Blueprints: Falvey Library

Contents: April 2004

• Ethics students hone their research skills
• "Where the sacred intersects with the secular":  Villanova e-journal features notable philosophers in inaugural issues
• Featured database: “North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories”

• PLoS Biology – A leader in the “open access” initiative
• Also contributing to this issue...

By Barbara Quintiliano, Information literacy / instructional design librarian

Stem cell research, executive compensation, capital punishment and same-sex marriage are just a few of the current ethical issues students grapple with in Ethics 2050, “Ethical Traditions and Contemporary Life.” Devoted to the study of Western ethical and moral traditions, with special focus on the Judeo-Christian heritage, the course is usually taken in a student’s sophomore year and is a core requirement for all Villanova students, with the exception of those who take a more specialized course in this area, such as the nursing and some engineering students. Over 700 students take this course each year.

Ethics 2050 students must write carefully researched and argued papers in which they are challenged to apply principles enunciated by philosophers of the past and present to specific ethical dilemmas of contemporary society.

To assist them in finding the best scholarly resources in the field, Bente Polites, librarian liaison to the philosophy department and ethics program, designs and conducts a research workshop for each section of ETH 2050. In these sessions students are taught to look beyond the World Wide Web for information. They discover that specialized reference works, such as the Encyclopedia of Bioethics and the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, will give them an overview and history of the ethical issue they have chosen. After focusing their topic, students can then search the databases Philosopher's Index and the bioethics subset of PubMed (formerly BioethicsLine) for in-depth, scholarly journal articles published by learned societies such as the Hastings Center and the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics of the City University of New York.

Dr. Sarah-Vaughan Brakman, director of the ethics program, attests to the efficacy of these information literacy sessions in raising the level of our students' research skills: "The library research workshops conducted by Bente Polites have been invaluable learning opportunities. Through them, students learn to identify the appropriate resources in philosophical and theological ethics, as well as in their chosen field of research. Students also develop their skills for evaluating scholarly resources, both in print and online. The ethics program has been delighted to have these workshops provided for our students."

By David Burke, Serials and digital formats cataloger

On March 16, Falvey Library celebrated Villanova University’s first locally-produced electronic journal, the Journal of Philosophy & Scripture. Inspired by the philosophy department’s biannual Religion and Post-Modernism Conference, this journal is published through the philosophy department and edited by two philosophy doctoral candidates, Adam Miller and Michael Norton. The journal is openly available at www.philosophyandscripture.org.

The event consisted of a presentation by Miller and Norton with some additional comments by the journal’s editorial adviser, Dr. John Caputo. As the name implies, the Journal of Philosophy & Scripture explores the intersections of secular philosophy and traditionally sacred texts such as the Bible. Miller and Norton perceive Western civilization as having entered a “post-secular” period where philosophy can no longer exclude theological questions and where religious thinking cannot ignore secular issues.

Caputo asserted that the journal “is a student production through and through.” Having graduate students produce the journal gives them some editorial experience (always helpful on a resume!), provides an opportunity to work in an interesting field of research they may not have time to explore fully, and yields professional contacts with other scholars in that field.

Editor Adam Miller shows the journal's web site.

The editors described the production and organization of the journal. Publishing the journal electronically suppresses production and upkeep costs; it also allows the journal to reach more easily an audience beyond Villanova University and, indeed, academia in general. The journal’s web site is organized to maximize simplicity, allowing a reader to click to a specific section of the journal from anywhere else on the site.

The structure of its editorial and production staff is organized to assure the journal’s continued existence after Miller and Norton leave Villanova. An open call for volunteers is made to philosophy graduate students at the beginning of an academic year. Senior positions are filled first (by lot if necessary) with everyone else serving on the general editorial staff. All decisions are made by the editorial staff as a whole.

All the articles published so far were solicited, although the fall 2004 issue will include the first unsolicited ones. Authors have included such prominent scholars as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Richard Kearney and Slavoj Zizek, “a lineup any journal would envy,” as Caputo noted. The journal does not retain the copyright to its articles, allowing submitting authors to republish elsewhere if they wish. In addition to approval from the editorial staff, articles also undergo a formal peer-review process to ensure quality. And apparently that quality has already made some impression; before reaching its first anniversary, the Journal of Philosophy & Scripture has received over 2,000 unique hits!

Following the presentation, Miller and Norton fielded questions from the audience, most of which addressed possible enhancements to the journal. The articles have all focused on philosophy and the Bible; the editors would like submissions which address the scriptures of other major religions. In the future, the web site may include more dynamic features such as online discussions, audio/video recordings of interviews, or a search engine for the entire run of the journal.

Joe Lucia, library director, suggested adding metadata tagging to the articles to better allow their retrieval by major search engines. He also invited Miller and Norton to use the Library’s expertise in archiving the journal for the long-term. The Journal of Philosophy & Scripture sets a fine precedent as Villanova University enters the world of electronic scholarship.

Selected as the “Best Reference Database 2003” by Library Journal (March 2003), North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories “provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. With more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives, including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, the collection provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included, along with thousands of political cartoons. Never before have scholars been able to search these documents easily and find answers to complex questions with just a few clicks.”

“The materials begin around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1890 to 1920. People from many countries are represented, including more recent waves of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. In selected cases, audio files will let users hear the actual voices of the immigrants, and facsimile images will show pages of their scrapbooks.

This full-text resource, published by Alexander Street Press, will be especially significant for those doing research in history, sociology, ethnic and diversity studies, women’s studies, labor studies and literature.

“Labor historians will benefit from details describing work in restaurants, meat packing plants, mines, railroads, and factories. Sociologists will find lengthy passages describing immigrant schooling, social life, domestic life, and community rituals. Students of literature will find descriptions of the events that inspired Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser.”  Historians will find descriptions of life during the Civil War particularly interesting.

“Particular care has been taken to ensure a balance between men and women, between the old and the young, and among different subcultures within a particular ethnic group. Selection is under the direction of faculty advisors, including Joel Wurl of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, the project’s senior advisor and general editor.”  (Text from alexanderstreetpress.com)

Access this database from the Falvey Memorial Library home page. Click Databases by Title and select North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories. This database is also listed under numerous “Subject” categories.

By Teresa Bowden

In October 2003 the journal, PLoS Biology, was launched amid much acclaim and anticipation. This is the spearhead title in a campaign to provide open access to the scientific literature. PLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published monthly by the Public Library of Science, whose aim is to show that open access can work, by competing head-on for the best research papers with top scientific and medical journals, such as Nature, Science, and the New England Journal of Medicine. PLoS Biology features works of exceptional significance in all areas of biological science, from molecules to ecosystems.

Open access means that all works published in PLoS Biology and other open access titles are immediately available to read and redistribute, subject only to the condition that the original authorship is properly attributed. In this way, current, quality scientific information can be placed in the hands of the public and fellow researchers without the barrier of a large subscription fee.

 This is made possible by a redefinition of the economics of publishing open access titles. Rather than the traditional, subscription-based, “reader pays” structure, PLoS charges a dissemination fee to the publishing authors, which is often covered by the agencies funding the researchers’ work. The hope is to provide economically viable alternatives to high cost commercial titles.

You can access PLoS Biology by a journal title search in VUCat, or at the following site: www.plos.org. The title is searchable, and you can sign up for “e-mail issue alerts” and have the table of contents sent to you each month. The second open access title produced by the Public Library of Science, PLoS Medicine, is currently accepting submissions and will launch its first issue in fall 2004.

Teresa Bowden is a reference librarian and librarian liaison to the biology department.

Also contributing to this issue: Judy Olsen, Jacqueline Smith and Merrill Stein; photography by Meredith McOlvin, IMS student staff and Michael Foight.