Lord Byron & the Internet

Marion! why that pensive brow?

What disgust to life has thou?

Change that discontented air!

Frowns become not one so fair.

from “Marion”

Lord Byron

This Marion is not the librarian, but rather the subject of one Lord Byron’s poems, which can be found in The Gallery of Byron Beauties, one of over 6000 Duke items available in the Internet Archive. This contribution has led to over 540,000 downloads of Duke material, and represents over 1,424,000 pages scanned. We now feature 12 collections on our home page with British Romantic Fiction, to which this book on Byron’s beauties belongs, and City Directories being the most recent. We will soon be adding Ottoman Turkish monographs and the Jantz collection.

During this time we have scanned about 150 items by means of patron requests. Even though a number of these requests originate with Duke patrons, a significant number also come through Interlibrary Loan. In the past year we’ve scanned a collection for one of Duke’s faculty to assist in his research.

While Duke’s yearbook, The Chanticleer, continues to be the most downloaded item, the 1954 edition has almost 5000 downloads alone. Other titles have risen to the top during individual weeks, most notable Mark Goodacre’s The Synoptic Problem, and Frank Brown’s Collection of North Carolina Folklore.

Coming soon: links in the online catalog that will lead to the digital copy in Internet Archive.

If you want to see or read more of Byron’s beauties just click on the link: