Image courtesy of the Villanova Digital Library (Bell Air 1964, p. 166)

Villanova’s 2024 Winter Gala has concluded, and students will now wait another year to dress up and take some pictures in Driscoll all while freezing in their suits, dresses, and heels in the chilly Pennsylvania weather.

Today’s TBT features a Junior Week formal from 1964. Would you wear any of these styles? Don’t forget, vintage styles are making a comeback! Maybe keep some inspiration in your back pocket for next year’s Gala.

Now that this Winter Gala is over, students are forced to face a long two weeks before they can bask in the relief of spring break, which is coming up after classes end on March 1. We hope that for those who attended the Winter Gala this past weekend, you enjoyed every minute with your friends dancing on the floor and saw “twinkles in their eyes and glows on their faces,” and that those memories will hold you over these next two weeks (and until the Winter Gala next year!)

Happy Thursday!

AJ Balinski ‘26 CLAS is a Communication major from Gibraltar, Mich. She works as a Communication & Marketing Student Assistant at Falvey Library.

By Abby Stinson

Today, Feb. 21, marks International Mother Language Day, a commemoration established by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to honor the linguistic diversity that enriches our world. Sadly, 40 percent of the world’s population lacks access to education in their “mother language,” or native tongue, leading to the loss of a language every two weeks and erasing valuable aspects of history and culture.  

This initiative, inaugurated in 1999 in Bangladesh, aims to “promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world,” according to the UN. The 2024 theme, “Multilingual education: a necessity to transform education,” underscores the significance of incorporation indigenous languages into education systems. To further this goal, the UN is convening an online panel event featuring experts in multilingual education from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. They also have named 2022-2032 as the “International Decade of Indigenous Languages”, ensuring an opportunity to collaborate and stimulate global change in this department.  

The preservation of languages is paramount for maintaining identity, facilitating communication, fostering social integration, promoting education, and driving development. For more information, read here: International Mother Language Day | United Nations.

Dig deeper and explore the resources below.

• Mother Language Day and its significance:
  • Why mother language-based education is essential | UNESCO
  • Indigenous Languages Decade (2022-2032) | UNESCO
• Mother Language Day applications throughout the world:
  • Young Scholars students continue tradition of celebrating International Mother Language Day (msn.com)
  • Mother Tongue Film Festival Opens at the National Museum of the American Indian On February 21st (yahoo.com)
  • International Mother Language Day: ‘I’ll take a wee bit of the Belfast accent with me when I return home’ | BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
• Tips for continuing to teach mother languages to future generations:
  • How Can I Teach My Child To Speak My Native Language? (msn.com)
• Library resources:
  • The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
    • Holdings: The origin of language : :: Library Catalog Search (villanova.edu)
  • Mother Tongues: Non English-Language Poetry in England
    • Holdings: Mother tongues : :: Library Catalog Search (villanova.edu
• Online Language-Learning Website/App:
  • Mango

Abby Stinson ’26 VSB, is a Marketing and Business Analytics major and a student worker at Falvey Library.

By Jutta Seibert

Elmer R. Kottcamp, Weather
Vane, c. 1941, watercolor and
graphite on paper, 43.9 x 31 cm.
Courtesy of the National
Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Visual representations of data help us understand numbers and their relationships with each other at their best, at their worst they misrepresent and distort what they represent. In our data-driven world visual literacy has become a critical component of information literacy. Thus, it should come as no surprise that this year the Library included a data visualization competition in its Love Data Week lineup.

Humans are remarkable adept at creating and understanding visual representations of data. While experts are divided on whether or not to count paleolithic cave drawings as early examples of data visualization, there is general consensus that maps are visual data communication tools. The information encoded on maps can be highly complex but nevertheless easy to grasp given a basic familiarity with coding conventions for maps. Some of these conventions are so ubiquitous that they are at times considered universal. This may be true today, but visual codes have changed over time. The four cardinal points are an interesting case in point. While we may consider the placement of the North at the top of a map as universal, not all maps follow this convention: Some Medieval European maps show East, where Jerusalem was situated, at the top of the map, Islamic maps often show the South at the top, and last, but not least, modern GIS systems show the travel goal and not one of the cardinal directions at the top.

Modern computing technology has put a wide range of data visualization tools at our fingertips. We are only a few clicks away from transforming data points on a spreadsheet into picture-perfect pie charts, bar graphs, tree maps, and scatter plots. In fact, creating visualizations is generally easier than understanding some of them. There is evidence that many data visualizations produced today are either nonsensical, pedestrian, or outrightly misleading. Numerous websites and publications are dedicated to the misrepresentation and distortion of data through visualizations. Similarly, a range of academic journals are dedicated to the topic of data visualization in various fields ranging from business to science, and the humanities. In a world where enormous amounts of data are continuously collected, both intentionally and unintentionally, data analysis and data communication are considered basic skills in many professions. Today, visual and data literacy are important components of basic information literacy.

Minard, Charles Joseph. “Representation of successive human loss during the Russia campaign of the French Army, 1812-1813.” Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Truly great data visualizations are rare. They tell a story and focus our attention. No specialized data analysis training is needed to understand their message. One of the most widely referenced examples is Charles Joseph Minard’s visualization of the human loss suffered by the French Army during the 1812-13 invasion of Russia and subsequent retreat. Minard’s mash-up of a map and flowchart poignantly shows the stark realities of human loss caused by war. Edward Tufte, a widely respected authority on visualizations and author of multiple works on the topic, calls it “the best statistical graphic ever drawn” on his website.

Explore our recommended reading list below if you are interested in the topic and join us on Friday, February 16 at 10 a.m. for Falvey’s first Data Visualization Competition awards ceremony.

Recommended Readings and Websites

• Cairo, Alberto. How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter About Visual Information. New York: Norton, 2019.
• Emery, John. “Top Five: Ways to Mislead with Data Visualizations.” phData, February 17, 2020. https://www.phdata.io/blog/top-five-ways-mislead-data-visualization/
• Funkhauser, A. Gray. “Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data.” Osiris 3 (1937): 269-404. https://www.jstor.org/stable/301591
• Lisnic, Maxim. “How People Actually Lie With charts. Visualization Design Lab, April 17, 2023. https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/blog/2023/04/17/misleading/
• Mackinlay, Jock D., and Kevin Winslow. “Designing Great Visualizations.” Tableau whitepaper. https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/designing_great_visualizations.pdf
• Thompson, Clive. “The Surprising History of the Infographic.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/surprising-history-infographic-180959563/
• Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 2002.
• Wainer, Howard. Picturing the Uncertain World: How to Understand, Communicate, and Control Uncertainty Through Graphical Display. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
• Yau, Nathan. Data Points: Visualization That Means Something. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2013.

Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

Some Falvey librarians love data, but I love FRED. Since FRED and I don’t have an exclusive relationship, I’d like to introduce you.

My job is to help students and faculty find the data they need. FRED stands for Federal Reserve Economic Data. Its a free online database that evolved to give researchers access to data needed to “understand the Fed’s policy decisions.”(St. Lewis Fed., n.d.) FRED is my helpmate.

Unlike most governmental data sites, FRED is not limited to serving up data gathered and created by it’s parent agency, the Federal Reserve. And you’d be wrong if you assumed that it only covers wonky economic indicators such as GDP, CPI, FDI,  interest rates, unemployment rates or disposable income.

FRED certainly does make data from key federal and international agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the International Monetary Fund and Eurostat available. But it also hosts lesser known data series from the Energy Information Agency, Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. These data sources are of interest across the social sciences and in STEM fields.

Like most librarians I’m on a budget so I appreciate a cheap date. FRED is free and for me. It hosts a pretty amazing range of select, private data sets from the likes of Haver Analytics, Indeed, National Association of Realtors, Moody’s, Realtor.com, Wilshire and Nikkei. There are robust indices and models built by academics too.

I could go on singing the praises of FRED data, but I’d risk being called a lovesick librarian. Still I can’t help mentioning that the FRED user interface is dreamy. Finding data to download, graph or map is done by keyword or browsing categories or sources. Adding data layers to graphs is intuitive and the options for formatting visualizations are many.

Many relationships involve a bit of regret. Last week I took FRED for granted, FRED wasn’t top of mind when a student stopped by my office looking for big data on housing conditions. She could have had just what she was looking for if I had been more attentive to FRED. Hope she sees this now!

St. Lewis Fed. (n.d.) What is FRED? https://fredhelp.stlouisfed.org/fred/about/about-fred/what-is-fred/

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA, is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.

Announcing the 2024 Villanova Literary Festival featured speakers: V. V. Ganeshananthan, Thursday, Feb. 15 in Falvey’s Speakers’ Corner; Tracy K. Smith, Tuesday, March 12 in the Connelly Cinema; Emilie Pine, 2024 Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Chair of Irish Studies, Thursday, March 14 in the President’s Lounge, Connelly Center; and Carolyn Forché, Wednesday, April 3 in the Driscoll Auditorium.

These ACS-approved events are co-sponsored by the English Department, the Creative Writing Program, Gender and Women’s Studies, the Center for Irish Studies, Center for Peace and Justice Education and Falvey Library, and are free and open to the public. All events begin at 7 p.m.

Dr. Gity Etemad speaks on the Baha’i faith. Image courtesy of Kallie Stahl.

Please join us on Tuesday, Feb. 20, from 4:30-6 p.m. in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner for the Interfaith Human Library.

In this library you can check out human “books”—faculty/staff/community members of diverse backgrounds (Baha’i, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Secular, Sikh, and more) to learn more about how they experience their faith/worldview identity. Small groups of students will meet with a different speaker for three 20-minute sessions. Curiosity is the only pre-requisite for this unique conversation opportunity!

REGISTER HERE.

This event is being held in conjunction with the UN World Interfaith Harmony Week.

This ACS-approved event is co-sponsored by Campus Ministry, the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and Falvey Library. It is open to Villanova faculty, staff, and students (both undergraduate and graduate). Light refreshments will be served.

Learn how to save a life! Join Savage Sisters, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives and helping others learn how to administer life-saving Narcan, for a training that includes two free doses of Narcan for every participant. Registration is not required.

Spring 2024 Trainings:

• Monday, Feb. 12, 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Andy Talley Athletic Center, room 191;
• Thursday, March 14, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner;
• Wednesday, April 17, 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m., Driscoll Hall, room 132.

More info: https://www1.villanova.edu/university/health-services/health-promotion/events.html

Africana Studies is hosting Dr. Dionne Irving for a public lecture of her work in Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner on Monday, Feb. 19, at 5 p.m. The title of Irving’s talk is “Caribbean Women Will Have Their Revenge on the New World.”

Irving is originally from Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of Quint (7.13 Books) and The Islands (Catapult Books). Her work has appeared in Story, Boulevard, LitHub, Missouri Review, and New Delta Review, among other journals and magazines. The Islands was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, The Scotiabank/Giller Prize, The New American Vices Award, and The Clara Johnson Award. Irving teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Initiative on Race and Resilience at the University of Notre Dame.

Registration is encouraged. RSVP HERE.

This ACS approved event, co-sponsored by the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies, the Department of English, and Falvey Library, is free and open to the public.

View the full calendar of Black History Month events on campus.

By Laurie Ortiz Rivera, PhD 

Image courtesy of Alexander Street.

Mental health is essential to overall health. Did you know that nearly 20% of children and young people ages 3-17 in the United States have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder? And suicidal behaviors among high school students increased more than 40% in the decade before 2019? (2022 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report). One thing every one of us can do is to be more informed by learning from resources about mental health available at Falvey Library.

Symptom Media is one of these resources, and it is an online mental health education and training film library with over a thousand streaming videos dedicated to recognizing mental health disorders and providing accurate diagnoses. Films of Volume V include various series of multiple disorders, such as ADHD, Violence, Eating Disorders, PTSD, and Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders. Sample titles include:

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Traumatic Brain Injury;
• Separation Anxiety Disorder;
• Bipolar I Disorder with Mood Congruent Psychotic Features;
• Anorexia Nervosa Binge-Eating Purging;
• Suicide Assessment;
• Schizotypal Personality Disorder;
• Adolescent Antisocial Behavior;
• Alcohol Use Disorder;
• Substance Use Disorder;
• Major Depressive Disorder;
• Opioid Use Disorder.

The film collection includes Teletherapy, Assessment Tools, Case Studies, Mental Disorder & Illness Symptoms, Coping Mechanisms & Defenses, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10) categories, among others. The Training Library tab lists all the videos organized by relevance, new arrivals, title, and release date. The platform tools allow for clip-making, playlist creation, LMS integration, citations, mobile sharing, and more. The text for each video is also included.

For more information, visit https://symptommedia.com/.

Reference:

2022 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2022 Oct. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK587182/

Laurie Ortiz Rivera, PhD, is Social Sciences Librarian at Falvey Library.

We invite the Villanova Community to join us for a taste of mindfulness meditation on Mondays from 1-1:30 p.m. during the spring semester. Mindfulness Mondays will offer a comfortable space, both in person and virtually, where you are guided and encouraged to stop and focus on the “here and now.” Mindfulness is proven to reduce stress and enhance well-being, which can be beneficial to all faculty, staff, and students.

Sessions will take place each week in person at St. Rita Hall, Multifaith Prayer Room and Zoom (join here). Sessions will take place on most Mondays from January 22 through April 29. *Please note: there will not be sessions on March 4 (spring break) and April 1 (Easter break). A full list of dates are available here.

These ACS-approved events are presented by The Office of Mission & Ministry and co-sponsored by Falvey Library. Registration is not required. All are welcome!