center for Peace and Justice Education; Jill McCorkel, PhD, Department of Sociology and Criminology; and Bryan Crable, PhD, Department of Communication. Each panelist described their perspective on why issues of race and inequality persist and the steps we can take to make a difference.

Maghan Keita, PhD, professor of History and director of the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies made opening remarks.

To kick-off the panel discussion, Dr. Jerusha Conner discussed her approach the problem of race integration by utilizing her background in the field of education. She stressed the need to educate and empower students to be activists in order to initiate social change. In addition, Conner cited that a group of current Villanova students participate in a service partnership with inner-city schools. By going to the core of the problem, she believes that the students are able to take action and promote change.

Dr. Jill McCorkel, who actively studies the inequalities that exist in the U.S. prison system, emphasized that a vicious cycle exists for students who come from lower-income families; they tend to go from school directly to prison. Dr. McCorkel called it a “school to prison pipeline.” She believes people from certain groups are considered scapegoats and are unfairly treated. The privileged don’t always recognize this inequality. In addition, Dr. McCorkel cited her belief that forms of punishment are connected with our racial history and recommends that we explore the ways that this connection resonates with other countries.

Examining the problem from a social justice perspective, Professor Carol Anthony discussed the need to question the ways we rationalize the morality of conditions in our society. She stressed reasons we should question our justification of violence and inequality as the norm.

Dr. Bryan Crable, an expert in the study of rhetorical theory, talked about race, identity, power and privilege, utilizing his background in the study of communication. He discussed his close examination of the relationship between Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison, two influential American writers. Dr. Crable views this relationship as a reflection of the racial divide that still clearly exists in society.

Jerusha Conner, Jill McCorkle, Carol Anthony and Bryan Crable participated in the panel discussion. (From left to right)

So, what steps can we take to successfully integrate all members of society? How do we avoid reinforcing the ever-present racial divide? The panelists agreed that we do a lot as a community, but that we are capable of doing much, much more. Some solutions include providing prison inmates with education, hiring more diverse students and faculty, and presenting more opportunities to students who come from lower-income families with more attention given to how racial diversity is presented in schools. It is also important to continue to be open to learning and make a conscious effort to self-educate. They believe that with knowledge we are better suited to tackle this problem.

Next up in the Reading Villanova series: Amy Way, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Communication; Chiji Akoma, PhD, associate professor, Department of English; and Catherine Warrick, PhD, associate professor, Department of Political Science will present on “The Global and the Interdisciplinary ‘Gender and Imperialism’” on Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 4:30 p.m. in Speakers’ Corner of Falvey Memorial. Be sure to join us!

From the time Becky Whidden arrived on the scene, she has been involved in many library events, worked on many a library project and inspired many library coworkers and students. Falvey Memorial Library, and Access Services in particular, was lucky to have her on the team for the past four years. We sincerely wish her all the best in her new position at the Office of Undergraduate Students. These photos reflect her positive energy, commitment to teamwork and her professional dedication. We will miss you, Becky!

Fall is the season when we all begin to move indoors and even pastimes get a little more ambitious – things like binge watching Game of Thrones, knitting Christmas stockings for the dog and tackling fat serious novels by Authors You Should Read come to mind. 

This fall is loaded with releases of buzzy books from authors Salman Rushdie, Elena Ferrante, John Irving and a host of celebrity authors. Fall break just may afford you time to get through one, or at least at procure it for your night table to enjoy over semester break. Some library staff have perused the fall lists and have picked their favorites. For a Booktober special, we’ll bring you their thoughts each day this week.

Semester deep and head aswirl from a rigorous graduate Strategic Communication theory class, I remember being quite relieved to recognize a familiar writer’s name on our syllabus tucked amongst Saussure and Baudrillard: Umberto Eco, author of the book, The Name of the Rose (and basis for this movie starring Sean Connery and a youthful, pre-Heathers Christian Slater). The film’s opening credits are quick to point out, however, that Eco’s novel about murder in a medieval monastery provides merely the palimpsest for the flick. (I’ll save you the Google – a palimpsest is something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.)

Eco, aside from being a famed novelist and bibliophile (I’ve read that the man owns 50,000+ volumes) is also a medieval scholar and semiotician. At age 83, he is Italy’s top selling author and one of the world’s top contemporary thinkers on media culture, having written extensively on the subject including scathing critiques on American culture and postmodern hyperreality. 

His most recent book, a sixth novel entitled Numero Zero, has been translated by Richard Dixon and will be published in English on November 3. The tale revisits Eco’s milieu of dark and murky clerical murder, but this time, it’s Pope John Paul I, 1992 Milan. The book has resided on Italian bestseller lists since March.

Social Science and Business Research support librarian, Kristyna Carroll, has provided the following links if you’d like to learn more.

• Here are books by Eco.
• Entry from Encyclopedia of World Biography
• Variety of sources from Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context
• Some search results from Social Sciences Full Text RE Eco
• Similarly, find search results from Humanities Full Text.

And, below, an excerpt about this book lover’s thoughts on libraries.

Links curated by Kristyna Carroll, research support librarian for Business and Social Sciences. Article by Joanne Quinn.