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Archiving History As It Happens

In 1918 and present day, Villanova’s librarians were there to preserve life during a pandemic.

“October 1918, came not with joy, but with sorrow, that will not be forgotten for many a long day. Philadelphia our beloved city was stricken with the terrible plague of Influenza.”

A mid the last global pandemic Villanova’s campus experienced, Rev. Francis E. Tourscher, OSA, received this handwritten journal entry from Sister M. Theresa Joseph, IHM, one of many nuns in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who volunteered from 1918-1919 in private homes and emergency hospitals caring for the city’s sick and dying.

Father Tourscher, who served as the University Librarian from 1923-1939, solicited and collected dozens of firsthand accounts and records from these women religious to “assemble facts while they are still a living memory.” More than a century later, Villanova senior and History major Elizabeth Lyons was eager to read these newly digitized accounts.

“These papers were a crucial part of my research into volunteering efforts during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic in Philadelphia,” Elizabeth says. “There weren’t a lot of personal accounts of what it was like to live through this period of time, so these offered a really unique perspective.”

Now that Falvey has been able to digitize and transcribe some of these resources, researchers are able to investigate and compare and contrast responses to the pandemic in 1918 vs. the current day.

“A hundred years from now, we want the next members of the Villanova community to see what life was like during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gaskell says. That’s why Falvey Memorial Library launched the “Documenting COVID-19” collection effort, in partnership with Villanova’s Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest. Since the initiative began in May 2020, Villanova faculty, staff, students and alumni have already contributed journal entries, artwork, poems and photographs.

“We have a very diverse collection to tell the story of what's happening today,” says Beaudry Rae Allen ’13 MA, Falvey’s preservation and digital archivist. “The most profound thing is how much people are willing to share about the experience. I think people have an understanding already of the importance of this moment, and why these experiences should be preserved.” ◼︎

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Ways Villanova’s Librarians Support Intellectual Inquiry

Always happy to help and eager to partner with student and faculty researchers across the University, the librarians in Falvey’s Research Services and Scholarly Engagement department also possess a formidable amount of expertise and knowledge.

Each of the 13 subject librarians covers an academic specialization area so they can provide dedicated support to Villanova faculty and students within a particular discipline. Here are just a few of the ways they help make learning and research happen at Villanova:

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One-on-One Consultations

“We do individual consultations for anyone who has a question about how to find resources or approach a project,” says RSSE Director Jutta Seibert, MA, MLS, ’16 MA. “We can be reached in many ways—we answer email questions, we have a chat function through the Library’s website, and we meet with people for individual appointments remotely and in person.”

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Collection Building and Curation

“We contribute to the infrastructure of the Library, making sure that we have the knowledge resources in place for faculty and students to do the research that they need to do,” says Business Librarian Linda Hauck, MBA, MLS. “We help identify useful resources, including books, e-books, journals, databases and subscriptions, and make recommenda tions about what to buy.”

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Research Instruction

“Faculty reach out to us to provide instruction to their classes, and we prepare customized interactive workshops where they learn research methods, usually tailored to a project deliverable students will submit,” says Seiber, who also serves as the subject librarian for History, Art History, and Global Interdisciplinary Studies.