Earlier this year, the Rubenstein Library purchased a KryoFlux floppy-drive controller to help retrieve data from the numerous floppy disks we receive. The University Archives had an obsolete machine with a 5.25″ drive that didn’t work and I hoped the Kryoflux could breathe new life into the drive. After some effort the equipment was installed and the initial self-check tests were successful. A stack of 48 5.25″ floppy disks from the Alvin Roth Papers were close at hand and thus served as the inaugural batch of media to test copying. The copying process was quick, simple, and more importantly, seemed to work. Finally it was time to take KryoFlux’s closing avocation to heart: “enjoy [my] shiny new disk image” and test the results.
Seth and the KyroFlux
Mounting the disk copy showed a list of files, but their contents seemed wrong. The documents would start and end at seemingly random points of prose mid-sentence. The seemingly random beginnings and ends were too regular to be a simple case of digital rot. I wondered if I had done the capture wrong (the point of testing) but it might be something else too. I had to dig deeper for more evidence, past the file structure to the data itself for more clues.
In addition to finding problem, I found something much more interesting: “(c) Brain,” a bit of text that tied this disk to a bit of computing history. The Brain virus, written in 1986, is widely accepted as the first MS-DOS virus and, ironically, was an honest mistake. Two brothers, Basit & Amjads, wrote Brain as a means to protect their heart-monitoring software from piracy but ended up having a greater reach than they expected. Just like many others, Brain somehow found its way onto this disk apart from the software it was protecting. Unfortunately this disk doesn’t have a complete copy of the virus; although I am glad there was enough to open the door on an interesting piece of computing history.
New equipment and old media, combined with new puzzles and old viruses, certainly made for an interesting day. While this virus doesn’t pose any real threat to us now, it does serve as a reminder to be careful with the records we receive.
Post contributed by Seth Shaw, Electronic Records Archivist for the Rubenstein Library.
In honor of all the cooking and eating we’re planning to do for Thanksgiving, we wanted to share a few menus and recipes from Thanksgivings past. Over the next couple of days, look for delicious posts drawing from the Hartman Center’s extensive collection of advertising cookbooks.
Today’s recipe comes from a cookbook published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company in the 1920s. The following Thanksgiving menu, the author suggests, is perfect for “the average woman, who must prepare for her parties alone or with one maid to help,” without making everyone “uncomfortable” by becoming “a flushed and worried hostess.” I think we’d all appreciate the help of that maid this year!
Assorted canapés
Turkey with chestnut stuffing and giblet gravy
Baked onions
Baked squash
Caramel sweet potatoes
Mashed potatoes
Molded cranberry jelly with celery and olives
Orange delight salad
Pumpkin pie
Caramel Nut Cake
Salted Nuts
Bonbons
The featured recipe – Caramel Nut Cake (pictured below) – of course contained Calumet Baking Powder. The picture doesn’t look too appetizing, but it sure sounds good. And where can I get one of those mini turkeys?
Caramel Nut Cake
½ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
¾ cup milk
4 eggs
2 cup sifted flour
2 level tsp. Calumet Baking Powder
¾ cup chopped nuts
Sift flour three times with baking powder. Cream shortening, add sugar, gradually add egg yolks and nuts. Add dry ingredients alternatively with milk. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in 2 layers in a moderate oven (375 degrees F.). Ice with caramel icing, sprinkle the top and sides of cake with chopped nuts.
You can check out more images like these in the Emergence of Advertising in America digital collection. Stay tuned for more recipes later this week!
Post contributed by Liz Shesko, Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Marketing, and Advertising History.
Working on the Economists Papers Project at the Rubenstein Library this summer introduced two Duke economics graduate students to an inspiring and impressive figure who shaped the histories of both Duke University and the United States: Juanita Morris Kreps. The description and arrangement of 58 boxes of her professional papers was made possible in summer 2011 by Matthew Panhans and Nori Takami, with funding from the Center for the History of Political Economy.
Born into a childhood of poverty in the small mining town of Lynch, Kentucky in 1921, Juanita Kreps emerged as one of the top students at Berea College, earning her a scholarship to study economics at Duke University, where she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. She joined the faculty at Duke in 1955 and served as Dean of the Woman’s College and as Associate Provost; in these roles she oversaw the controversial 1972 merger of the Woman’s College and the men’s Trinity College to form the present coeducational undergraduate Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of that merger in 2012, many of us may not be aware of its deep significance to the history of Duke and to the future for women in higher education. Kreps’ papers hold many files of correspondence from alumna who responded to her calls for comments, accompanied by letters, speeches, and memoranda written by Kreps which reveal her own insights into this monumental change.
In 1972 Kreps became the first woman to hold the prestigious James B. Duke chair, and in 1973, Kreps was named a Vice President of the University. In 1976 she left Duke to serve as the first female Secretary of Commerce under President Carter, also the first academic to serve in this role and the fourth woman ever to be a part of the Cabinet. As the Secretary of Commerce, she was an advocate for the business community while also encouraging business to look beyond profits and towards social responsibility to workers, consumers, and the public.
Perhaps rooted in her humble beginnings in Kentucky, her academic research maintained real-world relevance. Much of her work was on the value of women’s work, women’s education, and labor issues related to aging populations. These and other topics that remain relevant today pervade her speeches, which are both witty and moving. The plethora of thank you notes accompanying each speech offers clear evidence of the power of her words and ideas – but if this is not enough to convince you, come to the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and read them for yourself!
Post contributed by Paula Mangiafico, Senior Processing Archivist for the Rubenstein Library. Matthew Panhans is an M.A. student in Duke’s Department of Economics. Norikazu Takami is a post-doctoral fellow at Duke’s Center for the History of Political Economy.
The Internet Archive just reached an important milestone by digitizing 5,000 books at Duke. The 5,000th book, The British Album: In Two Volumes, contains poetry by “Della Crusca, Anna Matilda, Arley, Benedict, The Bard” and other writers on themes including love, horror, jealousy, and death, and is part of the general collections of the Rubenstein Library. The “Ode to Death” begins “THOU, whose remorseless rage, Nor vows, nor tears assuage, TRIUMPHANT DEATH!—to thee I raise, The bursting notes of dauntless praise!” The second volume can be found here.
The Scribe Scanner. Photo by Rita Johnston.
The Internet Archive scanning center at Duke University has been in operation for one and a half years and has digitized materials from collections within the Rubenstein Library, including the University Archives, Utopian Literature, and Confederate Imprints. I scan about 450 pages per hour and around 50 books a week. Most books in the public domain under 11 x 13 inches in size can be digitized on the Scribe book scanner, as well as pamphlets and loose documents.
Books digitized through Internet Archive are usually available on the site by the next day, are full-text searchable, and can be read in a web browser or downloaded to a computer; e-book reader; or mobile device. You can find newly digitized Duke materials by clicking on the RSS feed link at the bottom right on this blog or by visiting the Duke University Libraries Internet Archive page. Patrons can request a book to be digitized by the Internet Archive by contacting Rubenstein Library staff.
Post contributed by Rita Johnston, Scribe scanner operator.
In this post Professor Lucas Van Rompay, Chair of the Duke University Department of Religion, explains an exciting new addition to the Rubenstein’s early manuscript collections. Thanks, Professor Van Rompay!
Recently acquired Greek “Menologion” manuscript, ca. 11th century, Constantinople. Image courtesy Lucas Van Rompay.
The Rubenstein Library recently acquired a fascinating 11th-century Greek manuscript.
With some colleagues and students of the Graduate Program in Religion, we went to see the manuscript on Thursday, October 6, and were greeted by Naomi Nelson, Director of the Rubenstein Library, and J. Andrew Armacost, Head of Collection Development and Curator of Collections.
The new manuscript contains a collection of the lives of saints celebrated in the Greek Orthodox Church during the month of September. It is the first volume of what once must have been a ten-volume set, known as the ‘Menologion’ and covering the entire liturgical year (which begins in September). This particular collection is associated with the name of Symeon Metaphrastes, who in the late 10th century rewrote and collected much of the ancient Greek hagiographical tradition.
While Symeon’s collection became authoritative in the Greek Orthodox Church and is preserved in a great number of manuscripts, the new Duke manuscript stands out for its early date and for the exceptionally fine quality of its script and its lavish execution. It may safely be dated to the middle of the 11th century and must have been produced in Constantinople, from where in the 11th century a number of copies of Symeon’s Menologion were sent to churches and monasteries all over the Byzantine Empire.
Students and faculty view the new manuscript with Curator of Collections Andy Armacost. Image courtesy Lucas Van Rompay.
Until 1960 the manuscript belonged to the library of the Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos, from which it was sold, and later sold at auction to the Schoyen Collection, which recently deaccessioned it. It will be part of the Kenneth Willis Clark Collection at Duke, which already contains a great number of very fine Byzantine manuscripts.
Thanks to Andy Armacost, Curator of Collections, for coordinating this post.
Tonight and on December 6th, the Duke New Music Ensemble will be performing new compositions written as soundtracks for films from the Rubenstein Library’s collections. We asked the dnme composers to tell us a little bit about the films they chose and how they inspired their compositions. For more details about the performances, visit the group’s Facebook page or click the poster at right to enlarge it.
David Kirkland Garner
The video I chose to use is from H. Lee Water’s “Spindale ’37” film (from the H. Lee Waters Film Collection). I chose the portions of the video having to do with the factory for Yelton’s Flour, opening with footage of the flour refining process from inside the building then turning to the procession of workers leaving the factory at the end of the day. The music I wrote is not meant to be closely synced with the video. Rather, it creates a singular mood for the film images. The music is created in two parts: a repeating groove in the keyboard, bass and 3 banjos and a slowly unfolding melody in the other instruments. At the beginning and end of the piece the ensemble uses percussion instruments to imitate the sounds of summer in rural North Carolina.
Jamie Keesecker
Margolin’s 1965 Hawaii film footage (from the Morris and Dorothy Margolin Film Collection) presents a challenge in that almost every moment captured in the footage comes from a performance that was originally accompanied by music, and the musicians themselves can be seen throughout most of the film. Seeing the musicians strumming guitars and ukeleles in unison is one of the aspects that attracted me to this film. But rather than attempting to recreate the music that would have originally accompanied the images in the video, I have written music that is merely meant to represent my own reactions to seeing the film. At the same time, I have chosen to write for a consort of mostly plucked string instruments similar to those depicted in the video. Musical gestures are at times intended to be synchronized with the musicians on film, and other times not, just as the musical material itself contains hints of Hawaiian tropes while remaining, on the whole, quite different from what would actually have been played by the musicians on film.
D. Edward Davis
My archival footage is of a student protest that occurred at Duke University in 1969 (from the Radio TV Services Records). Despite the “homemade” image quality (or perhaps because of it), the images capture the drama of the protesters in action, with the cameraman acting as a participant and not a spectator. I’m drawn to this film because of its connection with the University’s history, and I tried to mirror the intensity but also the sinister beauty of these images with my music. As students are presently (Nov 2011) involved in “Occupying Duke” in the same physical location as the 1969 protests, I love how the film has both a distant timeless quality and a captivating immediacy. Thanks to the staff of the Archives for preserving this footage and also for making it accessible to researchers and artists.
Vladimir Smirnov
The video I chose was footage of traveling down a river (the Chao Phraya, I presume?) in Bangkok from a collection of travel footage by former Duke Professor Margolin (from the Morris and Dorothy Margolin Film Collection). I myself have never traveled to Thailand, and the video drew me in with its images of a very exotic world and with its slow hypnotic pace. I tried to create a musical atmosphere that the video suggested to me with very gentle and exotic sounds—muted piano, bowed vibes, slow swells on the guitar and bass, flute that is sung into at the same time as it’s played, banjo, and very sparse strings. I didn’t really think too much that I was working with archive film when writing, I just focused on the images and atmosphere.
Kenneth David Stewart
The footage I selected is of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens from 1937 (from the Radio TV Services Records). What moves me about this footage is how striking the color of the flowers appears as captured by the Kodachrome film. It is interesting how this footage from 1937 is just two years after Kodak made this kind of film commercially available—in fact, the famous color scenes in the Wizard of Oz were shot with this same film. This captured color, to me, almost has its own texture independent of the hue itself.
The written music for the instruments is based on the live ensemble playing the role of three choirs simultaneously ‘singing’ different music, but at the same time each contributing to a larger, composite texture. In addition to this, there is an electronic track with supporting harmony and the sounds of a typical journey in the rain from my home to the Biddle Music Building recorded onto microcassette.
The process used to construct the visual narrative is based on whether the camera shot is close to the flowers themselves or farther, panning across the gardens. At the same time a ‘chord progression’ of color directs the footage from yellow to orange to red to pink to white to ivory and back to yellow again to repeat the cycle. None of these textures are more important than another and in this way, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
My mother, a former professional horticulturalist, instilled in me a love of plants and flowers at a young age. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of my mother and I outside planting flowers and vegetables in our family garden. This piece is dedicated to her.
Post contributed by the members of the Duke New Music Ensemble.
In 1918, the week of November 11-18 was not only a celebration of the end of World War I, but was coincidentally also a week of massive fundraising by the United War Work Campaign to support troops and boost morale until their work was done. The scrapbook of posters and pamphlets from the campaign was described previously in the post “Scrapbooking for Victory.”
The scrapbook has been undergoing treatment in the conservation lab for the last couple of months. As a paper conservator, I’ve been collaborating with book conservator Meg Brown to treat the album’s myriad problems, from the damaged binding to the fragile items glued to the pages. The scrapbook has been a challenge because of its large size and the awkward folding items it contains. The conservation problems have required hands-on treatment, lots of brainstorming sessions, and ongoing dialogue with curators to understand how the scrapbook will be used. It’s a popular item with librarians, professors and researchers, and it’s no surprise; it’s a wonderful book!
Before Treatment: Tears to a Poster in the United War Work Campaign Scrapbook
Meg cleaned, consolidated and relined the spine to make the text block stronger, and she used the spine lining to securely attach the text block to the cover. I’ve been mending tears and flattening creases in the posters and leaflets, many of which have broken at the folds from handling and from insect attack. A few of the damaged booklets will be lifted from the pages and housed in pockets for easier, safer access. The largest poster in the book unfolds to 82 x 41 inches (208 x 104 cm), so I’ve had to commandeer extra table space. It’s especially useful at times like this to have a table on wheels that adjusts in height!
When the treatment is finished, a storage box will be made, and the scrapbook will be sent back upstairs to the Rubenstein Library for all to enjoy.
For more photos of the scrapbook, and its restorative sojourn in the Conservation Lab, visit the “United War Work Campaign Scrapbook” set on the Rubenstein Library’s Flickr photostream.
This is the fourth in a series highlighting film shorts from theFull Frame Archive, a collection within theArchive of Documentary Arts that preserves masters of all past winners of Durham’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The Full Frame Archive has acquired 79 films since 2007 and continues to grow; DVD use copies of these films can be viewed in the Rubenstein Libraryreading room. The Full Frame Archivefinding aid provides a complete list with descriptions, as well as titles of award-winners not yet acquired.
Oil Blue opens to long shots of only sea and sky, vast and awe-inspiring. Not until after the two-minute mark does any sign of humankind appear, when a gigantic oil tanker slowly moves across the screen. Finnish film student Elli Rintala sought to make a film about the North Sea oil industry, but not a conventional documentary. “I wanted to explore the area between experimental film and documentary film.” Oil Blue won the 2009 Full Frame President’s Award for the best student film.
“On the coastline of my hometown Porvoo is situated the biggest oil harbor and oil refinery of Scandinavia,” she explained to me by email. “I remember that as a child I was fascinated by the massive ships moving slowly in the horizon. . . . Of course I could have made a more traditional and more informative documentary on this subject, but somehow I wanted to maintain the viewpoint of a child, which shows the vessels as a mystery.”
Filming at sea was not easy. “Because the conditions were quite demanding we had to plan everything in advance as precisely as possible. Every image and every angle had to be known beforehand, we couldn’t improvise that much. But I think that all that planning was a great advantage for the film.”
Rintala was granted access to film aboard the oil tankers without much difficulty, however. “Neste Oil, the company which owns the refinery and the tankers, was very cooperative from the very beginning. . . . [They] realized that my aim was not to make a provocative or accusing film.”
But the strict security regulations were a challenge. “Any electrically powered cameras or equipment were prohibited on the deck because of the danger of an explosion. So we had to use a very old spring-wound Bolex camera when shooting on the deck. . . .
“Part of the material is shot from a tiny inflatable in order to get as close to the water level as possible.” Filming on a raft presented its own challenges. “Occasionally the swell of the sea was quite strong and naturally that made the filming more difficult. Once our camera-assistant even threw up during the filming.”
The absence of words in the film compel the viewer to listen—to the sounds of the ocean and machines and to the evocative musical score. “In general I like the way the music and the sound design coalesce in the Oil Blue. The structure of the film is quite musical in any case. One person said to me, that it is possible to watch it the same way you listen to ambient music. This was a great compliment for me, because my aim was that the images could be like music.”
Although Rintala wants to leave any message in Oil Blue open to interpretation, she says it “could be seen as an allegory of our life style also in a more general way. The oil transportations are only one example of this balance of terror between human race, technology and nature, which is so typical for our time.”
Rintala is currently at work on her graduation film “about the main airport of Finland, Helsinki-Vantaa and the development of air traffic from 1950s to this day. I’m going to use archive material and current footage to portray the lost innocence of flying in our time. So from the element of water in Oil Blue I’m moving on to the element of air.”
Post contributed by Tanya Lee, Full Frame Archive Intern.
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Time: 7:00 PM Location: Franklin Humanities Institute Garage, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse (map) Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu
Join us for a screening of Good Times (31 minutes, Hebrew/ Arabic/ English with English subtitles), the second film in the 2011-2012 Rights! Camera! Action! series and the winner of the 2004 Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short.
Good Times was shot in Abu Dis, a small Palestinian village divided in two by a wall built by the Israeli government. The film follows the villagers’ lives before the wall was built and through the construction of a temporary, then a permanent, wall. Moving in colliding microcosms, the inhabitants of the village and the Israeli soldiers protecting the border create an absurd routine of mutual respect and resentment.
Following the film, students from Duke’s BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab will give a presentation on their work this semester.
The screening is free and open to the public, and free popcorn will be provided!
Date: October 24-December 11, 2011 Location and Time: Rubenstein Library Gallery during library hours Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu
Benjamin Lowy’s powerful and arresting color photographs, taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles, capture the desolation of a war-ravaged Iraq, as well as the tension and anxiety of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
To photograph on the streets unprotected was impossible for Lowy, so he came up with the brilliant approach of making images that illuminate this difficulty by shooting through the windows and goggles meant to help him, and soldiers, to see. In doing so he provides us with a new way of looking at the war—an entirely different framework for regarding and thinking about the everyday activities of Iraqis in a devastated landscape and the movements of soldiers on patrol, as well as the alarm and apprehension of nighttime raids.
Lowy’s work was selected from over two hundred entries in the fifth biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition, judged by William Eggleston. Lowy will speak about his work during the exhibit’s opening reception on Thursday, November 10th at 5:30 PM in the Rare Book Room.
An online exhibit is available on the Libraries’ website as well.
Lowy received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career in 2003 when he joined Corbis and embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to cover the Iraq War. In 2005 Photo District News chose Lowy’s Iraq images as some of the most iconic of the start of the 21st century. Lowy’s photographs appear regularly in national and international such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Stern, and Rolling Stone. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco MOMA, Tate Modern, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Battlespace, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others.
The Archive of Documentary Arts at the Rubenstein Library acquired the exhibit photographs through the generosity of the Honickman Foundation established by Lynne Honickman. Harold Honickman sits on the board of the Honickman Foundation and is a member of the Duke University Library Advisory Board. The gift of Benjamin Lowy’s photographs supports the Rubenstein Library’s commitment to acquiring photographic collections that have artistic merit and that reflect the visionary purposes and documentary impulses of their creators.
