All posts by mej28@duke.edu

Donate Children’s Books to Book Harvest

In honor of Martin Luther King’s vision and in support of our local community, the Duke University Libraries are running a children’s book drive through January 10, 2020.

The books we collect will be donated to Book Harvest, a North Carolina nonprofit that believes in the power of books to change children’s lives and works to ensure that all children can grow up in book-rich homes. Since it was launched in 2011, Book Harvest has provided more than one million donated books to children throughout North Carolina.

We need new and gently used books for children of all ages, especially board books and picture books for the youngest readers, as well as Spanish and bilingual books, and books with diverse characters and story lines. Even one book can make a difference in a child’s life.

Look for the book collection bins in the following locations, and please help us fill them!

  • Perkins Library, in the lobby across from the von der Heyden Pavilion
  • Perkins Library, Shipping and Receiving (near the Link)
  • Rubenstein Library, Library Administration Suite (2nd Floor)
  • Lilly Library, main lobby
  • Smith Warehouse, Bay 10, Shipping and Receiving

Don’t have books but want to donate? Visit Book Harvest’s Amazon wish list. You are also invited to volunteer for the MLK “Dream Big” community drive and to attend the 2020 celebration!

Learn more about Book Harvest on their website.

Library Gift Ideas for the Holiday Season

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is here! We are so excited for the holiday season but know how hard it is to brainstorm gift ideas. Luckily, the Duke University Libraries have two programs that provide the perfect opportunity for a thoughtful and unique present.

Adopt-A-Book

Game of Thrones
A few noteworthy first editions from the recently acquired Locus Science Fiction Foundation collection, all available for adoption.

That best friend who has seen every episode of Game of Thrones? Get them the perfect holiday gift by adopting the first book in the series, signed by George R. R. Martin himself! As part of our Adopt-a-Book Program, you can choose from a number of books and help fund their preservation in honor of someone else.

We have many titles across a variety of subjects, so you can find the perfect title that truly creates a gift like none other. An electronic bookplate with the name of the donor or honoree is added to the item’s catalog record, and they are also listed on the library website as a contributor. Gifts to the program help conserve a book and keep it available for current and future faculty, scholars, and students. 

Some lovely first-editions currently available for adoption are Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle (1962), Edith Wharton’s Old New York (1924), Gertrude Jekyll’s Children and Gardens (1933), Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925) and John James Audubon’s Birds of America (1827). Find many more at our Adopt-a-Book website.


Adopt-A-Digital-Collection

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Duke football player Ken Abbott (c. 1933), from the Duke Sports Information Office Photographic Negatives Collection.

Maybe you have an uncle who loves Duke athletics but already has ten basketball jerseys? You can still give him the perfect holiday gift by adopting Photographic Negatives from the Duke Sports Information Office, a digital collection relating to all things Duke sports. Every year, we digitize thousands of items in our collections. These digital assets must be carefully managed to preserve them for generations of students and researchers to come. This work requires storage space, the specialized expertise of our talented staff, and you! Our Adopt-a-Digital-Collection program allows you to support the long-term preservation of these important cultural and scholarly resources, keeping them safe and accessible indefinitely. Each digital collection available for adoption is unique, allowing you to specialize your holiday gift to someone’s interests.  

Some collections currently available to be preserved include the African American Soldier’s Korean War photo album, the Isaac Leroy Shavers Papers that include his sermons and missionary work, and Italian Cultural Posters. Find those and more at our Adopt-a-Digital Collection website