Scopus is an abstract and citation database of more than 77.8 million records from more than 5,000 international publishers that provides an overview of the world’s peer-reviewed research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social science and arts and humanities. It includes books, chapters, articles-in-press, conference papers, data papers, editorials, and patents.
Training sessions for faculty and students will be offered on Wednesday, April 12, in Mullen Library. Instruction will be provided by Christina Mattioli, Elsevier. Elsevier swag available for attendees! Register here; space is limited.
Our guest blogger is Elyse Ridder, a graduate student in the joint program for Musicology (MA) and Library & Information Science (MLIS) at the Catholic University of America, and a student employee in the Catholic University Special Collections.
John Webber, courtesy of WebberMusic.
One of the biggest projects I have been privileged to work on as a student employee at the Catholic University Special Collections is the John Webber Music Collection. John Webber initially donated his collection to our archives in Spring 2021, with a variety of compositions written throughout his life. However, this collection is very different from a majority of the materials we possess in the archives. This is a born-digital collection, where Webber’s works are entirely contained through digital storage. There is no physical paper trail at all. As Webber is still composing today, we regularly receive updates from him with new compositions to add to his collection.
John C. Webber (1949- ) served in the Royal Marines Band Service for the UK Ministry of Defense from 1963-1972. Webber received an undergraduate degree from Rheinische Musikschule in flute performance (1974). Before traveling to the United States, Webber received FTCL and LTCL (post-graduate performance diplomas) diplomas in music theory and composition, and flute teaching, respectively. Once in the United States, he received his M.A. in music theory and composition from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (1976) and his DMA in music composition from The Catholic University of America (1979). With experience from graduate assistantships and fellowships, he proceeded to teach music theory, piano, and composition at a number of universities in the United States and United Kingdom. Webber has founded and conducted various orchestras, and his music has been performed on both radio and television in Europe and the United States. His music is published by Arsis Press, Anglo-American Music Publishers, and his own Webber Music.
External storage devices that contains Webber’s compositions.
Webber’s original donation consisted of one external storage device with over 100GB of used storage. It amounted to around 50,000 files and over 300 different compositions. To say it was a daunting task is an understatement, and there was so much to do. With 43 years of music in front of me, I wanted to ensure that all of Webber’s compositions were given equal attention and nothing was overlooked. My task involved processing/inventorying all of the music, categorizing each work, writing a finding aid using EAD, and then ensuring that it was uploaded and accessible online for the public to view.
During my initial inventory, I scrolled and opened hundreds of files while brainstorming on how to cohesively organize Webber’s music so it was easy to find items. After about six months of processing, I had managed to categorically list all of Webber’s 369 compositions by musical subject using a system similar to the Library of Congress’ musical subject classification. Webber’s musical collection contains two series: series one includes compositions written by himself, and series two is a collaboration between him and John Gehl. Series one has seventeen subseries, consisting of orchestral symphonies and solo instrumental music to opera and teaching methods. Series two only has one subseries: opera/musical theater. However, that was only one piece of the puzzle completed.
One of Webber’s latest compositions for chorus and orchestra, 2022.
The next step was creating a finding aid for this voluminous collection. Our finding aids were built around listing paper material collections, so we did not possess EAD that could accommodate born-digital items. Because of this, an entirely new finding aid had to be composed for Webber’s collection. For example, I had to measure the extent of the collection by gigabytes and file numbers instead of linear feet. Webber classified each of his compositions by a six digit file number, and each file can contain cover images, scores, instrument parts, finale files, relevant text, etc. So to organize it cohesively, I used Webber’s file numbers and grouped relevant materials with each file.
John Webber has committed his entire life to music and has spent over 40 years sharing his compositions with performers, listeners, and fellow music professionals. My goal for this project (and still ongoing today) has been to ensure that Webber’s music is labeled, categorized, and easily accessible for anyone who wishes to perform, view, research, or listen to his works.
In Special Collections, we’ve dressed in our grandest greens to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. In that spirit, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some books in our collection which are a lot more prepared than us to celebrate the Irish saint’s day, such as these books from our Nineteenth-Century Irish Poetry collection, housed in Rare Books. But how do such recognizably “Irish” bindings come about?
No need to don their green here! These books were already looking plenty ready for St. Patrick’s Day.
Ireland has long held an odd place amongst the British Isles, as something that is separate and yet (perhaps unwilling) a part of it. Even from its early days of recorded history, Ireland is granted stories and qualities that, while not all necessarily bad, render a place of magic and strangeness, other-ing it from its “more civilized” English neighbor. Bede writes on Ireland’s unnaturally healthy air, of which one breath can kill any snake. Gerald of Wales refutes the superior air, and also peoples the land with werewolves. Later writers, such as William Spencer, were attracted to the rugged wildness of Ireland, even as they opposed its independence. This does not even touch on the folklore traditions of changelings and good folk which carried well into the nineteenth century, and which Ireland is still famous for today.
Because of English efforts to “civilize” what they saw as a barbarous land and people, Ireland has had to cling hard to its culture, its history, and its traditions. With the Celtic revival movement, beginning in the nineteenth century, came a new appreciation for Irish art and poetry. Irish artists dove into traditional myth and folklore, and pulled from traditional Irish art to establish ‘Celtic motifs.’ The Irish literary revival encouraged writers to bring back styles that mirrored the old traditions and Irish poetry as its own distinct art form flourished.
Which brings us back to the collection of nineteenth-century Irish poetry donated to Catholic University’s Rare Books department in 2022, by Frank and John Mulderig. While much of the poetry follows these revival themes of old myths and meter, one hardly needs to open the pages to feel the movement’s effects. Every book in this collection comes in a binding that is either original or, in a few rare cases of rebinding, contemporary to the book’s publication.
Songs of Sion, by Sister Mary Stanislaus MacCarthy, making good use of illuminated-capital style lettering and celtic knots. Note the dragon hiding in the knots in the top right corner.
These bindings draw from a wide scope of Irish art and history to make a collection of visuals which take inspiration from a variety of sources in Irish history. For instance, this book of poetry, entitled Songs of Sion, draws from what is likely the most famous and influential illuminated manuscript in all of Ireland, the Book of Kells. You can see the manuscript’s influence in the capital S’ styled after the illuminated capitals of the Book of Kells, which were often made to look like animals, and in the Celtic knots used throughout.
Bog-Land Studies, written by Jane Barlow. A simple clover accents the cover which portrays the quiet Irish countryside.
And then, there are the simple scenes of a quiet and long lasting way of life, such as is shown on the cover of Bog Land Studies. The cover presents the Irish countryside, with its peat roofed houses, and cozy puffs of chimney smoke. There are the woods behind the houses and then, stretched out in front of the scene is a quiet and unassuming bog, in which ancient secrets could lie quietly hidden. (The Celtic revival movement also brought about an interest in Irish archeology. It was during this period in the nineteenth century that people began to realize that the strange bodies sometimes found preserved in their peat bogs might be from a much older time.)
When thinking about a rare book, it’s important to remember that one must consider more than just the text. Books are artifacts in their own right, and while the inner pages may showcase the breath of stories and experience from Irish citizens and expats, as they explore their land, history, and personal experiences, the bindings on these books tell their own stories.
As of the publication date of this blog, the Irish Poetry collection is being cataloged. Inquiries about the collection can be referred to: lib-rarebooks@cua.edu
Campbell, K. L. (2014). Ireland’s History: Prehistory to the Present. Bloomsbury.
Gerald of Wales. (1983). The History and Topography of Ireland (J. O’Meara, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (circa 1188).
Saint Bede. (1969). The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Translation). Oxford University Press. (731 A.D.).
In The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History, Ed Achorn brings to life the most consequential presidential election in US history by chronicling Abraham Lincoln’s nomination to lead the Republican Party in the 1860 presidential election.
Once you are finished, check out the rest of our Popular Reading collection. Titles range from commentary, fiction, historical fiction, mystery, suspense, non-fiction, current affairs, science, social issues, and politics.
Hold your cursor over the Title to see a short description of the book, or click to view the catalog record. The status of the book is shown beside the call number.
Leonora Barry, n.d. Terrence Vincent Powderly Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University.
It is difficult for the twenty-first century mind to grasp the endless drudgery of the daily lives of nineteenth century workers, especially the masses of the poor, and particularly women. While the status of mother or wife was better than that of domestic servant, there was little else separating them from the constant toil of hauling and fetching, cooking and cleaning, child and elder care. Additionally, unmarried or widowed women worked in factories and other places of commercial employment with harsh conditions, low pay, and scant regard. Out of this challenging milieu arose the example of Lenora Barry, called ‘Labor’s True Woman.’ Born on August 13, 1849, in County Cork, Ireland, as Leonora M. Kearny, daughter of John Kearny and Honor Granger, she was the only woman to hold national office with the Knights of Labor, America’s first large and somewhat successful labor union during their brief heyday in the mid to late 1880s. She was a dedicated advocate for bettering the conditions of American working women and the progress of women’s rights, including suffrage, during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Knights of Labor Assembly, Female Delegates, 1886. Terrence Vincent Powderly Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University.
Her Irish farming family immigrated in the wake of the Irish Famine to Pierrepont, a rural New York community, in 1852. Following her mother’s death in 1864, her father remarried to a woman barely Leonora’s senior, with the resulting tension prompting the younger woman to attend a teaching school. After receiving a teaching certificate at only age 16, she taught at a local school for several years. She married Irish immigrant William E. Barry, who was both painter and musician, in 1871 and they settled in Potsdam, New York, where their first child, a daughter, was born in 1873. Per state law and despite a chronic teacher shortage, she was forced to give up teaching because she was a married woman and forced by economic necessity into manual labor. She and her family moved constantly, with two sons born by 1880 when her husband and daughter both died. After years as a seamstress, she found work in an Amsterdam, New York, hosiery factory where she and fellow workers faced hard conditions, low pay, and long hours.
Leonora Barry to T V Powderly, July 26, 1887. T V Powderly Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University.
In order to take positive action on the issues faced by her fellow workers, Barry joined the women’s branch of the Knights of Labor in 1885, near the time of that organization’s zenith. Originally a secret postwar group of Philadelphia clothes workers, it was transformed into an association fighting for labor reform across trades and industries on a national level. Barry soon rose to become master workman or president of her local Knights branch of about 1,500 members, then head of District Assembly 65, which had fifty two local branches with over 9,000 members. The following year she served as one of five district delegates to the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor in Richmond, Virginia. Endorsed by the Knights national leader, Terence V. Powderly, whose archival papers hold pride of place in Catholic U’s Special Collections, Barry was voted by the convention delegates to lead the newly created Department of Women’s Work. She was the first woman to be paid as a labor organizer and the only one to hold national office in the Knights of Labor. Her charge was to investigate women’s employment conditions, build new Knights assemblies, agitate for equal pay.
Pro labor pamphlet that includes a chapter on Leanora Barry, 1975, Special Collections, Catholic University.
Barry travelled across the country investigating the lot of women workers, and her reports to the Knights General Assembly in 1887, 1888, and 1889 detailed abuse of both women and children. She also gave over 500 speeches during her career, with ‘The Dignity of Labor’ on July 4, 1888, in Rockford, Illinois, being long remembered. Nearly 65,000 women belonged to the Knights, who offered jobs and affordable goods as well as supporting boycotts in women workers’ interests. About 400 Knights locals included women but Barry found it difficult to build a strong following due to both apathy and divisions trying to organize women in a male dominated society. Employers denied her entrance to their work sites and better paid workers hesitated to join labor movements fearing their situations would decline. Barry began to support state and federal legislation to protect workers, with a notable success in Pennsylvania passing its first factory inspection act in 1889.
Commemorative Road Marker honoring Leonora Barry-Lake, n.d, State of New York.
Unfortunately, for both Barry and women workers, she became embroiled in internal disputes with Knights Secretary-Treasurer, John Hayes, who took control of the Women’s Department in 1888 and harassed Barry with tacit support from Powderly to her resignation in 1890, effectively ending the Women’s Department. Another factor though was her marriage to Obadiah Read Lake, a St. Louis printer and telegraph editor, that same year and her notion that women should not work outside the home unless there was economic need. Barry continued to travel and agitate for women’s suffrage and temperance, though not ignoring labor as she spoke to the Congress of Women at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Later in life, known as ‘Mother Lake,’ she moved to Minooka, Illinois, and was active in both the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Catholic Total Abstinence Union. Perhaps ironically, she died July 18, 1923 due to mouth cancer. While there are no papers of her own at Catholic University’s Special Collections, her correspondence and reports feature prominently in the those of Terence V. Powderly and John W. Hayes, which can also be accessed digitally via ProQuest’s History Vault. For more on the Knights and/or women workers of the era, see the scholarship of Susan Levine, Steven Parfitt, Kim Voss, and Robert Weir.
Taras Zvir, Theology & Religious Studies Librarian, has been selected as the recipient of the Edward J. Belanger Jr. Staff Award for Excellence in Service for 2022.
Library staff noted his willingness to take on a wide breadth of tasks for the better of the university: from the advanced research & instruction needed for our ecclesiastical programs to shifting collections because of facilities emergencies. Many library patrons have shared their experiences with the quick, courteous service provided by Taras and an appreciation of his deep subject expertise.
One library staff colleague wrote in their nomination:
The research requests he receives are often complicated and require the use and understanding of resources in several languages. … His library instruction is well-received, with many graduate students seeking his assistance for one-on-one consultations. … He politely and quickly responds to all inquiries, providing well researched answers, in plain language that the student or faculty understands. He assumes all assignments willingly and steps in, as needed.
Ed Belanger worked for the university for over 40 years before retiring in 2002 as the Libraries’ business manager. His service and dedication to his fellow staff was extraordinary, and he was one of the most positive, up-beat, and good natured people you will ever meet. After his retirement, his children made a donation to the Libraries for the creation of an award in his honor. Each year the Libraries select a staff member of the year who not only contributes outstanding service to the library but also shares Ed’s good nature. Past honorees serve as the award committee, selecting from among nominations submitted by library staff.
This week is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week (Feb. 20-24), a celebration of the concepts of fair use and fair dealing. The Association of Research Libraries explains that “while students, faculty, librarians and others use copyrighted material on a daily basis, Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week is a time to promote and discuss the opportunities presented, celebrate successful stories and explain the doctrine.” You can see the full schedule of events on their website.
Murky Waters of Fair Use Navigating the murky waters of Fair Use for educational materials while honoring copyright law can make instructors and students at academic institutions feel like they are drowning in conflicting information. However, it is important to pay attention to when and how to use published resources so that authors and creators continue to enjoy the recognition and compensation they deserve for their intellectual property.
Fair Use principles are really more of a set of guidelines than actual rules, while U.S. copyright laws are defined in detail. Fair Use guidelines provide limited exceptions to copyright laws that allow users in non-profit, educational settings to reference copyrighted material. To make sure you are not pirating intellectual property, you need to refer to the U.S. copyright laws at www.copyright.gov. The simplest way to answer whether you may use another person’s work is to ask the copyright holder directly, or check with the U.S. Copyright Office to determine if they have more detailed information regarding the usage rights of an individual item.
Fair Use doctrine is outlined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use). It provides four factors in determining fair use when balancing your needs with that of the copyright holder:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Even an unpublished work can fall under fair use if all the above factors are considered.
“Shiver me Timbers!” One should interpret each Fair Use Limitation as conservatively as possible to avoid copyright infringement. For example, in this blog text I have used the phrase, “Fair Use principles are really more of a set of guidelines than actual rules.” I have also used several nautical analogies that will lead many readers to recall Captain Barbossa’s quote from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, “The code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” If we review the Fair Use guidelines we can see that this blog’s pirate homage is not in danger of violating copyright law because:
1. The reference is being used in a nonprofit educational setting. 2. The movie itself and this quote are well-known as intellectual property of the Disney Corporation. 3. The movie was not quoted directly. Rather, a phrase was used as an homage to and a variation on the movie quote. 4. The movie will retain its value, and no money will be made from the use of the phrase, therefore the Disney Corporation will not lose any money on account of the homage phrase being used.
US Copyright Office logo
The American Library Association confirms that Fair Use does not mean one has the right to use all copyrighted material under the designation of “educational purposes.” In fact, there are often disagreements about what constitutes fair use of a work which require a court decision:
“Section 107 is not meant to be specific. Rather, Congress intended for fair use to be determined on a case-by-case basis. … Educational and research activities are mentioned in particular as potential fair use scenarios, since these endeavors by their very nature build on the creation of new knowledge and creative work.
However, it should not be assumed that every use of a copyrighted work in an educational environment is a fair use. If a copyright holder claims that their copyright has been infringed, the defendant may argue a fair use defense. Ultimately, it is up to the court to make the final determination if a use is fair.”
It is important to remember that the copyright for a work may supersede simple citation in your own work. In other words, you may not have the right to use certain materials even if you include a citation for them. For example, the Disney company’s name and logo is a copyrighted image that may only be used by the Disney corporation for its own publications and performances. If a high school choir department does a concert of Disney songs, they must buy a copy of each song for each student singing the concert to comply with music copyright laws. In addition, the choir program may not advertise the concert as a “Disney” concert, even though they are an educational institution and they will make no money from the performance. They would instead need to advertise their concert as “Musical Movie Magic,” or something equally devoid of the company’s name, character names, or movie titles.
Now that you have a better understanding of what qualifies as Fair Use under U.S. Copyright Law, you can enjoy smooth sailing through the ocean of online and physical information resources. Bon voyage!
Our guest blogger is Elyse Ridder, a graduate student in the joint program for Musicology (MA) and Library & Information Science (MLIS) at the Catholic University of America, and a student employee in the CUA Special Collections.
Joseph Fahey, courtesy of Manhattan College.
During my time as a student employee at the Catholic University Special Collections, I have explored a few collections, especially music collections, since that’s my specialty. However, during my Fall 2022 semester, I worked on a collection that was entirely different. Joseph Fahey donated his papers in 2016 and it contains his life’s dedication to peace studies, including his employment at Manhattan College, correspondence with individuals throughout a fifty year period, many peace events he attended, publications, travels, and much more.
Joseph Fahey is a Catholic theologian and peace studies scholar and activist. A graduate of Maryknoll Seminary and New York University, he is a co-founder of Pax Christi, USA and was named a Pax Christi Ambassador of Peace. He is also a co-founder and Chairperson of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice. A long-time professor at Manhattan College (1966-2016), he created the College’s Peace Studies and Labor Studies programs.
His papers originally arrived in three boxes, and there was no perceived order to how items were organized within the boxes. Papers, documents, letters, etc. were not processed or sorted through. There were notes from previous students that attempted to unbury Fahey’s life work but they were incomplete. I ultimately decided on reordering every single item. I created a three step method to successfully restructure the Fahey Papers. This included: 1) inventorying the entire collection by creating a preliminary box list of every item; 2) reorganizing the collection into appropriate series, subseries, and folders; and 3) composing a finding aid for public accessibility.
Fahey saved this from his trip to the USSR in the early 1990s.
As I sifted through letters and documents spanning from the 1960s to 2010s, I started to visualize a way to organize everything. After I finished inventorying, I created a rough skeleton of my arrangement plan. It consists of three series, with distinct characteristics and subseries to find items faster. The first series consists of newspaper clippings, personal documents, photographs, letters, etc. The second series is the largest in the collection and contains five subseries. The subseries includes correspondence, articles, promotional materials, and publications from organizations such as Pax Christi and Manhattan College to Fahey’s travels abroad and published original works. The last series contains correspondence with notable people he met throughout his life, including Pete Seeger, Eileen Egan, and many more.
By creating piles, reordering everything within the boxes to the appropriate series, disposing of duplicates or damaged items (after proper review), creating new folders, and ordering items chronologically, I managed to get Fahey’s collection down from three boxes to two. Lastly, I created a finding aid using EAD after I finished reorganizing the entire collection.
Finished Collection of the Fahey Papers.
Joseph Fahey had a prolific career and life devoted to peace studies and the betterment of people across the globe. The more I delved into Fahey’s works, the more I wanted to represent his dedication and passion for world peace by ensuring his collection was respectfully and logically organized so it is accessible for everyone for many years to come.
The Joseph Fahey Papers finding aid is available online here.
For the viewer of the drawing, painting, or sculpture, mystery often surrounds the creative process. It is also true that what motivates an artist varies amongst artists.
For Dony Mac Manus, Lecturer of Drawing and Sculpture in the Department of Art, Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art and the University’s first Artist in Residence, the starting point is often a commission for a work of liturgical art. Like many artists, he develops his ideas first through sketches inspired by primary source readings and visuals from museums, churches, and books. However, deep faith, prayer, and contemplation are the critical ingredients that differentiate his creative process from that of many others.
Created in Reverence: The Artistic Process of Dony Mac Manus is on view in Mullen Library’s May Gallery through the Spring, 2023 semester. The items on display include watercolor and clay sketches, and will give visitors a glimpse into Mac Manus’s approach based on Thomas Aquinas’s definition of art as recto ratio factibilium or right reason in regard to the making of things
Love Data Week is an international celebration of data. This week was created to promote data discovery, use, protection, sharing, and preservation, specifically in everyday life to inspire communities to use data and was established to bring change that can make a difference. These changes come in a variety of forms including policy, environmental, or even social change. Love Data Week occurs every year around Valentine’s Day. This year it runs from February 13th through the 17th and the theme is Data: Agent of Change. The focus is on helping both new and experienced users find data training and resources that could assist them in bringing attention to issues that they care about. You can stay connected and up to date with Love Data Week by using and looking for #LoveData23 across all social media platforms. ICPSR or the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research is the host organization for International Love Data Week. A full list of the events being offered can be seen on ICPSR’s Love Data Week “List of Events” page.
What is ICPSR?
ICPSR includes more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations around the globe. ICPSR primarily provides training in “data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.” Along with this, they help to maintain a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences with 21 specialized collections of data in an array of subjects. This data can be used by the public who can contribute their own data as well. ICPSR also provides educational resources to help teach about data and provides courses through their Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research in statistics, data analysis, and quantitative research methods.
Find Data
If you are interested in finding data to use from ICPSR you are in luck! ICPSR has an entire webpage dedicated to finding data and offers helpful tips and suggestions to make this process easy. Users can search the datasets using keywords and can sort through results using several different filters including subject terms, data format, and time period. Along with searching, users can browse data by subject term, when data was released, by most popular search terms, and by the most downloaded datasets. A majority of these datasets can be downloaded for use or analyzed online and all information for proper citation of this data is provided.
Aside from providing datasets, ICPSR also works to curate data. Data curation is a process that can add value and meaning to data as well as help to preserve it. ICPSR does this through organizing, describing, and enhancing data to be used by the public and to give the public information for interpreting data. To learn more you can visit ICPSR’s “Data Management & Curation” web page.
time to promote and discuss the opportunities presented, celebrate successful stories and explain the doctrine.” You can see the full schedule of events on their 
environmental, or even social change. Love Data Week occurs every year around Valentine’s Day. This year it runs from February 13th through the 17th and the theme is Data: Agent of Change. The focus is on helping both new and experienced users find data training and resources that could assist them in bringing attention to issues that they care about. You can stay connected and up to date with Love Data Week by using and looking for #LoveData23 across all social media platforms. ICPSR or the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research is the host organization for International Love Data Week. A full list of the events being offered can be seen on ICPSR’s Love Data Week 
ICPSR includes more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations around the globe. ICPSR primarily provides training in “data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.” Along with this, they help to maintain a data archive 