The “You Are Getting Sleepy … Very Sleepy” Award

Sometimes even the most devoted mother has days when every minute the children are still up is like a knife through her soul worrisome because the little darlings need their rest.  Back in the days before C-SPAN was invented, parents often eased their kids off to dreamland as early as 4 p.m. by gathering the whole family around the ole seed catalog.  Interestingly, at this photo shoot the boy on the left fell backwards off the ottoman immediately after this photo was taken and woke up 3 days later.  These days, parents get the same results by having the kids play a few minutes of Wii Seed Catalog after dinner.

The “You Are Getting Sleepy … Very Sleepy” Award (Grandmother Division)

Of course we don’t want to forget that grandmothers are mothers, too!  This woman, stuck babysitting her grandchildren while their parents are off at a quilting bee, ice cream social, or Iron Maiden concert, has worked out a deal with her granddaughter to hypnotize the baby into stunned submission by wearing their most crazily patterned clashing dresses.  We can’t tell for sure since it’s in b&w, but you just know there is orange and lime green involved.  As soon as little brother was “asleep,” Grandma and little Betty Lou or Sally Sue or whatever hotwired the neighbors’ Ford Fairlane and went out joyriding.

The Milton Bradley Caldecott Award

Oh, this takes us back to our childhood.  We remember how, after we put on our jammies and brushed our teeth and washed our faces, our mom would sit us down and read us a bedtime, um, board game.  We liked The Game Of Life because we got to make exciting decisions like whether or not to buy insurance, and checkers, because the repeated “red, black, red, black” refrain lulled us into slumber pretty quickly.  Of course, our favorite was Monopoly, but Mom never liked reading that one to us because it went on forever, nobody ever won, and somebody always ended up crying and kicking the board over.

The Kardashian Sisters Special Achievement In Cloning Award

“The only bad thing is that sometimes I can’t tell whether I’m looking at Susie or Little Susie.  Or myself, really.  I was afraid this might happen when I married that Xerox machine, but, you know, he’s been really good to me, and our kids really love him.”

The “We’re Going To Get Rid Of These Germs Once And For All” Award

All parents know that no matter how clean you keep your home, your child will find the dirtiest object and put it in his or her mouth immediately.  Scientists believe that human babies are born with a homing device in their brains that is otherwise found only in the dirtier breeds of dog.  This is why, even if a team of housekeepers spends 72 straight hours cleaning and sanitizing your house such that Martha Stewart would proudly serve Thanksgiving dinner off the floor, within 5 seconds of being put down a toddler will be happily eating a cigarette butt. Which is amazing considering nobody in your house smokes.  This mother, tired of risking her child’s health with (shudder) temporary disinfectants, has installed a sprinkler system in her home that sprays the entire house with Lysol every 60 seconds, day and night.  She also has the cleanest bathroom in town, but we recommend that if you go visit, don’t eat anything that has been in an open container, and whatever you do, DON’T LOOK UP.

The “You March Yourself Home And Come Back When You’re Looking More Presentable, Mr. Man” Award

Just as airplane travel used to be a dressier affair, with passengers jetting around the world in ball gowns and tiaras, childbirth used to demand a certain level of formality.  This new mother sent her husband home to change into a tuxedo before he was allowed to meet the baby.  (“We don’t want him to think he’s been born into a family of slobs!”) Under her white hospital gown, the mother is wearing a beaded evening gown with train, and the baby’s diaper has been heavily bedazzled.  Things are much more casual today; if you’ve been to a hospital recently you’ve undoubtedly seen many people wearing tube tops, NASCAR t-shirts, “I’m With Stupid” baseball caps, and Daisy Dukes.  And those are just the doctors.

The “You’d Be Nervous And Irritable If You Had To Wash Dishes In Heels, Too” Award

“You know how it is when you’re going through withdrawal … you drop everything you pick up.  Why, it got so bad I lost my job at the Hand Grenade & Faberge Egg Museum!  Finally I went to my doctor, who told me I had a medical condition called ‘the DTs’!  He prescribed Postum, which is 100% coffee-free, and also has 2000% of my recommended daily allowance of codeine.  Now I feel AWESOME!  And on really tough days like today, when I’m trying to finish whipping up a new miniskirt and the little girl next door won’t stop leaning on my sewing machine staring at me, I use new X-Treme Postum.  The ‘X’ is for ‘Xanax’! Ever since I’ve started drinking it, I … I … oh, wow, I can see my reflection in this cup!  I … I’s jsst gon’ put my headdown on ths li’l girl for jus’ a sszzzzzz…..”

This 1952 magazine ad for Lustre-Creme shampoo showcases Ms. Taylor’s famous beauty.  In addition to her two Oscars, we learn here that she was also voted by “Modern Screen” and “a jury of famed hair stylists” as one of the world’s 12 loveliest-haired women.  The film that’s also being promoted here, Ivanhoe, was released in 1952 and also starred Robert Taylor (no relation) and Joan Fontaine.  It was one of the four top money-making films of the year and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

In this comic strip-style ad, Elizabeth Taylor says “Like satin … that’s my skin with new Woodbury Powder!” and also, apparently, “I love the super-smooth finish Woodbury gives my skin.”  Here she’s identified as one of the stars of the 1949 film version of Little Women, in which she played Amy, starring alongside June Allyson as Jo, Peter Lawford as Laurie, Margaret O’Brien as Beth, and Janet Leigh as Meg.

It’s no wonder that an actress with Elizabeth Taylor’s legendary beauty was in demand by companies marketing their beauty products.  Many other stars of the day appeared in similar print ads; for example, June Allyson, Rita Hayworth, and Bette Davis all did work for Lustre-Creme.  The men of Hollywood did their fair share of advertising, too: here you can see Humphrey Bogart for National Airlines and Bob Hope for Pepsodent.  You can find many advertisements featuring celebrities in Ad*Access here.

Over the next few weeks, we will be tying up loose ends so we can replace the existing site at http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections.

Features

34,000 items from 22 digitized collections, cross-searchable in a common index. Includes a wide range of formats: photographs, advertisements, books, sheet music and more.

PDF export for items

Save or print a PDF of any item. Especially useful for our sheet music collections.

Zooming & Panning

Zoom in close on images to see the smaller details or read the fine print.

Page-turning for paginated items

Turn through the pages one-by-one or click the strip of thumbnails to jump ahead.

Internet Archive Books

Our site now includes our books digitized and hosted by the Internet Archive (currently over 3,000), including Duke yearbooks.

Better Aesthetics

Inviting, attractive collection homepages and stronger library branding.

Usability Improvements

Many enhancements, including a single search bar and tabbed property browsing.

Blog Integration

Our blog posts about each collection now appear in the collection portals and throughout the site.

Commenting & social media integration

Leave a comment on the site, “tweet” or “stumble” your favorite discoveries, or see others’ links to our items.

Collection Context

For any item view, get information about its digital collection as well as the archival collection encompassing the physical object.

New Portals to Explore

Search or browse materials from multiple collections at once (e.g., through an Advertising portal)

Advanced Search

Combine search terms in multiple fields to form specific queries.

Map & Timeline

Explore the collections via map & timeline interfaces.

Tripod2 Project Background

The release of a beta site is an exciting milestone for Duke’s Digital Collections program. Taking this project from ideation to implementation over the past several months has required an incredible amount of hard work, especially by two developers in the library: Will Sexton and Andy Hull.

More about the design process:
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/category/website-redesign/

Feedback

Your feedback on the beta site is welcome!
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/digital-collections/feedback-beta/

Most winters we have maybe one dusting of snow, or a few sleet pellets mixed in with the rain once or twice, so being threatened with the Icepocalypse every few days is something we’re not accustomed to. Every time we turn around, we are back at the grocery store kicking somebody in the back to get the last loaf of bread or punching somebody in the windpipe to grab the last gallon of milk. This is really more exercise than we are used to getting. And we won’t even talk about how the schools are constantly letting out early or just plain closed, resulting in selfish children wanting to be picked up or fed or whatever kids are into these days.

So to combat the winter doldrums, we here at Duke Digital Collections present some sunny, tropical images from Ad*Access to help you think warm thoughts. Put on your sunscreen, change into your skimpiest and most scandalous swimsuit, crank up “Vacation” by the Go-Go’s, and let’s hit the beach! (You can click on any of the images to see a larger version and more information about it.)

January is the perfect time of year to visit fabulous Runway Beach! Yes, nothing is more relaxing or romantic than lying on the beach sipping a margarita as you are strafed by a jet that fills your eyes and mouth with sand and blows the drink out of your hand. The smell of cocoa butter mixed with jet exhaust will make you contentedly lie back and say, “AaahhhhhAIIIEEEEEARGGGH KOFF KOFF KOFF.”

Visit the, uhh, glamorous Belgian coast. Now, we love Belgium and are not questioning the glamorousness of its coast, mostly because we are too busy being transfixed by this CRAZY picture. Look at everything that’s going on here! There is, like, a policeman with a donkey, and a couple of mobile cabanas or circus wagons or something, and a woman sunbathing in a shadow, and the Coliseum, and a guy watching a 3-D movie with his pet dinosaur, and we don’t even know what else. With all this going on, there is of course no room left to show the coast or ocean or anything, but we feel confident that if we look hard enough, we will find Waldo somewhere in this picture.

A cruise can be a wonderful vacation, apart from inconveniences like rogue waves capsizing the ship, losing power in the middle of the ocean and being towed back to shore, and, worst of all, having to put your shoes on and leave the ship to visit exotic ports of call. What a drag! That’s why the West Indies, or possibly South America, have recently completed a street-widening-and-liquefying program that allows cruise ships to sail right down Main Street through the middle of town. You can lean out the porthole of your stateroom right here in downtown South America to pet a horse, or pick a coconut, or say hello to Carmen Miranda, all without having to get dressed and put your flip-flops on.

Are you allergic to the ocean? Or maybe you’re like us, and there’s a warrant for your arrest in every seaside resort in the Western Hemisphere. Don’t worry – you can go catch some rays in the desert! Lounge by the pool in sunny Phoenix, fabulous Las Vegas, earthquakey southern California, or tropical Branson, Missouri. We are pretty sure all those places look like this. And if you’re lucky, like this couple, you may catch a glimpse of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower wandering in from the dude ranch next door. Yeehaw!

Wherever your vacation takes you, whether it’s sunny Florida with your family or your dingy basement with a bottle of tequila and the complete “Dukes of Hazzard” on DVD (what, just us?), it’s critical to look good. In our opinion, nothing says “healthy hair” like a shampoo whose name sounds like “anthrax.” Yes, Canthrox shampoo “gives such massy fluffiness that the hair appears much heavier than it really is.” That’s why all the top beauty magazines such as Vogue, Elle, and Popular Mechanics are stressing the importance of heavy hair this year. Remember, if your hair doesn’t look so heavy that your friends wonder how your skull and neck can support it, then YOU ARE NOTHING.

Be thankful … for consumer electronics. Finally, Dad got the hint and got us that Pentron tape recorder we’ve been Tweeting, Facebooking, texting, graffitiing the bathroom walls, and whining around the dinner table about! It’s just what we need to record the sounds of Little Susie stomping on his feet and holding his arms while Big Sister (or Mom or Crazed Neighbor or whoever that is) chokes him from behind.  Family togetherness!

Be thankful … your name isn’t Mallory Elkonite. Oh, that’s not the woman in the apron’s name?  Okay, then be thankful you have a handy switch in your kitchen that operates the Grand Coulee Dam, like not-Mallory does.  No more trudging out into the desert to open the floodgates!  And now that we think about it, “Mallory Elkonite” would be an awesome name for a character on a soap, or maybe a sexy spy.

Be thankful … you can travel in style with your typewriter, pipe, and stripey pajamas. Except it will cost you $25 to check your pajamas, and you have to be able to fit the typewriter under the seat in front of you, and don’t even think about tampering with, disabling, or destroying the lavatory smoke detector so you can light up that pipe.  (Perhaps you were expecting some kind of airport-security–related joke here.  We try not to go for cheap laughs here at Duke Digital Collections.  We try to go for free laughs, because we have $0 in our comedy budget.  Obviously.)

Be thankful … your hands are as soft as a velvet child, even on wash day. “My hands used to be so rough and brittle that I couldn’t even play the piano!  My husband and I had nothing to do but discuss my hair-do and perfume until, mercifully, it was our 8 o’clock bedtime.  Golly, I sure hope they invent TV soon!”

Be thankful … you can now watch the Slack-Jawed Gawking Channel in crystal clarity. Thanks to the Mallory Inductuner, your TV is more inductunicated than ever.  In fact, non-inductunification is down over 80 percent since last Thanksgiving.  What an age we live in!

Most of all, take a moment — or two — to be seriously thankful for some serious stuff, for real.  Friends, family, your health, your pets, your Snuggie, whatever you have that brings you joy.  And, you know, if you want to show some gratitude for Duke Digital Collections, that would be cool, too.  We wear a size Large, green goes with our eyes, and our birthstone is diamond.  Just puttin’ it out there.