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. 

Help us celebrate Love Data Week, the international celebration of all things data related! Love data is a week dedicated to raising awareness and celebrating how data influences our world! 

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! To help new and seasoned data users find data training and resources to move the needle on issues they care about, I have created a list of resources one could use to explore those issues. 

With February also being Black History Month, I wanted to bring attention to some of the research and data sources available covering issues with race, not only in the U.S. but worldwide.   

Check out these resources to learn more. 

U.S. Census Information on Race: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race.html  

Race, Ethnicity and Marriage in the United States: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/07/interracial-marriages.html  

Pew Research Center Race and Ethnicity information: https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/race-ethnicity/ 

ICPSR is a data repository available to Villanova students, faculty, and staff. They host a variety of datasets that have been curated for ease of use, including many sets dealing with social issues. Two helpful features they offer are the Thematic Data Collections, which includes the Resource Center for Minority Data, and their Current Events in the Bib page, which shows publications dealing with current society issues and how data is being used in to broaden the scholarship. Explore ICPSR to find datasets available for secondary analysis to advance policy and social change. 

The International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology, IASSIST, recently released a webinar titled “A Conversation About Data on Race & Ethnicity Around the World” By Bobray Bordelon, Barbara Levergood, Kevin Manuel, Nigel de Noronha, Anja Perry, and Anne Zald. The panel was moderated by Alexandra Cooper and Deborah Wiltshire.

Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian, recommends the book, Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein. “The book touches on why data scientists need feminism and how data can perpetuate intersectional inequalities. The book also provides examples of different projects like Data for Black Lives: https://d4bl.org/.” 

It is important to also highlight some of the inherent issues that are prevalent in data science. Beaudry Allen, University Archivist, recommends Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble to learn more about the systematic racism found in data science. 

For more information about different data resources Falvey offers check out the Falvey library blog. There were different data related posts throughout the week! Make sure to join us again next year for Love Data Week 2024, which will run from Feb. 12-16.

Follow and spread the word about Love Data Week 2023: @lovedataweek on Twitter and Instagram #lovedata23 

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

Nicole Daly is Communication Librarian at Falvey Library.

Falvey Memorial Library is pleased to announce “Falvey Fridays,” a workshop series drawn from our popular brown bag lunch sessions. Each workshop will provide new and exciting information on research methods, tools, and pedagogies for researchers of all levels. Registration is free and open to the Villanova community.

Please register for workshop sessions below. Once registered, you will be sent a Zoom link to the event.

Tabula: Extracting Tables from PDFs (Friday, March 26; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian.

If you’ve ever tried to do anything with data provided to you in PDFs, you know there’s no easy way to copy-and-paste rows of data from tables out of PDF files. Come learn more about Tabula, an open source tool for extracting data tables locked inside PDFs and how to import that data easily into a CSV or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEld-6qqT0jGtf_gLlSDe1fstCDdj2cNA-

Citation Management using Zotero (Friday, April 9; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Sarah Hughes, Nursing & Life Sciences Librarian.

Serious research projects call for no-nonsense tools for taming citations. Learn how to use Zotero to save, organize, and share references.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ud-qurTgqE9eNmezaCgojaU2-bjBTCpD-

Policy Map/Social Explorer (Friday, April 23; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Deborah Bishov, Social Sciences & Instructional Design Librarian and Merrill Stein, Social Sciences Librarian.

Explore features of two easy-to-use, online demographic data mapping tools which draw on a combination of governmental, proprietary and open resources.  Map data of interest and export and save visualizations for research or teaching. Knowledge of GIS (geographical information systems) is not required.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEscOGtqTwuGN1SqGzFYONpmNA65dIQ5H_h

Newspapers and magazines are widely used to gauge public attitudes and awareness. These workshops will take a close look at the discovery of national and international news publications. They will cover daily news as well as magazines and newspapers aimed at specific interest groups. Mundane but critical tasks such as locating a cited source, determining the availability of news sources in the local collection, and citing news sources will be addressed as well. Special attention will be paid to digital archives and some of the challenges and opportunities they present.

Join Jutta Seibert, history librarian, for two workshops on newspapers and magazines: Friday, Feb. 12, at 3 p.m. and Wednesday, March 24, at 4 p.m. Both 60-minute workshops are ACS approved.

Please REGISTER HERE for the Feb. 12 workshop. Once registered, you will be sent a link to this event.

Please REGISTER HERE for the March 24 workshop. Once registered, you will be sent a link to this event.

Falvey Memorial Library is pleased to announce “Falvey Fridays,” a workshop series drawn from our popular brown bag lunch sessions. Each workshop will provide new and exciting information on research methods, tools, and pedagogies for researchers of all levels. Registration is free and open to the Villanova community.

Please register for workshop sessions below. Once registered, you will be sent a Zoom link to the event.

Reusing Responsibly: Copyright Basics (Friday, Feb. 12; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Sarah Wipperman, Scholarly Communications Librarian.

We create and interact with copyrighted material every day, whether it’s sending an email, replying to a tweet, writing a book, or making a podcast. This presentation will give you the tools you need to better understand what gets copyright and how to reuse copyrighted content responsibly.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJctceGvrD0rHtxsV_U_88w-IfV33Ui-T6WE

Bringing Historical Maps into GIS (Friday, Feb. 26; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian.

Georeferencing is the process of connecting images (e.g. aerial photographs, scanned historical maps, satellite images) to their geographic locations, so that they can be used as spatial layers in GIS software. Using tools like Map Warper and ArcGIS Online, this workshop will provide participants with the steps to align geographic coordinates to a digitized historical map and display them online in order to examine how locations have changed over time.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvcu6qpzwsHNC-PS8AvZfHFufmAel6O5JC

Understanding and Negotiating Publisher Contracts: What to Look for Before You Sign (Friday, March 12; 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)

Workshop led by Sarah Wipperman, Scholarly Communication Librarian.

You wrote an article, and it was accepted! The publisher sends you a publishing agreement to sign, but what does that agreement actually say? What rights are you giving away, and what rights do you retain? Can you post your article to your website? Can you use it in the classroom? Can you send it to colleagues? This workshop will look at a variety of agreements across different disciplines; give you tools to understand general journal policies on when and how you can post articles; show you ways that you can negotiate with publishers to retain more rights to your work; and discuss ways that you can share your work more widely.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApduGhrzMuGdOmjWMu0Bc0A8jU5QNQgvwt

Tabula: Extracting Tables from PDFs (Friday, March 26; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian.

If you’ve ever tried to do anything with data provided to you in PDFs, you know there’s no easy way to copy-and-paste rows of data from tables out of PDF files. Come learn more about Tabula, an open source tool for extracting data tables locked inside PDFs and how to import that data easily into a CSV or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEld-6qqT0jGtf_gLlSDe1fstCDdj2cNA-

Citation Management using Zotero (Friday, April 9; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Sarah Hughes, Nursing & Life Sciences Librarian.

Serious research projects call for no-nonsense tools for taming citations. Learn how to use Zotero to save, organize, and share references.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ud-qurTgqE9eNmezaCgojaU2-bjBTCpD-

Policy Map/Social Explorer (Friday, April 23; 11 a.m.–12 p.m.)

Workshop led by Deborah Bishov, Social Sciences & Instructional Design Librarian and Merrill Stein, Social Sciences Librarian.

Explore features of two easy-to-use, online demographic data mapping tools which draw on a combination of governmental, proprietary and open resources.  Map data of interest and export and save visualizations for research or teaching. Knowledge of GIS (geographical information systems) is not required.

Please REGISTER at the following link:

https://villanova.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEscOGtqTwuGN1SqGzFYONpmNA65dIQ5H_h

Revitalize your research at the first Falvey Forum—Drawn from Falvey Library’s brown bag lunch workshops, this two-day, six-session virtual event will provide new and exciting information on research methods, tools, and pedagogies for researchers of all levels. Register for one or multiple sessions (outlined below) on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and Thursday, Oct. 22, from 11 a.m.—3 p.m.

“Falvey Forum 2020 represents the best of our research workshops (which can be requested on demand by faculty and departments) rolled into two fun and interesting days. This is an exciting opportunity for Villanova students, faculty and staff as well as members of the general public to deepen their understanding of great academic tools and discover new techniques to meet their research goals,” Rob LeBlanc, First-Year Experience Librarian.

The conference is free and open to Villanova faculty, students, staff, and community members. Visit the Falvey Forum homepage for more details and to register for sessions: https://library.villanova.edu/research/teaching-and-learning/workshops/falvey–forum-2020

Conference Workshops

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 21

Citation Wrangling—Presenter: Sarah Hughes (11 a.m.—12 p.m.)

Serious research projects call for no-nonsense tools for taming citations. Learn how to use Zotero to save, organize, and share references.

Data Visualization with Tableau—Presenter: Erica Hayes (12:15 p.m.—1:30 p.m.)

This session will provide a gentle introduction to how to use Tableau Desktop Public, a free software that allows individuals to publish interactive data visualizations and graphs on the web.

Copyright and Publishing 101 — Presenter: Sarah Wipperman (1:45—3:00)       

Academia is full of copyright and publishing questions that are often difficult to answer: Can I use this image in my work? What can I do with my work once it’s published? What does that agreement I signed actually say? Can I post my work on a certain website?

THURSDAY, OCT. 22

Beyond the Archive—Presenter: Beaudry Allen (11 a.m.—12:00 p.m.)

The archive is not a passive, neutral institution, but an active ever-evolving site where social power and memory is negotiated, challenged, and confirmed. This session will explore the history of diversity and social justice on Villanova’s campus through material from the University Archives and illustrate how archival practices and bias shape memory.  It’s is also an opportunity to learn how to do research in an archive.

Storytelling and GIS—Presenter: Erica Hayes (12:15 p.m.—1:30 p.m.)

While maps have been around for centuries, the digital age has given them new meaning. GIS software offers users the potential to visualize, analyze, and tell spatial stories. In this session, you will learn more about ArcGIS Online and Esri Story Maps, a web mapping application that allows you to combine GIS maps, text, images, and video to tell your own geographic story.

Sharing Your Work: Academic Social Networking Sites and Beyond—Presenters: Sarah Wipperman and Dr. Janice Bially Mattern (1:45—3 p.m.)     

Social media sites like Twitter and other online platforms make sharing your work, networking, and raising your visibility easier than ever. But which sites and platforms are most effective? Is it worth the effort? Where should you start? Join Scholarly Communications Librarian, Sarah Wipperman, and Director of Villanova Institute for Research and Scholarship, Dr. Janice Bially Mattern, to learn the techniques and social norms of using these platforms to increase your visibility.

Questions? Contact Rob LeBlanc, First-Year Experience Librarian.

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. 

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.