After months of careful consideration and hard work, Falvey Library is proud to announce their newest addition to their vast collection is ready for all students to enjoy.
The new Popular Reading Collection is made up of over 400 fiction and non-fiction books ranging across a wide variety of genres. This includes new releases like Richard Osman’s The Last Devil To Die, popular literary fiction like Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, romantic fiction like Sally Rooney’s incredibly famous Normal People, as well as fantasy, mystery, cookbooks, essay collections, and more.
To find out what Falvey’s latest feature has in store, be sure to check out the Popular Reading Launch and Reception. This event will be held in the library’s Speaker’s Corner on Monday, Feb 5 at 1 PM. The afternoon entails some opening remarks, as well as showing gratitude to the committee of student volunteers who made the decision on which books should become the newest addition to the shelves. Following the opening, there will be refreshments available while you can browse the newly stocked aisles.
The dedicated Falvey Library staff who worked over the past few months to coordinate and carry out this effort could not be more excited about opening up this new resource to the Villanova community. Shawn Proctor, Falvey’s communication and marketing program manager, has said “With this new collection the Library is pleased to be able to expand its offerings to serve the whole Villanovan, beyond academics to support personal wellness, growth, and various areas of interest.”
Falvey Library’s vast collection has always served to provide for the academic needs of students, but with this new collection, it aims to fulfill their personal ones. After the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, many students across the country struggled with anxiety, depression, stress, and loneliness as they tried to find their new normal in a world that had completely and instantly changed. In fact, the annual Healthy Minds Study of 133 college campuses found that in the 2021-22 school year, 44% reported symptoms of depression and 37% reported symptoms of anxiety. These numbers were the highest they had been in 15 years.
At Villanova, the emotional aftermath of the pandemic resulted in the Falvey staff deciding to make the library into an even more supportive environment for students beyond their academics.
The Popular Reading Program was spearheaded by the library’s Collection Management Committee led by committee chair and university librarian Millicent Gaskell. The committee is also composed of librarians with expertise in humanities, STEM, and the social sciences.
The program relied on the feedback of students to ensure that it was successful in being a source of support in the Villanova community. First, all students were able to participate in a survey sent through the Wildcat Newswire to share their thoughts on what kinds of books they would most like and other preferences. Then, to further gauage students interest, a student committee was selected to give their input through the process of selecting which books would become the newest members of Falvey’s collection.
Though it has been almost four years since the COVID pandemic first began and it can feel as though life has gone completely back to the way we remember it, the lingering effects are still apparent today. This new collection addresses these effects and is now one way for students to take care of their mental health while enjoying a good book.
