Blueprints: Falvey Library
Contents: May 1999
From Silver Spoons to Suspicious Books: An Early Entrepreneur's Marketing
Strategies
by Amy Rojek
Hubbard display features American Arts and Crafts Movement publications
Elbert Hubbard had the kind of personal charisma that could turn a man of questionable
ethics and talent into a wealthy and influential writer and businessman. He was a force in
the American Arts & Crafts movement, which began in the 1880s as a rebellion against
the Industrial Revolution's mass-produced generically-decorated products. Hubbard was
called the P.T. Barnum of book selling. He led a flamboyant lifestyle until his tragic
death on the Lusitania, the civilian ship sunk by the Germans at the beginning of World
War I.
And beginning in May 1999, Hubbard's collection of books, papers and
pictures is the center of a Falvey Library special collections' exhibit.
Born in Bloomington, Illinois in 1856, Hubbards first job was selling soap
door-to-door. He later moved to Buffalo, New York and joined the Larkin Soap Company as
junior partner in charge of sales and advertising. There he found his calling.
He turned the company into a mail-order business, using premiums to increase sales. For
example, a customer, upon buying one box of soap, would receive a real silver spoon set as an additional gift.
Unfortunately, Hubbard never mentioned that the spoons were made of a German silver, an alloy which contained absolutely no silver. The
company flourished and was soon worth more than 30 million dollars (over 24 billion
dollars today).
Hubbard' hazy sense of ethics never changed -- in his public or private life. He had
been married for several years when he met Alice Moore, a schoolteacher. Their
relationship progressed until 1894, when Hubbard fathered two daughters, one by his wife,
and the other by Alice. Needless to say, his wife was granted a divorce, and seven days
later, Hubbard married Alice, who was to be his love and sharer of his fate on the
Lusitania.
In the meantime, Hubbard retired from the Larkin Soap Company and enrolled in Harvard
University but quickly lost interest and dropped out. He then decided to turn his talents
to writing. He journeyed to England to gain inspiration for his writing and there was
impressed with William Morris, a leader in the British Arts & Crafts movement, and his
Kelmscott Press.
Hubbard returned to the United States and used his fortune from his Larkin days to
begin his own printing shop, the Roycroft Press, based on the Kelmscott Press.
It is for the Roycroft shops that Hubbard is best known today. He turned his
soap-selling techniques to books, giving customers premiums and successfully pioneering
the selling of books "upon suspicion," by
sending unsolicited book copies to the public with a
request for payment if they enjoyed the book.
By 1905, Hubbard's magazine The Philistine had a monthly circulation of over
100,000 copies.
Hubbard also cashed in on the American desire to keep up with the Joneses by marketing his books as one-of-a-kind pieces. The
books were bound in made-to-order covers, as well as decorated with hand-drawn and
hand-watercolored illustrations. Hubbard also began to market the books as limited
editions. Each book was numbered and signed by
Hubbard. However, he was not above printing several editions of these limited pieces, nor asking his employees to sign his name on
the signature page. To this day, one can only be positive of Hubbard's signature on
official documents, such as canceled checks.
Today, collectors avidly search for Hubbard's fine books as well as the furniture and
metalwork from the Roycroft shops in East Aurora, New York. Unfortunately, at the end of
his career, Hubbard wrote more and more pamphlets advertising various companies and their
wares, and these pamphlets have little value for collectors. However, they give a
wonderful glimpse into the history of advertising in America at the turn of the 20th
century.
Falvey Library received the Elbert G. Hubbard Collection in 1972 from Mrs. Harold A.
Stine. Her father, Roy D. Packard, had amassed at the time of his death in 1959 a grand
collection of Hubbard's book materials, as well as his personal papers and photographs, a
collection second only in size to the collection of Elbert Hubbard II, Hubbard's eldest
son and successor to his father's business.
Falvey Library's collection is of particular interest to scholars of late 19th
and early 20th century literature and history, as well as to persons interested
in the history of advertising.
Amy Rojek is a visiting reference librarian and special collections cataloger.
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The Results Are In! Information Literacy Program Yields Success
by Merrill D. Stein
During the fall semester, the Quest tutorial pilot program,
designed by Falvey librarians in collaboration with Core Humanities faculty, was
introduced to all first year students. At that time, six random sections of Core
Humanities seminars, totaling one hundred students, were administered a pre-test and a
post-test to determine the students' level of information seeking skills.
The test consisted of ten multiple choice questions. Familiarity with call numbers,
using FLASH (the library catalog and information databases), differentiating between
scholarly and popular journals, and aspects of the World Wide Web were assessed. After the
students completed the Quest tutorial, a post-test was administered to the same
students in order to measure what they learned.
Joseph Pigeon, of the mathematical sciences department, was enlisted to analyze the
results and determine whether a measurable effect was obtained. Data for each question was
studied: The overall averages of correct answers increased from 71% to nearly 88% after
the tutorial was completed.
Statistical analysis of the test scores before and after the tutorial yielded
significantly higher scores than expected. The P values resulting from standard
statistical analyses such as the t-test, analysis of variance, and the Chi-square test
strongly suggested that the intervention of the tutorial process produced a meaningful
positive effect. In particular, the Chi-square test, the most relevant and powerful of the
three analyses, offered extremely convincing evidence of a successful program (2=65.179,
DF=1, P=.0001).
John Doody, director of Core Humanities, makes a point
during the information literacy program's wrap up session in April. The "Quest"
pilot program, developed by a committee of Falvey librarians and Core Humanities faculty,
taught information retrieval skills, Boolean searching and source evaluation techniques to
all of Villanova's first year students.
Merrill Stein, head of Falvey's access services department, serves on the
Information Literacy committee.
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Irish Scholar Depicts Defeat of United Irishmen in 1798
Rebellion
by Judith Olsen
In the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the forces of the United Irishmen were crushed by
Dublin Castle, the Anglo-Irish government, assisted by British troops. This devastating
loss, resulting in 30,000 deaths, laid the foundation for the existing conflict in
contemporary Ireland.
Yet "in 1797 the smart money was on the success of the United Irishmen,"
according to Irish scholar Thomas Bartlett. Bartlett, the final speaker in Falvey
Library's Distinguished Lecture series this year, spoke on April 16 to a gathering of
students, faculty, administrators, staff and local Irish historians.
He presented a compelling chronology of the years leading up to 1798 as an alarmed
Dublin Castle summoned its military and intelligence forces to combat the threat posed by
the United Irishmen. Bartlett characterized the insurgents as serious revolutionaries with
international connections that threatened British hegemony.
France, allied with the United Irishmen, staged a full scale invasion against Ireland
in 1797 that failed only because of stormy seas. The warning to the established government
was real: the French forces would return.
In fact, two guillotines were constructed and some Irish citizens were learning to
speak French in anticipation of the French victory.
Bartlett's talk, rife with spy stories from both sides, explicated the military
strategies that lead to the defeat of the United Irishmen.
Further, he intimated that Theobald Wolfe Tone, considered a martyred hero of the
Rebellion, actually meant only to injure himself to avoid hanging when he slit his throat
in prison.
Bartlett, a professor of modern Irish history at the National University of Ireland and
editor of The Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1998), is
presently at Notre Dame as a Naughton Fellow. His lecture, jointly sponsored by the Irish
Studies program and Falvey Library, was introduced by James Murphy, director of Irish
studies, and James Mullins, University librarian.
"The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798" lecture reflects the University Learning
Communities' theme, "Worlds in Collision," and was supported by a grant from
that committee.
The Falvey Memorial Library Distinguished Lecture series brings to life the writing and
research of outstanding authors and scholars.
Judith Olsen is a reference librarian and newsletter editor.
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The McGarrity Collection
If you attended Thomas Bartlett's talk or saw the display about the Irish Rebellion of
1798 in Falvey Library your interest in Irish history may have been piqued. Much more
information about Irish history can be found in the McGarrity Collection, an integral part
of Falvey Library's Special Collections.
Joseph McGarrity donated his collection of books and periodicals about Irish history to
Villanova University in 1940, and Falvey Library has added many important books to the
collection in the years since. Many of these books are very rare and fragile, but all
items are available for study in the library.
McGarrity, who came to the United States from Ireland in 1890, was a prosperous
businessman and a prominent member of Philadelphia's Irish American community. He played a
key role in generating support and money in the U.S. for Irish independence.
You are encouraged to contact Special Collections Librarian Bente Polites
(610.519.4283) or Bente.Polites@villanova.edu) if
you'd like to learn more about this collection.
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Falvey Librarians Promoted
by Sue Ottignon
Dr. James Mullins, University librarian and director, announced the promotions of
Jacqueline Mirabile, government publications and reference librarian, to the rank of
Library Professional III, and Michael Foight, business information specialist and
reference librarian, to the rank of Library Professional II.
The ranking and promotion policy, instituted by the professional librarians at Falvey
Memorial Library in the early 1990s, established a process of review by a committee of
peers to ensure that promotion would be consistent, systematic, broad-based and fair. The
promotion committee reviews candidates' dossiers when they seek promotion to the next
rank. Acting in an advisory capacity, the committee then makes its recommendations and
forwards the dossiers to the University librarian and director and the Vice President for
Academic Affairs.
Each year full time library professionals have the
opportunity to seek promotion. The specific promotion and original appointment
requirements are defined in the ranking and promotion document for each of the four
library professional ranks. Candidates must demonstrate that they are meeting the
specified criteria, which include job performance, professional development,
library/university/community service and academic/creative activity. The criteria, which
are uniquely appropriate to librarianship, measure the library professional's contribution
to Villanova and to the profession.
Sue Ottignon, reference librarian, serves as chairperson
of the Rank and Promotion Committee.
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from Falvey Library
Full-text, searchable access to archived issues of over 50 core scholarly journals in
the social sciences, humanities and mathematics available 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, from anywhere on the planet? Sound too good to be true? Well, if you're a member of
the Villanova community and have a Villanova Internet address, this is true.
(See below for how to access JSTOR.)
As featured in a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article, Falvey Library is a
charter subscriber/member of JSTOR, or
 Journal Storage project, a full-text and
full-page image electronic database of back issues of academic journals. JSTOR currently
contains 69 fully-digitized titles, featuring over 2 million pages of content.
JSTOR is a boon to researchers and librarians. For researchers, the ability to search
the full-text of journals liberates searching from the confines of an index --
one is no longer dependent upon how others have categorized content. For librarians, JSTOR
relieves concerns of storage space for older journals by offering reliable access to
authentic digital reproductions of journal pages as they originally appeared in print.
Questions? Contact the Reference desk (610.519.4273 or
falvey-reference@email.vill.edu).
We hope you will find JSTOR a valuable scholarly resource.
"Search no more." Philadelphia Inquirer 15 April
1999, sec. 6: 1+.
Access to JSTOR is available to
the Villanova community from the library's homepage (http://www.vill.edu/library). From
the homepage, click on Databases, then All Databases,
then the letter J, then JSTOR. Faculty, students and
staff can access JSTOR from any networked machine on campus. If accessing from off-campus,
one needs to have a Villanova Internet address. If you receive your Internet access
through the University RAS system, you're set. If not, establish a connection to the
University's Proxy Server (Instructions available from the library's homepage. Click on What's
New, then New Villanova Proxy Server).
Also contributing to this issue of Blueprints: James Mullins, Bente Polites and Lisa
Stillwell.
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