This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and people around the world are celebrating his life. You can check out some of the festivities happening in the UK on the Shakespeare400 website. Also, there are special performances and events at the Shakespeare Globe (I have to figure out a way to get there). Back here in the United States the Folger Library is getting in on the action with their The Wonder of Will program. Another thing not to be missed is the Shakespeare Documented online exhibit!
On Twitter scroll through #Shakespeare400 to see what people are talking about!
Locally check out some of the events taking place around Raleigh. It’s not too late to attend the Carolina Ballet’s performance of Macbeth. The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA is putting on a festival on April 23rd!
Here at the library we are celebrating in several ways. All this week we will be posting blog posts related to Shakespeare, using the hashtags #shakespeareeverywhere and #shakespeare400. Rubenstein will be featuring several Shakespeare related documents, including this document showing some of Whitman’s thoughts about Shakespeare. And of course this Friday the first hour (10-11) of Shakespeare Everywhere will be taking place in The Edge Workshop Room. They will then be moving over to the Hanes Iris Garden Amphitheater in Duke Gardens from 11:30-12:30, and then the LSRC Hall of Science Atrium from 1-2.
That’s the question we’re asking Duke students and faculty today—and every day this week.
It’s National Library Week (April 10-16), and we’re celebrating by asking people to #ThankALibrarian and tell us how a librarian has helped them.
Has a librarian helped you with a paper or research project recently? Or maybe someone helped you check out a book or a DVD? Or maybe someone came to one of your classes and taught you about a new tool or database?
If so, now’s your chance to say thanks! (We’ll only blush a little).
Look for groups of librarians all around campus (East and West) this week. We’ll be taking pictures, posting them on our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts using the hashtag #ThankALibrarian.
Buttons!
You can also send us your own photo by downloading and printing this handy template. Write a message, take a photo, and post your photo with the hashtag #ThankALibrarian on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and tag us (@dukelibraries).
We’ll be giving away fun library buttons (because everyone loves buttons, right?). Plus you can enter a drawing to win one of our sweet Perkins-Bostock-Rubenstein library T-shirts.
You know you want one of these.
So if you see us out there, take a moment to stop and #ThankALibrarian!
What: Research + creativity on display, coffee and dessert Where: The Edge Workshop Room (Bostock 127) When: April 11, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
You’ve seen their projects around campus–come find out what these students are working on! Join us in The Edge for a series of lightning talks given by undergraduate students using the Innovation Co-Lab or The Edge to power their work. They will discuss their research work and future plans. The participating students are working on projects with:
Following the lightning talks and a panel Q&A, join presenters for a coffee and dessert reception to celebrate a successful semester. Student projects from the Innovation Studio will be on display in the Lounge during this time.
Interested in project space in The Edge next semester? We’re accepting applications for Summer or Fall 2016 semesters. Submit an application online or email us at edge@duke.edu for more information.
Learn more about the Innovation Co-Lab and their projects and programming: https://colab.duke.edu/.
This event is co-sponsored by the Innovation Co-Lab and Duke University Libraries.
A green devil in a stained glass window in the Chapel
A new exhibit focusing on the history and legacy of Duke Chapel is now on display in the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery. The exhibit, which will be on display through June 19, opens wide the doors of the Chapel to reveal the stories within—from the origins of the stained glass windows to the legacy of student protest.
Duke Chapel is the most iconic building on West Campus, and it has a history as rich as its architectural grandeur. Over the past eight decades, Duke Chapel has celebrated thousands of services, welcomed millions of guests, and served as the preeminent icon for the university. The Chapel represents many things to many different people. Its varied roles, constituencies, and history allowed it to cultivate an atmosphere that welcomed world-renowned speakers and musicians while also providing space to express the emotions of life in the silence of a sacred space.
Students protesting South African apartheid outside Duke Chapel in 1985.
The story of Duke Chapel is not just the story of a building. It represents the story of a community and of the richly diverse group of people who have helped to shape the Chapel’s legacy—and who will ultimately shape its future.
The exhibit is co-curated by Andrew Klumpp D’14, former Visitor Relations Specialist at Duke University Chapel and current Ph. D. student in American Religious History at Southern Methodist University, with the assistance of Sara Blaine Clark D’09, Assistant Manager, Special Events, Duke University Chapel.
Palfrey is the author of “BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More than Ever in the Age of Google”
What: Lecture and Opening of the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Archive When: Thursday, April 7, 5:00 p.m. Where: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Reception to follow
Join the Duke University Libraries as we celebrate the opening of the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Archive with a special lecture featuring educator and technology expert John Palfrey, distinguished authority on education and technology and author of BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (Basic Books, 2015).
Palfrey is the Head of School at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Previously, Palfrey served as Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School and as the founding chairman of the Digital Public Library of America. He has written extensively on internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world.
Palfrey’s talk will be followed by a brief response by N. Katherine Hayles, James B. Duke Professor of Literature at Duke and author of numerous books, including How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (University of Chicago, 2012).
Sponsored by the Duke University Libraries, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Information Science + Studies Program, Information Initiative at Duke, Masters of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Studies Program, Center for Documentary Studies, Forum for Scholars and Publics, and the UNC School of Information and Library Science.
Head coach David Cutcliffe holds up the New Era Pinstripe Bowl trophy after Duke defeated Indiana. Image by Duke Photography.
On Tuesday, March 1, Duke fans will get a chance to see the university’s latest athletic accolade up-close and in-person in Perkins Library.
The New Era Pinstripe Bowl trophy will be on public display across from the first floor service desk from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.Visitors are invited to stop by, take a photo with the trophy, and meet members of the Duke football team and Duke Athletics staff.
Historical Duke football memorabilia from the Duke University Archives will also be displayed, including game programs from the 1942 Rose Bowl, 1945 Sugar Bowl, 1955 Orange Bowl, and 1961 Cotton Bowl. Legendary coach Eddie Cameron’s own scrapbook from the 1945 Sugar Bowl will also be on display, containing photographs, clippings, letters, and souvenirs.
The New Era Pinstripe Bowl trophy commemorates the Blue Devils’ historic win over Indiana University, 44-41, at Yankee Stadium, in one of the most dramatic games of the 2015 postseason.
The game gave Duke its first bowl victory since 1961.
So stop by the library, get a photo, and join us as we celebrate another historic Duke victory!
Related Pinstripe Bowl coverage from Duke Athletics
Members of all faiths are welcome to use the new Prayer and Meditation Room in the library.
In response to student requests, the Duke University Libraries are pleased to set aside a dedicated room on the second floor of Perkins Library for prayer and meditation.
Room 220 in Perkins Library is located near the open study area with wooden carrels on the library’s second floor. (See map below.) The room is a shared space open to all members of the Duke community to use either individually or in groups.
Anyone who wishes to use the space is asked to follow a few simple guidelines:
Prayer or meditation does not necessarily need to be silent, but it should be quiet enough not to disturb anyone studying in adjacent areas or rooms.
The Prayer and Meditation Room cannot be reserved and is not to be used for studying or for meetings.
If you use the room, please show respect toward others who use it. Keep the room clean, take your personal belongings with you when you leave, and do not sleep or bring food into the space.
We hope the room will be of use to members of all faiths who study and work in the library.
The Prayer and Meditation Room is located in Room 220 on the 2nd Floor of Perkins Library.
Duke University has received a $1.165 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the continued development of an open-source integrated library system.
Known as Kuali OLE (pronounced oh-LAY), for Open Library Environment, it is the first system designed by and for academic and research libraries to manage and deliver scholarly information. Three OLE Partners—Lehigh University, the University of Chicago, and SOAS at the University of London—have already implemented Kuali OLE in their library operations. The grant will support the further development, refinement, and adoption of the system by a broader group of public and private institutions.
Large research library systems manage and provide access to millions of books, journals, online resources, special collections, and other media. To do so, they rely on various commercial software products to handle the everyday work of ordering and paying for materials, cataloging them, loaning them to library patrons, and making disparate computer systems work together. These routine business functions are mission-critical for libraries, but the proprietary software that manages them can cost colleges and universities thousands or millions of dollars to license and maintain.
The goal of Kuali OLE is to replace some of the costly, inflexible systems many libraries currently rely on with an open-source, enterprise-level system that is freely available to libraries worldwide and supported by members of the library profession itself.
“The information environment has changed rapidly over the last few decades, but the technology of library management systems has not kept pace,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke. “The development of OLE offers a welcome opportunity to design a system that is flexible, customizable, and nimble enough to meet the complex needs of today’s libraries and library users.”
The Open Library Environment has been in development, with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, since 2008. In that year, representatives from more than a dozen libraries convened at Duke to discuss a next-generation framework for managing library collections and resources—essentially a library system designed by and for librarians.
This grant from Mellon will support the next phase of OLE’s code development through December 2017 by strengthening the technical capacity of the Kuali OLE Core Team. This will enable OLE to respond and adapt to technical infrastructure changes. It will also allow for increased functionality and features for successful implementation at the other partner libraries, including Duke, Cornell, Indiana University, Texas A&M University, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Pennsylvania, and Villanova University.
The hope is that Kuali OLE’s implementation at a range of private and public institutions will generate interest and participation among more academic institutions and partners worldwide.
“We envision this project as both a pivot for OLE that leads to a stronger, more effective and sustainable technology infrastructure, and an opportunity to renovate our organizational model to address code, community ownership, and the speed of development,” said Tim McGeary, Associate University Librarian for Information Technology Services at Duke. “We are grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for recognizing the promise of the Kuali OLE project.”
Duke University Libraries will host a reading and discussion with Roxana Robinson, critically acclaimed fiction writer and author most recently of the novelSparta.
When: Tuesday, February 2, 4:00-5:30 p.m. Where: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library Room 153 Q&A, book signing, and reception to follow.
Ms. Robinson is the Libraries’ inaugural Rosati Visiting Writer. She will be in residence at Duke January 28-February 18, 2016. She is the acclaimed author of numerous novels and short stories, as well as the definitive biography of Georgia O’Keefe. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Hunter College/CUNY MFA Program, has received NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and is President of the Authors’ Guild.
This event is free and open to the public.
Master Class Opportunity for Duke Undergrads [REGISTRATION REQUIRED] In addition to her public reading, Ms. Robinson will conduct a master class in writing for Duke undergraduate students on Tuesday, February 9, 10:05 a.m.-12:35 p.m. Interested students should register for the master class with Sara Seten Berghausen (sara@duke.edu). The registration deadline is February 3, 2016.
Some 60 wax cylinders and 76 aluminum discs containing approximately 1,367 songs recorded in the 1920s and 1930s will be digitized as part of the project.
The collection includes some 1,367 songs recorded in the 1920s and 1930s on wax cylinders and aluminum discs. The recordings were made in the field by folklorist, professor of English, and Duke University administrator Frank Clyde Brown (1870-1943), who traveled across North Carolina collecting folk songs, sayings, stories, and other folklore between 1912 and his death in 1943. Brown collected songs from at least 52 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, representing all regions of the state.
“The recordings include music unique to North Carolina, as well as popular American folk songs, traditional British ballads, and a range of other tunes,” said Winston Atkins, Preservation Officer for Duke University Libraries and the principal investigator for the project. “Taken together, they represent an important and untapped primary source of American folk music in the early twentieth century.”
The songs have never been widely accessible due to the age and fragility of the recording technology Brown used, as well as the difficulty of transferring them to more modern media formats.
Because they are too fragile to be played as intended, the cylinders and discs will be digitized using a non-contact visual scanning technology known as IRENE.
“Until recently, there has been no non-destructive way to recover audio on historical wax cylinders and aluminum discs, which require a mechanical stylus and can be damaged if played today,” said Craig Breaden, Audiovisual Archivist in Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The Duke recordings will be digitized using a new non-contact technology, known as IRENE, at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts. IRENE takes ultra-high resolution visual scans of the grooves imprinted on the cylinders and discs and mathematically translates those into digital sound files that are remarkably faithful to the original recordings. Because there is no actual contact with the recording, IRENE’s scans can also capture sounds from damaged media.
Digitization will begin in the summer of 2016 and take approximately one year. The recordings will then be described and processed, and the collection will be made freely and publicly available through the Duke University Libraries website in 2018.
Undated photograph of Frank C. Brown from the Duke University Archives.
Born in 1870, Frank Clyde Brown began his career as a professor of English at Trinity College in Durham (the forerunner of Duke University) in 1909 and later became chairman of the department. Between 1924 and 1930, as Trinity expanded into Duke University, Brown served as the institution’s first comptroller, overseeing the construction of West Campus and the renovation of East Campus. He also served as university marshal, entertaining distinguished visitors to the new university.
In 1913, at the urging of legendary folklorist and musicologist John A. Lomax, Brown founded the North Carolina Folklore Society and was elected its first president. He later served as its secretary-treasurer, program chairman, and primary collector until his death in 1943. His efforts to record the sounds and nuances of North Carolina’s “folk” were part of a national trend in the early twentieth century to preserve American folk culture, aided by new technologies that allowed folklorists to make recordings in the field. The 1,367 songs captured by Brown are a significant part of that legacy.
The seven-volume Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, published posthumously by Duke University Press between 1952 and 1964, represents Brown’s lifetime of collecting. It is widely regarded as one of the premiere collections of American folklore ever published and is available online. Four of the seven volumes are dedicated to the music Brown recorded and include transcribed melodies and song lyrics. However, the editors of Brown’s work left out an estimated 400 songs he recorded. These “bonus tracks,” which are found on the wax cylinders and aluminum discs but not in the published collection, will be digitized as part of the project.
“All Day Singing.” Woodcut by Clare Leighton, from Vol. 2 of the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, published by Duke University Press in 1952.
Brown’s original manuscripts and notes, which were used to compile the collection, along with his original recordings, are housed in Duke’s Rubenstein Library.
In 2015, two Duke faculty members—Victoria Szabo and Trudi Abel—incorporated some of the Frank C. Brown recordings into NC Jukebox, an interdisciplinary Bass Connections course introducing undergraduate and graduate students to digital history. Students conducted original research on the history of the recordings and tracked down the descendants of some of the singers and musicians. The course will be offered again in Spring 2017.
The grant to digitize Brown’s recordings is part of CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards program, a national competition that funds the digitization of rare and unique content held by libraries and cultural memory institutions that would otherwise be unavailable to the public.
During the winter break, we’re reconfiguring the Circulation and Reference Desks into a single combined library service point.
With the fall semester now over, we are going back into construction mode to complete five small projects in Perkins and Bostock Libraries. The majority of the projects are expected to be wrapped up by the start of the semester in January 2016.
Here’s a summary of the projects and what you can expect if you visit the library over the winter break.
New Perkins Library Service Desk: On the main level of Perkins Library, the Circulation and Reference Desks are being completely reconfigured into a new single library service point. Demolition of the existing desk area started this week and is expected to take a week or so. A new desk, consultation spaces, shelving area and processing area will be created in the existing space. While the work is going on, library services will be available by the Perkins archway entrance.
Bostock Floor 2: The spaces formerly occupied by Library Development, Communications, the Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing, and Business Services will be renovated. Temporary walls have already been removed and pre-construction work has been completed. Once finished, the Data and Visualization and Digital Scholarship department heads and staff will relocate to offices in the renovated space. There will also be a meeting room within their combined suite. The DC3 (temporarily located in the 1928 Rubenstein Library tower offices) will return to a new space just down the hall from their former location.
The former home of Data and Visualization Services on the 2nd floor of Perkins Library is being transformed into a dedicated Dissertation Reading and Writing Lab for Duke graduate students.
Bostock Floors 2/3: The spaces formerly occupied by the Library Administration Office, Business Services, and Library Human Resources will be touched up, painted, and furniture will be returned to those areas. The former office for Library Human Resources will revert to a reservable meeting room for library staff.
Perkins Floor 3: The temporary stack and reading room spaces created for Rubenstein Library staff and services during the renovation will be returned to student/public spaces. The temporary walls have already been removed and some furniture has been returned. The shelves are clear and some shelving is being removed or relocated. Books and other materials will return to the third floor later in Spring 2016.
New Dissertation Reading and Writing Lab, Perkins Floor 2: The former Data/Visualization Lab on the 2nd floor of Perkins will become a new Dissertation Reading and Writing Lab. The space will be emptied, new carpet will be installed, and a number of open carrels and portable storage units will be installed in late January for use by graduate students. This space is expected to open in February or March.
Pardon our progress while we continue to improve your library!
Ever wonder who those teams of people are and what they’re working on? Come find out December 4!
What: Research-in-progress, coffee and dessert Where: The Edge Workshop Room (Bostock Library 127) When: Friday, December 4, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
You’ve seen the project teams in The Edge—come find out what they’re working on! In between LDOC festivities, join us in The Edge for a series of lightning talks given by Bass Connections project team participants about their team’s research work in progress and future plans. The participating teams are:
Following the lightning talks and a panel Q&A, join the team members for a coffee and dessert reception to celebrate a successful semester.
Interested in project space in The Edge next semester? We’re accepting applications for the Spring 2016 semester. Submit an application online or email us at edge@duke.edu for more information.
Duke University Press will be celebrating University Press Week November 8-15, 2015, along with the Association of American University Presses and its more than 130 members. University Press Week highlights the extraordinary work of nonprofit scholarly publishers and their many contributions to culture, the academy, and an informed society. A number of local events are planned.
For the first time ever, The Regulator Bookshop in Durham will host a pop-up university press bookstore in its lower level. The bookstore will feature books and journals from local presses Duke University Press and Wake Forest University Press as well as presses from around the country. Browsers may be surprised to find how many books of general interest university presses publish, from cookbooks to music books to local history, memoir and travel. The Regulator Bookshop will also host two events during the week, a reading by Alejandro Velasco, author of Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela (University of California Press) and a reception followed by a reading by Ambassador James Joseph, author of Saved for a Purpose: A Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values (Duke University Press).
Other events celebrating University Press Week include displays of Duke University Press books and journals in the Durham County Library and Duke University’s Perkins Library. The Perkins display can be found on the first floor near the Duke Authors display. The Center for Documentary Studies will sponsor an artist talk and book signing at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, featuring Nadia Sablin, whose book Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila is the seventh winner of the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. You can find more details about this event here.
Duke University Press will feature special University Press Week posts on its blog and will sponsor online contests during the week. Fans of university presses are encouraged to use the hashtags #ReadUP and #PublishUP to talk online about why they love to read, teach, and write university press books and journal articles and to use the #UPShelfie hashtag to share pictures of the university press books on their shelves.
Getting ready for Halloween? So is Lilly Library! Come check out our collection of spooky DVDs and graphic novels, on exhibit through the end of October.
The H Word: Horror in the LibrariesFuture Imperfect: Dystopian and Post-Holocaust Cinema
Congratulations to the 2015 Library Writing and Research Award Winners!
The Duke University Libraries are pleased to announce the winners of the 2014-2015 library writing and research awards. The Aptman Prize, the Middlesworth Award, and the Holsti Prize recognize excellence in student research using sources from the Libraries’ general collections, the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and primary sources for political science or public policy, respectively. New this year is the Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award which is given in recognition of an outstanding work of creative writing.
Chester P. Middlesworth Award
Undergraduate: Michael Sotsky
Holsti Prize
Honors Thesis: Charlotte Lee
Semester Paper: Jack Dolgin
Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award
Antonio Lopez, Jr.
We will be celebrating their achievements at an awards reception on Friday, October 30 from 3:30-4:30 in the Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room. All are invited to join us for refreshments and the opportunity to honor the recipients.
Note: In our original blog post about these awards, we inadvertently omitted Jack Dolgin’s name when we first announced the winners. Our apologies to Mr. Dolgin!
The term “Hackathon” traditionally refers to an event in which computer programmers collaborate intensively on software projects. But Duke University Libraries and the History Department are putting a historical twist on their approach to the Hackathon phenomenon. In this case, the History Hackathon is a contest for undergraduate student teams to research, collaborate, and create projects inspired by the resources available in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections. Projects may include performances, essays, websites, infographics, lectures, podcasts, and more. A panel of experts will serve as judges and rank the top three teams. Cash Prizes will be awarded to the winning teams.
Date: Tuesday, October 6 Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein Library
Join us for an evening of music and conversation in the Rubenstein Library as we explore the deep roots of the Mountain Music of North Carolina.
Terry McKinney–bluegrass, country, and gospel musician–will give a free performance as part of the Archives Alive course NC Jukebox, which explores the history of music making in early twentieth-century North Carolina.
This event is free and open to the public.
To learn more about the Archives Alive initiative, a joint venture of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, visit the website.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will discuss her books, the American presidency, and leadership lessons from the White House at 6 p.m. Thursday, November 5, in Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater. The event is free and open to the public.
Doris Kearns Goodwin will be joined onstage by David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group and Chair of the Duke University Board of Trustees.
Goodwin will be joined on stage in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group and Chair of the Duke University Board of Trustees. The event is one of several programs this year celebrating the opening of the renovated the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. She is the author of six critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling books. She appears regularly on network TV programs and was an on-air consultant for PBS documentaries on Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy Family, and Ken Burn’s The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.
Goodwin was born and raised on Long Island, New York. She received her B.A. from Colby College and her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. Goodwin served as an assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson in his last year in the White House. She later assisted Johnson in the preparation of his memoirs.
Goodwin’s monumental history of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005) reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book won the Lincoln Prize, the New York Historical Society Book Prize, the Richard Nelson Current Award, the New York State Archives History Makers Award, and was the basis of the 2012 feature film Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day Lewis.
Goodwin’s most recent book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013), is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Dreamworks Studios/Steven Spielberg have acquired the film rights to the book.
Goodwin lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband Richard N. Goodwin, who worked in the White House under both Kennedy and Johnson. The Goodwins have three sons.
The evening with Goodwin and Rubenstein will be presented as the Weaver Memorial Lecture, hosted every other year by the Duke University Libraries in memory of William B. Weaver, a 1972 Duke graduate and former member of the Library Advisory Board. The event is co-sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Sanford School of Public Policy, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and the Department of History. Copies of Goodwin’s books will be available for sale at the event.
Admission is free, but tickets are required and are available through the Duke Box Office. A small service charge may apply for tickets ordered by phone, online, or mail. Visit tickets.duke.edu for more information.
Recording during this event is not permitted. Questions? Contact Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications, Duke University Libraries, at 919-660-5816 or aaron.welborn@duke.edu.
The construction fence surrounding Rubenstein Library.
Although the inside of Rubenstein Library is now fully renovated and open for use, you may have noticed that, outside, construction vehicles and fencing linger on.
In case you’re wondering, the blue fence around Rubenstein Library is hiding a new landscaping project that will take place over the next few months. Workers will be replacing the topsoil, installing irrigation measures, planting new trees and shrubs, and hardscaping. The whole project is scheduled to be complete by December 31, 2015.
The corner entrance to Rubenstein will be open after December 31.
In the meantime, the corner entrance to Rubenstein will remain closed so that work vehicles can move back and forth without affecting pedestrians. (You can still see the gorgeous vaulted interior behind that door if you enter through the main library entrance, walk through the Photography Gallery, and hang a left).
Come December, the fences will be down, plantings will be in place, and the public will be free to use BOTH library entrances. Thanks for being patient while we put the finishing touches on Duke’s latest point of pride!
Duke faculty can help us improve library services by participating in the Ithaka Faculty Survey!
This fall, the Duke University Libraries will be participating in the national Ithaka Faculty Survey.
On Wednesday, September 9, nearly 1,000 Duke faculty will receive an email invitation to participate. The survey will be open through Fall Break, and faculty will be encouraged to complete the online questionnaire throughout the month it is open.
We will use findings from the Ithaka survey to gain a better understanding of Duke faculty members’ research and teaching experiences, habits, and patterns. These findings will help us to direct resources and develop services to help meet their expressed needs.
Institutions that have participated in the past report that their findings were extremely useful for strategic planning and long-term goal setting, so we feel the timing of this survey is especially appropriate as the Provost’s Office embarks on a university-wide strategic planning process. Also, by participating in this national survey, we will have an opportunity to compare local findings with data from peer institutions.
If you are a Duke faculty member and receive a link to the survey, we hope you will participate. As a small incentive, all faculty who complete the survey will be entered into a drawing for a $75 Amazon gift card.
If you have any questions about the Ithaka Faculty Survey, please contact Emily Daly, Head of the Assessment and User Experience Department in the Duke University Libraries.
Members of these advisory boards will help improve the learning and research environment for Duke University students and advise the Libraries on topics such as study spaces, research resources, integrating library services into academic courses, and marketing library services to students.
The boards will typically meet four times a semester to discuss all aspects of Duke Libraries and provide feedback to library staff. This is an amazing opportunity for students to serve on the advisory board of a large, nationally recognized non-profit organization.
All three advisory boards are now taking applications or nominations. Application deadlines are:
Members of the Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board and the Undergraduate Advisory Board will be selected and notified by mid-September, and groups will begin to meet in late September. More information is available on our website, where you will also find links to the online applications forms.
For more information or questions about these opportunities, please contact:
When is the library open? How do I find a book? Where do I print?*
Duke University’s newest students can find the answers to these questions (and more!) on the Library’s First-Year Library Servicesportal page.
Each August, a new class of undergraduates arrives in Durham ready to immerse themselves in the Duke Community. Duke University Libraries serve as the core of intellectual life on campus. On East Campus particularly, the Lilly and Music Libraries have the unique opportunity to introduce our newest “Dukies” to the array of Library resources and research services available.
To help navigate the vast Library resources, we’ve created a portal especially for First-Year students. Through this portal page, new students (and even some not-so-new) can discover all that the Duke University Libraries offer:
Quick Facts: about collections and loan policies Where: to study, print, and … eat! How: to find and check out books & material, and get… Help!: Meet the “who” – Librarians, Specialists, & Residence Hall Librarians Research 101: how to navigate the Research Process Citation 101: how to cite using recommended styles *And when is the Library open?
Find the answer in our list of the Top 12 Questions, developed with input from First-Year Library Advisory Board students.
On East Campus, after students settle in and begin classes, the Lilly Library and Duke Music Library offer several ways for the newest “Dukies” to learn and benefit from the incredible resources of the Duke Libraries. Lilly and Music sponsor Library Orientation events such as scavenger hunts, film showings, and prize drawings to familiarize them with library services and collections. In recent years, students played The Library Games, and were wowed by theIncredibles and the Libraries’ super powers. This year, the Class of 2019 will experience the power of discovery because …
After the excitement of the new semester subsides, the Duke University Libraries continue to reach out to our students, always ready to offer research support and access to resources in support of their scholarly needs.
Here’s to a great year – and Duke career – filled with academic success!
Remarks at 2:30 p.m. in the Gothic Reading Room
by Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian
and Vice Provost for Library Affairs
Help us celebrate the transformation of a library that is truly one of the crown jewels of Duke by joining us for a special open house for the entire Duke and Triangle-area community on Thursday, September 10, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Tour the new spaces and exhibits.
Meet and mingle with library staff.
Learn how the Rubenstein Library can support your research.
Free giveaways and light refreshments.
Free and open to the public.
Visitor Parking Information: Free parking will be available at Parking Garage IV (click for map), next to the Bryan Center, for visitors traveling to the open house from off-campus. Take a ticket when you enter the parking deck. When you exit, inform the parking booth attendant that you were visiting the Rubenstein Library Open House. The attendant will take your ticket and allow you to exit at no cost.
Virginia Woolf’s writing desk, part of the recently acquired Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room.
An extremely rare copy of the Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book printed in what is now the United States, on loan by special arrangement with David M. Rubenstein. On display in the Michael and Karen Stone Family Gallery.
A new permanent exhibit on the history of Duke University, on display outside the Gothic Reading Room.
Our new Photography Gallery, featuring an exhibit on early 20th-century images of China by Sidney Gamble.
The new Rubenstein Library reading room, where researchers can explore our special collections.
More Opening Events and Exhibits
We’re lining up a number of events and exhibits to celebrate the opening of the Rubenstein Library throughout the fall of 2015. Check out our opening events site for a complete listing and stay tuned for regular updates.
About the Rubenstein Library Renovation
The construction crane looms over a gutted Rubenstein Library stack core, December 2013. See our Flickr album of renovation images for more.
The renovation of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, housed in Duke’s original West Campus library building, is the final phase of the Perkins Project, a 15-year-long effort to renovate and re-imagine Duke’s West Campus library complex that started back in 2000. (Read more about the history of the Perkins Project on our renovation website.)
Construction work on the Rubenstein began in late 2012, and the building will officially open to the public on August 24, 2015.
The 1948 library tower under scaffolding, August 2014.
The Rubenstein renovation has transformed one of the university’s oldest and most recognizable buildings into a state-of-the-art research facility where students, faculty, and visitors can engage with the Libraries’ collection of rare and unique scholarly materials.
The research, instruction, storage, and exhibition capabilities of the Rubenstein Library have all been greatly increased. The new library also features state-of-the-art closed stacks with high-tech security and a closely-monitored environment.
Workers re-hang portraits of historic Duke luminaries in the renovated Gothic Reading Room, July 2015.
Updates have also extended to the Mary Duke Biddle Room and the Gothic Reading Room. The charm and character of these signature Duke spaces has been preserved, but their finishes, furnishings, lighting, technology infrastructure, and exhibition facilities have all been enhanced.
Finally, the library’s main entrance has been redesigned with new doors, windows, and lighting to give the entire library complex a more unified and welcoming presence on the historic West Quad.
Mark your calendars and join us 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. on September 10!
Join the Duke University Libraries for a night of comics-themed trivia at Fullsteam Brewery in downtown Durham. Test your knowledge of superheroes, women in comics, comics and war, popular media depictions of comics, and more.
Duke’s Rubenstein Library is home to the Edwin and Terry Murray Comic Book Collection, which includes over 65,000 comics from the 1930s to the present, making it one of the largest archival comic collections in the world.
Our comics trivia night will take place at Fullsteam Brewery in downtown Durham on July 23.
Our comics trivia night will coincide with Durham Comics Fest on July 25, an annual, all-ages celebration of comics and graphic novels organized by the Durham County Library.
This event is free and open to the public, ages 21 and up.
The 2015 season of the American Dance Festival has now kicked off with fabulous performances through July 25th.
To help you get your groove on, check out dance-themed highlights from Lilly Library’s film/video collection in the Lilly Video Spotlight: Dance on Film.
If our spotlight whets your appetite, explore Lilly Library’s large selection of dance DVDs to keep you tripping the light fantastic all summer long. Don’t feel like tripping the light fantastic with Lilly? The ADF Archives serve as an excellent resource for dance historians, and this summer the International Screendance Festival hosts screenings at the Nasher Museum of Art.
Updated from a June 2014 post authored by Danette Pachtner, Librarian for Film, Video & Digital Media and Women’s Studies
We can’t make your finals go away, but we can make them a little bit sweeter. The Libraries will be hosting two study breaks on Wednesday, April 29 to help ease the pressure of studying for finals.
Starting to feel like this? It’s time for a study break!
Puppies in Perkins is back! Certified therapy dogs will be taking over Perkins 217 from 3:30-5:30 pm for a snuggle-filled study break. Stop by for a some tail-wagging fun and a little puppy love!
C is for COOOOKIES!!
The Friends of the Duke University Libraries and the Duke Campus Club will be hosting our spring study break starting at 3:30 pm on the Libraries Terrace (outside, between Perkins and Bostock). Stop by for some free treats and drinks, but be sure to come early as supplies are limited!
Study Breaks, Relaxation Stations… and do you know about the Fo?
Feed your body and recharge your brain at Lilly Library during Finals Week.
Scientific studies prove that taking a break from relentless studying improves cognitive skills. When Duke students are on East Campus during Finals Week, they may enjoy (so to speak) expanded hours and even find some fun “stuff” to do in Lilly Library.
Students studying in the Lilly Reference Room
Thursday the 23rd – Saturday May 2nd:Open 24/7
Beginning at 8am on Thursday, April 24th, Lilly remains open though the final exam period, closing on Saturday, May 2nd at 7pm.
A thankful Study Cat first appeared in Lilly’s Relaxation Station during previous Finals (courtesy of an unknown student)
Monday the 27th:Lilly Library Study Break at 8pm
Cookies, homemade treats and a variety of goodies can help counter the stress of studying!
Tuesday – Thursday:Relaxation Station
Crafts, card and board games, jigsaw puzzles are available 24/7 with the bonus of late night refreshments (provided by Devils After Dark )
Anytime: Know the Fo Want good luck on your exams? It’s a good luck tradition to pet one of the two Fo Dogs guarding the south entry to the Thomas Room.
Get Good Luck with the Fo or take a study break in the Lilly Relaxation Station.
No matter the campus – East or West – , be sure to check out all the information in the Duke Libraries’ End of Semester Survival Guide. Good Luck on Finals, and be sure to take advantage of Lilly Library’s student support system when you are on East Campus!
Date: Thursday, April 2 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.: Food, Music, Art + More! All Day: Writeable walls open for artstigating (markers provided)! Location: The Edge, First Floor of Bostock Library More Info: Search “EdgeFest Duke” on Facebook
Don’t miss delicious food from Durham’s hot spots, including Juju, Monuts, Pie Pushers, NOSH, Mad Hatter, Pompieri Pizza, Toast & Cupcake Bar!
Stop by for mocktails, music and live entertainment from Poetry Fox, Inside Joke, #BusStopGuy, and DUI!
What’s EdgeFest? We provide the dry-erase markers. You provide the artstigatin’!
Starting at 9 a.m., the walls of The Edge are your canvas. By the end of the day, the walls will be covered with doodles, pictures, murals, and interactive displays by student groups, individuals, and fellow artstigators.
The creative fun starts at 9:00 a.m. and continues with a reception starting at 5:00 p.m.
Don’t miss EdgeFest on Thursday—the artstigatin’ will be wiped clean on Friday!
What If I’m No “Picasso”? Everyone is an Artstigator! We have awesome projectors onsite that you can use to project and trace anything you can put on your laptop. Need some inspiration? We’ll have some amazing art books on hand from Lilly Library’s collection to get your creative juices flowing!
Look for these posters around campus. And come to EdgeFest, April 2!
Please join us for a talk on changing models of scholarly publishing in the humanities, and how a transition to open access models might be funded and sustained.
Through the economic and structural reconfiguration made possible by the Internet, the potential for new modes of publishing scholarship have emerged. However, there has also been much alarm in the humanities disciplines, particularly at the proposed changes to economic models that could underwrite transitions to new models of publishing, such as open access.
In this talk, Dr. Martin Paul Eve, author of Open Access and the Humanities (Cambridge University Press, 2014) will explore the contexts, controversies and pragmatic paths for the future of open access and other potential transitions in scholarly publishing in the humanities.
Your opinion counts! Share your thoughts about ways to improve and enhance library services, collections, and spaces in a one-hour moderated focus group. All participants will enjoy snacks during the focus group and receive a $10.00 Amazon Gift card!
Here in the Libraries, we’re always trying to up our game. To help us serve our Duke students and faculty better, we conduct periodic focus groups with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members.
Share your input and make a difference. Focus groups help us improve our existing services and develop new ones to meet emerging needs. Click on the links below to be part of a focus group session.
This focus group will center on participants’ experiences accessing full text articles online.
Faculty and Graduate Student Focus Group: Thursday, March 19th
10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
Meet in the lobby of Perkins Library (by the elevators and stone stairs) Register here.
Since 1947, the Friends of the Duke University Libraries have presented the contest in alternate years to promote reading for enjoyment and the development of students’ personal libraries. The contest is open to all undergraduate and graduate/professional students who are regularly enrolled at Duke University. The winners for the 2015 contest are:
Undergraduate Division:
First prize: Claudia Dantoin, “A British Homecoming: Growing Up Alongside Austen, Dickens, and Dahl”
Second prize: Katie Fernelius, “Women’s Fiction of the Past One Hundred Years: Re-Reading the World in My Own Image”
Graduate Division:
First prize (tie): Anne Steptoe, “Look Homeward: A Girl’s Journey Homeward through 20th Century Southern Literature” (pictured above)
First prize (tie): Andrew Patty, “Masculinity, Race, and Southern University: An Exploration of the Role of Fraternities in College Life” (pictured below)
Second prize: Yuqian Shi, “Across the Great Wall, I Can Reach Every Corner of the World”
Andrew Patty and judge Ruth Ross with his prize-winning collection
You’re invited to a Duke University Libraries Open House!
Help us celebrate the completion of
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Bostock Library, First Floor
Remarks at 1:30 p.m. by Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs
Tour the new spaces, labs, and project rooms
Meet and mingle with library staff and The Edge support teams
Learn how The Edge can support your research and project work
Free giveaways
Enjoy refreshments by Parker and Otis
Floorplan of The Edge on the renovated first floor of Bostock Library
About The Edge To meet the needs of interdisciplinary, team-based, data-driven, and digitally reliant research at Duke, the Duke University Libraries have transformed the first floor of Bostock Library into a new academic service hub. With digital tools and collaborative workspaces, reservable rooms for project teams, and expanded technology and training facilities, The Edge: The Ruppert Commons for Research, Technology, and Collaboration is an attractive new research community destination in the heart of campus.
The Link Service Desk will undergo minor repair work December 15-January 2.
During the holiday break, the Link will be conducting repairs to its service desk on the Lower Level of Perkins Library. Workers will be re-laminating the surface of the desk as well as making changes to increase staff workspace.
The service desk will remain open during the repairs, but there may be brief delays depending on customer needs. The walk-up computers near the Link entrance will be removed while the work is being done.
These repairs will begin Monday, December 15, and are scheduled to be completed by Friday, January 2. There will be some noise and possible odors related to this work. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience as we work to improve the space!
Finals are beginning to loom on the horizon. But don’t despair! Along with finals comes the Library Study Break! The Friends of Duke University Libraries and members of the Campus Club will be baking up a storm of homemade treats to sustain Duke’s student population through yet another round of studying.
Take a break from the books on Tuesday, December 9, at 8 p.m. and come by Perkins 217 to enjoy homemade baked goods of all kinds! Your textbooks will still be there when you come back.
The Friends of the Duke University Libraries Study Break is presented in partnership with the Duke Campus Club and the School of Medicine, and is sponsored by Pepsi, Saladelia Café, and Costco.
It’s almost that time of year again! Finals are just around the corner and—more importantly—so are the puppies!
Once again, Duke University Libraries and Duke PAWS will be bringing puppies back to the library to supply our stressed-out students will all the fur-therapy and snuggly cuddling they can handle during final exams.
Puppies in Perkins will return on Wednesday, December 1o, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. (that’s a three-hour marathon of ear-licking, tail-wagging cuteness) in Perkins Library Room 217.
Pompey Ducklegs and his entourage, many dog-years ago.
This year we are teaming up with the Duke University Archives to do something new in celebration of one of Duke’s own furry friends: Pompey Ducklegs. Pompey Ducklegs was the pint-sized pal of Samuel Fox Mordecai, the first dean of the Trinity Law School, and a fixture around Duke’s campus for many years. Pompey went wherever Mordecai went, and he became something of a mascot for the Law School. This year marks the 101st birthday of the delightfully named dachshund, and we thought everyone should celebrate. So stop by Perkins 217 on December 10, enjoy some cake in memory of Pompey Ducklegs, and unwind from the stress of finals with the help of some wet noses and wagging tails!
Tired of hitting the books? Looks like somebody needs a puppy break!One final gratuitous puppy pic, for your viewing pleasure.
Creative Commons image via Flickr courtesy Kevin Schoenmakers.
Panel Discussion: Duke’s Global Mobility: How Are We Fostering Intercultural Competencies? Date: Wednesday, November 12 Time: 9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Where: Perkins Library, Room 217 (click for map) Registration: Please RSVP for this event
As part of International Education Week at Duke, Duke International House and the Professional Affairs Committee (PAC) of the Duke Librarians Assembly are sponsoring a panel discussion on Duke’ global mobility and how we are fostering intercultural competencies. Globalization has an increasing influence on our day-to-day lives, particularly in the education sector. The event will consist of a panel discussion featuring three speakers:
Li-Chen Chin, Director of Intercultural Initiatives and International House
Darla Deardorff, Executive Director Association of International Education Administrators and Research Scholar in Education
Seun Bello Olamosu, Associate Director for Intercultural Development and Outreach, will moderate the discussion. Coffee and refreshments will be served. Come by on Wednesday, hear what the panelists have to say, and ask some questions of your own!
Co-sponsored by DukeEngage and Duke Global Education for Undergraduates
The deadline to enter our student book collectors contest is February 10, 2015.
The Friends of the Duke University Libraries are proud to present the 2015 Andrew T. Nadell Book Collectors Contest. Since 1947, the Friends have presented the contest in alternate years to promote reading for enjoyment and the development of students’ personal libraries.
The contest includes an undergraduate and a graduate division. Cash prizes for each division are as follows:
First Prize Undergraduate: $1,000 Graduate: $1,000
Second Prize Undergraduate: $500 Graduate: $500
Winners of the contest will also be eligible to enter the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, where they will compete for a $2,500 prize and an invitation to the awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress.
Students do not have to be “book collectors” to enter the contest. Collections may be in any area of interest, and they do not have to be academic in nature. A collection should reflect a clearly defined unifying theme and will be judged by the extent to which its books and materials represent that field of interest. Entries may incorporate books and manuscripts, ephemera, maps, prints and drawings, and autograph material as long as they are relevant to the collection’s focus. The books do not need to be rare and monetary value will not be considered during judging.
Students who are interested in entering can visit the Book Collectors Contest homepage for more information and read about winning entries from past years. Students may also contact Megan Crain at megan.crain@duke.edu with any questions.
Workers are putting the finishing touches on The Edge: The Ruppert Commons for Research, Technology, and Collaboration, located on the first floor of Bostock Library. The space contains nine project rooms that are reservable for short- or long-term use by project teams.
Students and faculty who are working on interdisciplinary, data-driven, digitally reliant, or team-based research are invited to apply for a project room in The Edge by Wednesday, November 26. We’ll do our best to accommodate as many requests as possible and will notify all requestors no later than Friday, December 12, so you can make plans for the spring semester.
A portion of the project rooms in The Edge will still be “grab-able” (i.e., available for ad hoc reservations without submitting the project space request form). We also hope to re-open our form in the spring to accommodate additional groups in need of shared or dedicated project space.
In response to user demand, we recently added three new bulletin boards in Perkins and Bostock Libraries. These boards are available to the campus community for posting notices and flyers about Duke events and activities throughout the year.
First floor of Perkins Library, across from the ePrint stations near the Circulation Desk.Lower Level 1 of Perkins Library, along the hallway connecting the central Perkins stair/elevator with the Link.Lower Level 1 of Bostock Library, next to the Multimedia Project Studio.
Please remember that posting flyers in other locations throughout the library—including stairwells, restrooms, public entryways, windows, and book stacks—is not permitted. Flyers posted in those locations will be taken down. This is to help maintain an attractive and uncluttered library environment, and to increase the effectiveness of library signage intended to assist our users. Please see our library policies for more information.
Steve Roden and Dan Goodsell. Krazy Kids’ Food: Vintage Food Graphics. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2003.
Steve Roden, sound artist, painter, writer, and collector is in residence at Duke Rubenstein Library this month. Throughout the month he’s giving talks, performances and demonstrations at various Duke and Durham venues. Whether you get a chance to hear Roden’s talks and pieces, his publications are well supported at Duke’s Lilly (art) and Music libraries.
Most engaging, perhaps, is his 2003 collection of retro advertisements for children’s products, Krazy Kids’ Food. A retrospective of his work,Steve Roden in Between : a 20 Year Survey, is in the Lilly Library. More aurally inclined? Check out (literally!) Roden’s sound recording, Splitting Bits, Closing Loops, a CD at the Music Library. Somewhere in between? We recommend his edited book, Site of Sound : of Architecture and the Ear, exploring the relationship between sound, language, orality and hearing with writings on Vito Acconci, Steve McCaffery, Achim Wollscheid, GX Jupitter Larsen, and Marina Abramovic.
Henry Petroski will discuss his most recent book, The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors, on November 5.
Date: Wednesday, November 5
When: 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. (Refreshments served at 5:00 p.m, program begins at 5:30) Where: Franklin Humanities Institute Garage, Smith Warehouse Bay 4, (map)
Join the Duke University Libraries on November 5 for a book discussion with Henry Petroski, acclaimed author and Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of History at Duke. Professor Petroski is the author seventeen popular books on engineering and design, including the classics To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985), The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (1990), The Book on the Bookshelf (1999), and To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure (2012). Professor Petroski will discuss his most recent work, The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors: A Tale of Architectural Choice and Craftsmanship (2014). The book is an “architectural whodunit” that unlocks the secrets of Petroski’s handmade summer cottage in Maine. The author found himself fascinated by the origins of his 1950s home and set out to discover all the mysteries it contains–from dimly lit closets to a secret passageway. Readers follow along as Petroski slowly reveals the art and craftsmanship that went into the home’s construction, without ever removing a single nail.
Professor Petroski’s lecture is part of the Engaging Faculty Series, sponsored by the Friends of the Duke University Libraries. Books will be for sale at the event, and light refreshments will be served starting at 5:00 p.m. This program is free and open to the public.
PARKING INFORMATION:The gravel lot across from Smith Warehouse on Buchanan Blvd. offers free parking after 5 p.m. If you have a Duke parking pass, the central gated area is accessible by card-swipe after 5 p.m. For more details on parking at Smith Warehouse, visit the Franklin Humanities Institute website.
Starting Oct. 1, Duke students, faculty, and staff will be able to check out books in-person from nearly a dozen other major research libraries.
Duke University students, faculty, and staff will soon enjoy on-site library borrowing privileges at several other major research universities, courtesy of a new program known as BorrowDirect Plus.
Under a new pilot agreement beginning October 1, 2014, students, faculty, and staff from the following institutions will have reciprocal on-site borrowing privileges: Brown University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.
Guest users who have been verified and have home library accounts in good standing will have in-person access to materials at any of the participating libraries. When visiting one of these libraries, members of the BorrowDirect Plus community will need to show their campus ID card and log into their home library account to show their current status. Once verified, they will be issued a library card from the institution they are visiting.
Items, collections, and participating libraries available will vary by institution. The lending library’s policies and loan periods apply to guest borrowers, and it is recommended that users considering a visit to another library view their policies ahead of time. Borrowed items may be returned at either the lending library or the user’s home library. (For example, a book checked out at Yale could be returned here at Duke, and vice versa.)
For the most part, these same materials are already available through BorrowDirect, a rapid book request and delivery system used by all of the participating institutions (with the exception of Duke). The new agreement expands the system to include this in-person component.
As part of the Class of 2018 First-Year Library Experience the East Campus Libraries – Lilly and Music – will screen the Disney Pixar movie, The Incredibles,under the stars. Dash over to East Campus, bring a blanket (no capes!) and meet Incredible Librarians in action.
What: The Incredibles Film Showing
When: Thursday, September 25th at 8pm
Where: Outside on the East Campus Quad Rain venue: Nelson Music Room, East Duke Building
Brought to you by…
your INCREDIBLE East Campus Libraries
& Devils After Dark
Chinese documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project in 2010 to collect thousands of oral histories from survivors of the Great Famine (1958-1961) across rural China.
This October, Duke will be hosting Chinese documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang and three of his fellow documentarians for a two-week residency and the launch of a new digital oral history collection.
Wu Wenguang is one of the founding figures of the Chinese independent documentary film movement. His groundbreaking debut film, Bumming in Beijing (1990), portrayed with unscripted candor the disillusionment of five young Chinese artists in the wake of the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989.
One of Wu’s recent endeavors is the Memory Project, a wide-ranging documentary history of China’s Great Famine (1958-1961), featuring interviews with thousands of famine survivors. The interviews shine a light on one of modern China’s most traumatic episodes. Tens of millions of Chinese citizens died during the Great Famine years as a result of economic and social policies enacted under Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign. The famine and resulting death toll are often glossed over in official Chinese state history.
Starting in 2010, Wu recruited numerous young filmmakers for the Memory Project, dispatching them to 246 villages across twenty rural provinces. More than 1,220 elderly villagers were interviewed and recorded. These interviews also gave the amateur filmmakers from Wu’s studio a chance to leave the bustling chaos of the cities and reconnect with the history of the their families and their nation.
Visiting filmmakers (left to right) Li Xinmin, Zou Xueping, Wu Wenguang, and Zhang Mengqi.
In 2012, Wu and several of his protégés visited Duke for a series of screenings from the Memory Project. During that trip, he selected Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as an appropriate home for the raw footage of the interviews to be preserved. The first batch of interviews, totaling about 1,150 videos, was brought to Duke in the summer of 2013. Over the next several years, the Duke University Libraries will process the footage into a new digital collection for researchers worldwide to access.
Wu, along with fellow Memory Project documentarians Li Xinmin, Zhang Mengqi, and Zou Xueping, will return to Duke this October for a two-week residency and to launch the pilot for this new digital collection. There will be several events and film screenings to celebrate the filmmakers and their ground-breaking work.
Screenings and Events
All events are free and open to the public. Films are in Chinese with English subtitles. Films will be introduced by Duke University professor Guo-Juin Hong and be followed by Q&A discussions with the filmmakers.
Tuesday, October 21, 5:00 p.m.
Panel discussion and reception featuring Ralph Litzinger, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Women’s Studies and Faculty Director of Global Semester Abroad; Tom Rankin, Director of the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts; and Guo-Juin Hong, Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture, Director of the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and Co-Director of the FHI Audiovisualities Lab.
Franklin Humanities Institute Garage, Smith Warehouse (map)
Thursday, October 23, 4:00 p.m.
Reception and short clips with the visiting filmmakers
Perkins Library 217 (map)
Friday, October 24, 7:00 p.m.
Screening of “Trash Village” (2013, 82 mins.) by Zou Xueping
White Lecture Hall, East Campus (map)
Tuesday, October 28 5:00 p.m.: Reception with visiting filmmakers. Thomas Room, Lilly Library, East Campus (map) 7:00 p.m.: Screening of “Self-portrait” (2013, 77 mins.) by Zhang Mengqi. White Lecture Hall, East Campus (map).
Wednesday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.
Screening of “Huamulin, Boy Xiaoqiang” (2013, 76 mins.) by Li Xinmin
Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center (map)
Film screenings are part of the Cine-East Fall 2014 East Asian Film Series, co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Screen/Society, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The panel discussion on October 21 is co-sponsored by the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image.
The Duke Credit Union will be removing its ATM in Perkins Library, citing a lack of use.
On Wednesday, September 10, the ATM on the first floor of Perkins Library will be removed by the Duke University Credit Union. The Credit Union, which owns the machine, stated that the ATM is being removed due to lack of use and low transaction volumes. There are no plans to add another ATM within the library at this time.
Several other ATMs are available across Duke’s campus, a few of them in close proximity to the library. Follow this link to find a full list of available ATMs on Duke’s campus, compiled by Student Affairs.
A new exhibit in Perkins Library highlights the major points of struggle and triumph in Duke’s LGBTQ history over the past 50 years. The exhibit begins with the earliest records of LGBTQ activity on campus—the dark days of arrest and expulsions—and culminates with the thriving and active queer community seen at Duke today. This transition was neither quick nor linear. LGBTQ individuals on Duke’s campus faced major setbacks in every one of the last five decades.
The exhibit also functions as a timeline, marching the observer decade-by-decade in order to view every artifact within the greater context of Duke’s queer struggle. On display are arrest records for “homosexuality” in the 1960s, early 1970s-era queer publications, the official “dechartering” of the gay and lesbian alliance in the 1980s, the establishment of the LGB center during the 1990s, same-sex unions permitted in Duke Chapel at the start of the new millennium, and finally a reflection of the current vibrancy of Duke’s LGBTQ community.
The exhibit was curated by Duke alumnus Denzell Faison (T’14), with special thanks to co-advisors Dr. Janie Long, former director of Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and Professor Raymond Gavins, Duke Department of History. Thanks also to the Duke University Archives, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Blue Devils United, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture for their institutional support and contributed resources.
Commemorative Exhibit Opening Event and Remarks: Please Join Us!
Date: Thursday, September 25 Time: 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. (Program begins at 5:15 p.m.) Location: von der Heyden Pavilion, Perkins Library Remarks by: Exhibit curator Denzell Faison (T’14), former director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity Dr. Janie Long, and Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead.
The new “Bento Box” approach to displaying library search results on our website takes its name from the popular and often elaborately prepared Japanese lunches.
Starting today, if you search for a book, article, film, or other library resource on our website, you may notice something different.
We’ve changed the way search results appear in the library catalog, subdividing them into different groups according to the type of media (books, articles, images, etc.) and related tools and services (library research guides, library website links, and other resources). If you search for “Civil War women soldiers,” for example, you don’t just get results for books we have on that subject, but also links to related scholarly articles, images of women in the Civil War from databases and digitized archival collections, links to historical documents in the Rubenstein Library, helpful research guides, and more.
This unified approach to displaying and segmenting search results is commonly referred to as the “Bento Box” method, because of its resemblance to the popular and often elaborately prepared Japanese lunch boxes. It is designed to provide a quick, easy, and more intuitive way to find the information you need.
Bento searching was pioneered by our library colleagues down the road at NC State, and it has started catching on at other libraries around the country. It has the benefit of helping users gain quick access to a limited set of results across a variety of resources, services, and tools, while providing links to the full results.
We made an announcement about rolling out Bento over the summer. But in fact we’ve been developing, testing, and documenting our progress for over a year, and we greatly appreciate all the feedback our users have given us along the way. Your input has helped us design a better, simpler, more intuitively organized search interface for Duke students, faculty, and researchers.
Don’t like it? You also have the option of setting your default search options on our homepage if you find that Bento searching doesn’t meet your needs. Just click on the little gear icon on the bottom left corner of the search box on the library homepage. If you spend more time searching for journal articles rather than books, you can set “Articles” as your preferred search tab, and it will appear as the default every time you visit our site. You can change and customize your default search settings at any time.
Use the gear icon to change your default search to Articles, Books & Media, or All.
So give it a spin and let us know what you think! Use our feedback form to tell us how we’re doing or report a problem or issue.
Members of these boards will help improve the learning and research environment for Duke University students and advise the Libraries on topics such as study spaces, research resources, integrating library services into academic courses, and marketing library services to students.
All three advisory boards are now taking applications or nominations. Deadlines for applying are:
Members will be selected and notified by mid-September, and groups will begin to meet in late September. More information is available on our website, where you will also find links to the online applications forms.
For more information or questions about these opportunities, please contact:
How do you “library”? Let the Libraries Save the day!
First-Year Library Orientation
Each August, First-Year students arrive on East Campus and begin a Welcome Week filled with numerous events, workshops and programs designed to ease their transition to undergraduate life. The libraries on East Campus support the new students with programs for the First-Year Library Experience.
On East Campus, after students settle in and begin classes, the Lilly Library and Duke Music Library offer several ways for the newest “Dukies” to learn and benefit from the incredible resources of the Duke Libraries. Lilly and Music sponsor Library Orientation events such as scavenger hunts, film showings, and prize drawings to familiarize them with library services and collections. Past years have seen students “Keep Calm and Library On”, play The Library Games, and the Class of 2018 will discover the “Super Powers” of the Incredible Duke Libraries!
Fall Semester 2014:
Meet the Incredible Libraries – Open House and Scavenger Hunt for Duke 2018
When: Tuesday, August 26th at 7pm
Where: Lilly Library
Movie on the Quad: The Incredibles
When: Thursday, September 25th at 8pm
Where: East Campus Quad between Lilly and the Union
In addition to Orientation, the East Campus libraries — Lilly and Music — invite first-year students to engage with the Duke University Libraries in these ways:
Meet your Duke University Residence Hall Librarians: each East Campus dorm is matched with subject librarians who work with students throughout their first year at Duke.
Of course, there is another great way to learn about the libraries – work as a student assistant!
Here’s to a great year filled with academic success!
Architectural rendering of the renovated first floor of Bostock Library. Renovations will take place May-November 2014.
If you have visited Duke’s West Campus lately, you might have noticed that the first floor of Bostock Library is currently closed for renovations. The entire floor is being reconfigured into a new space that will allow the Libraries to meet the growing needs of interdisciplinary, team-based, and data-driven research at Duke. There’s an article about it in the latest issue of our library magazine, and you can read more about the project on our library website.
Throughout the planning phase of the project, we’ve tentatively been calling this space the “Research Commons,” for lack of a better name. Today, we’re pleased to announce that a better name has emerged. Allow us to introduce…
Why “The Edge”?
The overall goal of this renovation project is to create a new space that will allow Duke researchers and project teams to experiment with new ideas and approaches with experts, technology, and training available in close proximity. It should be the kind of space that invites discovery, experimentation, and collaboration. We needed a name that captured all of that in a succinct and memorable way.
The word “edge” suggests standing on the brink of something, or of being on the fringes or boundaries. It’s a place where different points of view or disciplinary approaches meet.
From a physical building layout perspective, it also makes a certain amount of sense. Just as the Link is in the middle of the library complex, The Edge is on the side that is furthest from the main academic quad.
Finally, there’s the subtle hint of gaining an advantage: The Edge is a place that will help you with your research or collaborative project.
To bring The Edge to life, the Libraries have been working with the architectural firm Shepley Bulfinch, the same firm that designed and built Bostock Library and the von der Heyden Pavilion in 2005, renovated Perkins Library between 2006 and 2008 (including the creation of the Link), and is directing the current renovation of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Few parts of Duke have been transformed so completely in recent years as the Libraries, and The Edge is just the latest proof of that.
We are looking forward to unveiling this attractive and innovative new destination in the heart of campus, which should be completed later this year by November or December. In January 2015, we will formally celebrate with a grand opening event. We hope you will join us at The Edge!
Architectural rendering of the Research Commons on the first floor of Bostock Library. Renovations will take place May-November 2014.
Fire Alarm Testing: June 16 – August 4
Duke’s Facilities Management Department be reworking the fire alarm systems in both Perkins and Bostock Libraries to synchronize the two facilities. A fire alarm test will be performed each day, June 16-August 4, at 5:30 p.m. to ensure the facilities are protected during off-hours. The test will be short and patrons will not have to leave the building.
Research Commons Construction
The first floor of Bostock Library is being renovated this summer to prepare for the new Research Commons. For the next few weeks, library users are advised that there will be some noise associated with the work, especially affecting the floors directly above and below Bostock Level 1. Most of the noise will be limited between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. We apologize in advance for the inconvenience.
Free earplugs are available at the Perkins Library Service Desk on the first floor for library users who are bothered by the renovation noise.
Here is a list of the work being done in the next two weeks:
1) Workers will begin roughing in electrical and telecomm wiring. This will involve drilling anchors into the ceiling on the first floor of Bostock: June 16-20
2) Core drilling the first floor slab: June 16-20
3) Attachment of lower track of walls with shot pins: June 20 – July 4
In order to make all members of the Duke community aware of the major activities and potential noise issues associated with the library renovations, we will be posting regular announcements of upcoming work on this blog. If you have questions, please contact Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications, at 919-660-5816, or aaron.welborn@duke.edu.
The Duke University Music Department hosts the International Festival of Spanish Keyboard Music this week. Special highlights of the festival are a harpsichord concert in the Nelson Music Room at 8 pm on June 2nd by acclaimed Spanish keyboardist and scholar Luisa Morales and a performance of Spanish organ music from the 16th and 17th centuries by distinguished Duke University Organist and Professor Robert Parkins on June 4th at 8 pm in the Duke Chapel. Admission to both concerts is free.
Beginning May 13th 2014, a Bass Connection project team of undergraduate and graduate researchers faculty and I began our collaboration, meeting in a dedicated space in Bostock Library and our project team will carry on there through early July. The Regulatory Disaster Scene Investigation project provides an opportunity to evaluate the process of assisting groups in focused research activities using the resources and expertise available through Duke Libraries. This project is in line with the projected opening of the Library Information Commons in 2015.
The broad intellectual question the group is investigating is “how does government best respond to crises?” The outcomes from this particular Bass Connections project will include a working visit to Washington D.C. to interview regulators and officials, producing a policy brief/ white paper, and possible conference presentations. This Bass Connections group work will make a contribution to a projected edited work which falls under the umbrella of the Recalibrating Risk working group in the Kenan Institute on Ethics.
The work group was convened in the Library by Professors Lori Bennear and Ed Balleisen and began with a discussion of assignments to investigate the history of government responders to crisis such as the NTSB, the Chemical Safety Board, the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, British Parliamentary Commissions and corresponding institutions in other countries around the globe. The group members were assigned the task of preparing annotated bibliographies about the institutions and their histories.
As the project moves forward, librarians with subject specialization and language expertise including Holly Ackerman on Latin America and Greta Boers who has expertise in Dutch are helping these researchers make the best use of their limited time. Only four more weeks- yikes! In the future it seems likely that the role of librarians will expand in assisting researchers in time-delimited participation in work groups revolving around new spaces like the Information Commons.
Carson Holloway is Librarian for History of Science and Technology, Military History, British and Irish Studies, Canadian Studies and General History
Hear Professor Thomas Brothers discuss his latest book on jazz musician Louis Armstrong, below. In Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, Brothers chronicles what was arguably Armstrong’s most creatively fruitful period – the 1920s and early 1930s – using a blend of cultural history, musical scholarship, and personal accounts from Armstrong’s contemporaries.
Just a sampling of the hundreds of popular titles you can now download as eBooks or audiobooks and enjoy on your own device. Click on the image to get started.
Duke University Libraries and Ford Library at the Fuqua School of Business are excited to offer a new service that allows library users to download and enjoy popular eBooks and audiobooks on their own devices, including iPhones, iPads, NOOKs, Android phones and tablets, and Kindles.
The new service, called OverDrive, has hundreds of popular fiction and non-fiction titles to choose from, including best-selling novels, well-known classics, self-improvement guides, and much more. We are adding new titles to Duke’s collection all the time.
Here’s how it works:
To get started, visit the Duke OverDrive website. (You can easily get there through the eBooks portal on our library website.)
Browse through the available titles, and check them out using your Duke NetID.
You can check out up to five (5) eBooks or audiobooks at one time.
Titles will automatically expire at the end of the lending period (21 days). There are no late fees!
eBooks can be read immediately on any device with an internet browser. Audiobooks can be streamed using the OverDrive Media Console app, which you can download for free on all major desktop and mobile platforms.
If a title is already checked out, you can place it on hold and request to be notified when it becomes available. You can place up to ten (10) titles on hold at a time.
If you don’t see a title you’re looking for, submit a request from any search page using the option. We’ll add requested titles to our wishlist and purchase them as funds become available.
Once you download a title, you can transfer it to your iPhone, iPad, NOOK, Android phone or tablet, or Kindle.
That’s it! Pretty simple.
In addition to hundreds of new and recently published books, you can also download tens of thousands of public domain classics as eBooks through OverDrive. Look for the “Project Gutenberg” link under Featured Collections.
We are in the process of adding to our initial selections in OverDrive, so we encourage you to submit recommendations through the site if there are eBooks or audiobooks you’d like to see available.
Screenshot of the OverDrive interface. Just a click “Borrow” to check out a title with your Duke NetID, or place it on hold and get notified when it becomes available.
Last December, a unique first-draft manuscript of the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit song “Born to Run” was placed up for auction at Sotheby’s. The seller of the document remained anonymous, but it was known that the manuscript once belonged to Mike Appel, Springsteen’s former manager. The bids poured in online, in person, and by phone, and one happy bidder went home with a piece of American music history.
That successful purchaser happened to be Floyd Bradley, a leadership donor to the Duke University Libraries and the Nasher Museum of Art, whose parents met in 1942 while students at Duke.
The Bradley and Springsteen families actually share a number of connections. Mr. Bradley’s mother Carol Lake Bradley (WC’43) and Mr. Springsteen’s mother were neighbors and friends in New Jersey. Mr. Bradley’s father, Floyd Henry “Pete” Bradley, Jr. (T’45), sold his house to Mr. Springsteen’s mother-in-law.
Mr. Bradley is also a proud Duke father whose daughter, Melissa, is a graduating senior this year. And so it came about, through special arrangement with Mr. Bradley and his wife Martha Hummer-Bradley, that the “Born to Run” manuscript will be on public display during Duke’s Commencement Weekend in honor of Melissa’s graduation.
The first draft manuscript of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” will be displayed in Perkins Library. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. Click for high-res version.
The document will be exhibited in front of the Circulation Desk on the Perkins Library main floor Thursday and Friday, May 8-9, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, May 10-11, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
After May 11, the manuscript will be moved to the third floor of Perkins, where it will remain on display in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library until June 27 and be available to view during normal library hours.
The “Born to Run” manuscript, written by Springsteen in 1974 in Long Branch, New Jersey, may look like nothing more than a piece of notebook paper scrawled with thirty lines of blue ink. But it offers a glimpse into the creative process of a musical icon. The draft contains a great deal of material that was never included in the final version. Yet the chorus is nearly identical to what we hear in the finished song. The margins and spaces are crowded with second thoughts and edits, illuminating the moments in which a rock and roll anthem was born.
“Born to Run” was the title track of Springsteen’s third album, released to great commercial and critical success in August 1975. Just a few months later, on March 28, 1976, Springsteen and his E Street Band performed in Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium to a packed house. According to a Rolling Stone reporter who was there, “The band played every song from Born to Run in one set, and at show’s end, ‘Raise Your Hand’ did its job: everybody stayed up through the three-song encore that ended with ‘Quarter to Three.’”
Visitors to campus are invited to stop by the library and view this special piece of music history.
Ticket stub from Springsteen’s performance at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium in March 1976, just a few months after “Born to Run” was released. Image from Brucebase.
Viewing the “Born to Run” Manuscript
Please note: During the summer, all Duke University libraries are open on a more limited schedule than during the academic year. Please check ouronline schedule of library hours before visiting.
May 8 – 11
On exhibit in front of the Circulation Desk, 1st Floor of Perkins Library
Thursday and Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
May 12 – June 27
On exhibit in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 3rd Floor of Perkins Library
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Closed May 24 for Memorial Day Weekend)
Closed Sundays
Duke: 175 Years of Blue Devilish Images Student Photography Contest
We are pleased to announce the winners of this spring’s Student Photography Contest sponsored by Lilly Library and the Duke University Archives. Congratulations and many thanks to all the student contestants; we are pleased and overwhelmed by all the great photos. If you can’t make it into Lilly Library to view the winning photos on display, all the entries may be viewed on the Duke Libraries Photo Contest Flickr page.
Students reinterpreted iconic photos from four categories presented by University Archives, and the independent panel of judges selected the following winners:
Academics: First Prize – Donovan Loh, Field Trip to Lake Waccamaw
Runner-Up- Susannah Roberson, A Glimpse to the Past
Athletics: First Prize-Misty Sha, Jumping the Sunset
Runner-Up- Erica Martin, A Star on the Rise
Campus Scenes: First Prize – Misty Sha, Man in the Snow
Runner-Up- Shameka Rolla, Capturing the Moment
Social Life: First Prize – Catherine Sun, Jarvis Smoothie Night
Runner-Up- Jennifer Margono, Round Table Antics
All the students who contributed their contemporary perspective of past Duke scenes illustrate that campus life and student life remain constant over the years. We hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we do.
Currently on exhibit at Lilly Library: The winning photos are on display in Lilly’s lobby through May, and will be installed in Lilly Room 05 during summer 2014.
It’s time to leave those textbooks behind and come cuddle a puppy!
The end of the semester is at hand, and only one obstacle looms between Duke students and a summer of freedom: Finals Week. The echo of textbooks being opened resounds across campus, accompanied, as always, by the plaintive sighs of undergraduates. However, amid the bleakness of finals, the Libraries are partnering with DukePAWS to bring you a moment of snuggly, furry relief—Puppies at Perkins!
On Tuesday, April 29, come to Perkins Library Room 217 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and trade in your final exams stress for some puppy love. Two shifts of certified therapy dogs along with their owners will be taking over Room 217 (click for floor plan) for three hours for some much needed fur-therapy.
Be sure to drop by for a few minutes (or the full three hours, depending on how much snuggling you require) and unwind from the stress of finals with the help of some wet noses and wagging tails! You can join the Facebook event here.
Also on Tuesday, make sure you stop by Perkins Library at 8:00 p.m. for the Friends of the Duke University Libraries’ Study Break! The event is held in partnership with the Duke Campus Club and the Duke Annual Fund and is sponsored by Pepsi. After a long day of hitting the books, enjoy a smorgasbord of cookies, treats, and other home-baked goodies.
The season of long, sleepless study nights is fast approaching. Soon untold cups of coffee and cans of energy drinks will be guzzled (perhaps together) all in the name of finals. When you are ready for a break from all that studying (whether you’ve been at it for five minutes or five hours), the Libraries have got you covered!
The annual Friends of Duke Library Study Break is coming up and Duke students will be a able to enjoy a veritable feast of baked goods. On April 29 at 8:00 p.m., pack up your books and head over to Perkins for a well-deserved break! There will be plenty of free food and drinks to help get you through the evening.
The Aptman Prizes recognize undergraduates’ excellence in research, including their analysis, evaluation and synthesis of sources, and encourages students to make use of the general library collections and services at Duke University. Prizes are awarded in three categories (first- and second-year students, third-and fourth-year students, and fourth-year students working on an honors thesis), and each one comes with a cash award of $1,000. Funding for the awards has been generously provided by Eileen and Lowell (T’89) Aptman.
The Middlesworth Awards recognize excellence of research, analysis, and writing by Duke University students in the use of primary sources and rare materials held by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Prizes are awarded in two categories (undergraduates and graduate students), and each one comes with a cash prize of $1,000. Funding for the awards has been generously provided by Chester P. Middlesworth (A.B., 1949) of Statesville, North Carolina.
The Holsti Prize recognizes excellence in undergraduate research using primary sources for political science or public policy. Ole R. Holsti (George V. Allen Professor Emeritus of Political Science) provided funding for this generous prize, which comes with a cash prize of $1,500.
The deadline for all three student library research awards is May 15, 2014.
All winners will be recognized at a reception held the Friday afternoon of Duke Family Weekend (October 24, 2014), where they will receive award certificates and cash prizes.
If your dorm room looks like this, be sure to drop off your extra books at the upcoming Friends of the Durham Library book drive! (Unless they are library books. We’ll be needing those back.)
UPDATE! We have added Lilly Library as a book drop-off location. You can now drop off your used books at Perkins Library on West Campus or Lilly Library on East Campus on April 28, 1:00-4:00 p.m.
It’s the ides of April, and that means LDOC (Last Day of Classes) is almost here. Pretty soon the whole Duke student body will be packing, shipping, and storing a year’s worth of stuff.
Among all those items are bound to be a number of books, purchased and read (or not read) for this year’s classes. Before you try to cram them all into the last pocket of your suitcase, consider donating them to the Friends of the Durham Library Book Drive.
Members of the Friends of the Durham Library will be stationed outside of Perkins and Lilly Libraries (weather permitting) on Monday, April 28, 1:00-4:00 p.m. They will be collecting books, CDs, and DVDs to benefit their book sales, the funds of which support Durham County Library programming. The Friends of the Durham Library hold book sales twice yearly and, to date, have raised over one million dollars to support public libraries around Durham.
Students, faculty, and staff can simply drop off their unwanted books, CDs, and DVDs and, in doing so, support a great cause. So mark your calendar for April 28, and bring us your books!
As we head into the last few weeks of the spring semester, LDOC is on many a Duke student’s mind. Yet in between now and all that summer fun stands the dreaded slog of Finals Week. Though we can’t take your finals for you, the Duke Libraries will be doing our best to nurse you through the long days of studying with an aptly timed study break!
The Friends of the Duke University Libraries’ Study Break will be Tuesday, April 29, at 8:00 p.m. in Perkins Library. The event will be held in partnership with Duke Campus Club and the Duke Annual Fund and will be sponsored by Pepsi. After a long day of hitting the books, be sure to stop by Perkins Library and enjoy a smorgasbord of cookies, treats, and other home-baked goodies.
Is your finals week missing a puppy? Come to Puppies in Perkins on April 29!
NEW THIS YEAR! The Libraries will also be partnering with DukePAWS to bring you Puppies in Perkins! Several therapy dogs will be in Perkins Room 217 waiting to dispense and receive hugs, cuddles, and lots of puppy love. The event will take place the afternoon of April 29th (more details to come).
Trade in your calculator and textbooks for some furry snuggles! Your stressed-out brain will thank you for it.
We’re looking for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty to participate in one-hour focus groups.
Your opinion counts! Share your thoughts about ways to improve and enhance library services, collections, and spaces in a one-hour moderated focus group. In return, we’ll feed you!
Here in the Libraries, we’re always trying to up our game. To help us serve our Duke students and faculty better, we conduct periodic focus groups with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members.
Your opinion counts! Share your input and make a difference. Focus groups help us improve our existing services and develop new ones to meet emerging needs. Click on the links below to be part of a focus group session.
Focus Groups for Undergraduates
Session 1: Tuesday, April 8, 6-7 p.m., Perkins 118 Catered dinner from Armadillo Grill Sign up for this focus group
Use the gear icon to change your default search to Articles, All, or Our Website.
We’ve received a lot of great feedback since we launched our redesigned library website earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t benefit from a few tweaks. Our website team has been working on some small but helpful changes, based on web metrics, usability testing, survey feedback, and suggestions from YOU!
The first change you might have noticed is the little gear icon in the bottom left corner of the search box. Clicking on the gear allows you to set your personal default search preference. If you spend more time searching for journal articles rather than books, you can set “Articles” as your preferred search tab, and it will appear as the default every time you visit the library homepage. You can change the setting at any time. (The gear works with browser cookies, so if you clear your cache, you will have to reset it.)
Another addition, implemented at the request of many users, is the addition of a website search box in the upper right corner of the masthead. This makes it easier to search our website and find information about the Libraries.
The new Research Commons page explains what you can expect from the renovations in Bostock.
With the announcement about the upcoming construction of the Research Commons on the first floor of Bostock Library, we also added a page about that project, including a timeline, FAQs, sketches of the new layout, and more. You can find it by clicking on “Research Support” in the header of our website and following the “Research Commons” link in the drop-down menu.
We are continually refining and testing our redesigned website, and we greatly appreciate all the feedback our users have given us along the way. Your input (and patience) has helped us create a better, simpler, more intuitively organized library site for all Duke students, faculty, and researchers. If you have additional suggestions for improvement, or to report a problem with our website, let us know!
The new Interview Room, Perkins 130, is equipped with a dedicated phone line.
Have a big job interview coming up this spring? Need a quiet space with a good phone connection? We’ve got you covered.
Starting March 26, Perkins Library will be offering a space for phone and virtual interviews in Perkins 130 for the remainder of the Spring 2014 semester as a pilot study. This room has a dedicated phone line that can be used to make business calls, both long-distance and local. Please visit the Perkins Research or Service Desk for the telephone number if you need to receive a call.
Duke students, staff, and faculty may reserve this room for up to one hour per day. To make a reservation, visit the Library Room Reservation page and click on “Reserve the Interview Room.” Then you can submit your reservation using your name and Duke e-mail address. The system will send a confirmation email to your Duke email. Make sure to respond within an hour to confirm your reservation.
The Interview Room is available whenever Perkins & Bostock Libraries are open. You can also reserve interview spaces in the Career Center at the Smith Warehouse Building.
Architectural rendering of a planned social lounge space in the Research Commons on the first floor of Bostock Library. Renovations will take place May-November 2014.
To meet the growing needs of interdisciplinary, team-based, and data-driven research at Duke, the Duke University Libraries will transform the first floor of Bostock Library into a new academic service hub equipped with tools and workspaces for digital scholarship, reservable rooms for project teams, and expanded technology and training facilities.
The new space will be known as the “Research Commons” and will officially open in January 2015. The improvements will allow for more technology-focused library services, more spaces for collaborative work, and an attractive new destination for students and faculty in the heart of campus.
The main period of renovation activity will be May – November 2014, in order to minimize disruptions to students and faculty. The $3.5 million project was approved by the Board of Trustees at their October 2013 meeting.
Floor plan of the Research Commons, which will occupy the entire first floor of Bostock Library. Click on the image to see a larger version.
The Research Commons will increase the Libraries’ ability to support interdisciplinary and team-based teaching and learning at Duke, such as the innovative projects emerging from the Bass Connections initiative. The space will bring together the Libraries’ Brandaleone Data and GIS Services Lab (relocated from the second floor of Perkins Library); workshop and presentation space for groups large (45-50) and small (6-8); reservable and drop-in project rooms; and expert library staff assistance, available on-site or by appointment.
“The goal of the Research Commons is to allow individual researchers and project teams to experiment with new ideas and approaches with experts, technology and training available in close proximity,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and the Vice Provost for Library Affairs. “It will be the kind of space that invites discovery, experimentation, and collaboration.”
Plans for the Research Commons came about through a multi-year planning process in which faculty, students, and library staff explored how Duke researchers are increasingly conducting their work in the context of interdisciplinary collaborations and digital production. Generous funding for the project was made possible through the Duke Forward Campaign.
In order to make room for the renovation, collection materials and furniture on the first floor of Bostock Library will be relocated to other library locations beginning in May. The Libraries will free up additional study space elsewhere in Perkins and Bostock to accommodate students temporarily displaced by the work. A complete list of which collections are moving is available on the Research Commons FAQ page.
Rendering of the Open Lab seating area of the Research Commons.
Also in May, the front entrance of Perkins Library will close due to the Rubenstein Library renovation on May 12 and remain closed until summer 2015. Library users and visitors will enter the library through the side entrance beneath the Perkins/Bostock connector, or through the von der Heyden Pavilion, which will remain open throughout the renovations. To better accommodate patrons, a Library Service Desk will be placed near the side entrance of Perkins while the front entrance is closed.
More information on the Research Commons, including a renovation timeline and FAQ, can be found on the Libraries’ website at library.duke.edu/research/commons. More information about the Rubenstein Library renovation can be found at library.duke.edu/renovation.
Duke: 175 Years of Blue Devilish Images – Student Photography Contest
Duke students are invited to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Duke University’s origins and win cash prizes at the same time! Explore and emulate the rich images of Duke’s past found in photos from University Archives and then reinterpret them with your own contemporary vision. Categories include Academics, Athletics, Campus Scenes and Social Life.
Sponsored by Lilly Library and Duke University Archives
What you need to know:
Who may enter – Currently enrolled Duke Students
When – Contest ends Thursday, March 27th at midnight.
Prizes – Winning photographs in each category will receive $200. First runners-up receive $50.
All contestants are invited to the Awards Ceremony on April 8, 2014 in the Thomas Room in Lilly Library. Winners will be announced and their photographs will be displayed in Lilly Library this spring.
Sponsored by Lilly Library and Duke University Archives.
Please excuse our noise on Friday, February 21, as we set up for the Library Party! Click on the image for more details.
All public service points in Perkins and Bostock Libraries will close earlier than normal on Friday, February 21, in preparation for the “Life Is a Cabaret” Library Party. All service points in the two libraries will officially close at 5 p.m., including the Circulation Desk and Research Desk. Other campus library schedules will not be affected.
The von der Heyden Pavilion will also close at 5 p.m. for event setup.
In addition, workers will be setting up equipment on Perkins Levels 1, LL1, and Bostock LL 1, throughout the day. If you need a quiet place to study, please try Perkins Levels LL2, 2, and 4, or Bostock Levels 1-4. These floors will not be disturbed.
Normal operating hours and library services for Perkins and Bostock Libraries will resume Saturday morning at 9 a.m. We apologize for any inconvenience.
DURHAM, N.C. – The Duke University Libraries are partnering with Duke’s office of Durham and Regional Affairs to encourage the use of educational technology in Durham Public Schools, thanks to an endowment from PepsiCo.
The PepsiCo K-12 Technology Mentor Program has been an outreach effort of the Libraries since 2007. It was originally created to provide better access to, support for, and integration of technology in Durham Public School classrooms.
Starting in March, the program will be coordinated by Duke’s office of Durham and Regional Affairs, in order to better integrate with Duke’s existing successful partnerships with Durham Public Schools.
David Stein, Senior Education Partnership Coordinator for the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, will lead the program. Stein serves as the university’s liaison to the eight public schools near Duke’s campus. Since he came to Duke in 2000, he has worked closely with Durham schoolteachers and officials to mobilize university resources in support of K-12 educational achievement.
Stein has developed and run programs like BOOST, in collaboration with Duke School of Medicine students, to encourage underrepresented minority students towards careers in medicine and science. He has also created numerous targeted enrichment programs like School Days, which encourages local eighth-graders to set their sights on college, and the John Hope Franklin Scholars, which fosters a love of history among high-potential middle-school students.
The goals of the PespiCo K-12 Technology Mentor Program are to keep classroom teachers abreast of instructional technology innovations, offer curriculum-related materials to support their work, and increase the information literacy of Durham Public School students.
Stein will work in close collaboration with Durham educators and Duke’s Libraries to develop technology training programs for educators, students, and parents. He will also continue to lead the John Hope Franklin Young Scholars Program and School Days.
“This new Duke Durham and Regional Affairs collaboration with the Duke Libraries is exciting and I am delighted that David Stein will be entrusted with this responsibility,” said Sam Miglarese, director of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. “His educational expertise coupled with his love of innovative technology will support effectively DPS teachers in our partner schools. I am grateful to Dr. Phail Wynn and Dr. Deborah Jakubs for making this shared vision a reality.”
Prior to coming to Duke, Stein scouted and marketed inventions for Harvard University and served as the community liaison for the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. He is a licensed secondary social studies teacher with a degree from Antioch College and attended graduate school in City Planning at the University of California at Berkeley.
For more information, contact: David Stein, Senior Education Partnership Coordinator, Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, dstein@duke.edu, (919) 668-6271
The Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute invites proposals from groups interested in participating in a series of seminars, discussions, presentations, and workshops, to be held over four days in Chapel Hill, NC, in November 2014.
DURHAM, N.C. – The Duke University Libraries have received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support an annual Scholarly Communication Institute with the goal of advancing scholarship, teaching, and publishing in the humanities through the application of digital technologies.
Over the last two decades, rapid technological changes have fundamentally altered the way in which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. There has been lively debate among scholars, librarians, publishers, and technologists about the ways in which scholars share their research within the academic community and beyond. Duke has long been a vocal participant in these discussions and a strong advocate for the knowledge-sharing mission of research universities.
The Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) began as a Mellon-funded initiative at the University of Virginia in 2003 and was based there for nine years. Duke will host the new SCI, working in close collaboration with partners at the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University, and the Triangle Research Libraries Network.
Like its predecessor program at UVA, the Triangle SCI will bring together a broad range of experts from inside and outside academia to discuss needs and opportunities in the domain of scholarly communications. The emphasis will be on productive dialogue across boundaries that often separate academic communities with an ultimate goal of fostering new types of collaboration and new models of scholarly dissemination.
“The goal of the SCI is not to schedule breakthroughs, but to create conditions that favor them,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke.
“It will bring diverse groups together and provide a combination of structured and unstructured time to brainstorm, organize, and jump-start ideas, to experiment and solve problems, and even begin to build,” she said. “This will be an opportunity both to talk and to do.”
Each annual institute will be organized under a broad theme. This year’s is “Scholarship and the Crowd.” It will be held November 9-13 at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Participants will be selected through a competitive proposal process. For the 2014 institute, applicants from the Triangle area are especially encouraged to submit. Proposals are being accepted through March 24. More information and application instructions are available at the institute’s website: trianglesci.org.
Experience Nature: Up Close and Personal – a Photography Exhibit in Lilly Library
Spring Semester is a misleading term, as it actually begins in January when the cold and barren landscapes of winter abound.
Lilly Library presents an exhibit of photographs to transport you to warmer times and places. Award-winning wildlife and nature photographer Kim Hawks focuses on shore birds, landscapes, and for those who enjoy the beauty of flowers such as those in Duke Gardens, extremely detailed macro plant portraits.
Featured in this exhibit is Turtle Tracks: False Crawl, winner of the 2013 Wildlife in North Carolina Photography Contest (First Place in Animal Behavior Category).
On exhibit January 6 – March 15, 2014
Lilly Library, East Campus (Directions)
Gallery Reception – Meet the Artist
Date: Saturday, February 8, 2014 Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Thomas Room, Lilly Library,East Campus
The Library Party is a unique Duke tradition. For one night only, Perkins and Bostock Libraries throw open their doors for a night of music, food, and un-shushed entertainment. The event is free and open to the entire Duke community.
After a year on hiatus as we prepared for the Rubenstein Library renovation, the Library Party is back! Once again, the Libraries are partnering with the Duke Marketing Club to organize this year’s event. The theme—“Life is a Cabaret”—is inspired by an upcoming exhibit on 19th- and early-20th-century Parisian cabarets that will be on display in the Perkins Gallery February–May, with a companion exhibit at the Nasher Museum’s Academic Focus Gallery.
Life Is a Cabaret will feature live music, costumes, decorations, food and beverages, and plenty of joie de vivre!
When: Friday, February 21 Time: 9 PM to Midnight Where: Perkins Library Admission: Free Dress: Cocktail Attire, or Your Best Cabaret Costume
Many thanks to the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Duke Student Government/SOFC, George Grody, and the Markets and Management Studies Department for sponsoring this event.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Illustration of cabaret girls by Albert Guillaume from Gil Blas, a Parisian literary periodical published 1879-1914.
On display in the Perkins Library Gallery, February 18 – May 12
This upcoming exhibit offers a whirlwind tour of Montmartre’s famed late-19th-century musical revues—the Chat Noir, Folies Bergère, and Moulin Rouge—which boasted such chanteuses as Yvette Guilbert and Josephine Baker. Cheap Thrills highlights the Libraries’ extensive collection of cabaret-related materials, including biographies, guidebooks, periodicals, and musical scores. The exhibit will be sonified, with recreated performances of the cabarets’ raucous ballads and rallying performances, all arranged and recorded by the Duke New Music Ensemble.
Companion Exhibit:
Night in the City of Light: Paris’s Cabarets, 1881-1914
On display in the Nasher Museum of Art’s Academic Focus Gallery, February 15 – June 29
Related Performances and Screenings
Saturday, March 22 (2-4:45 pm): Film Screenings and Discussion: “French Cabaret from Stage to Screen,” Nasher Museum of Art
Sunday, April 6 (5 pm): Duke New Music Ensemble [dnme] presents “Melodies and Cacophonies from Paris’s Cabarets,” Fullsteam Brewery, Durham
Sunday, April 13 (8 pm): Duke New Music Ensemble [dnme] Spring Concert with selections of cabaret melodies to coincide with the exhibitions “Night in the City of Light: Paris’s Cabarets, 1881-1914” and “Cheap Thrills: The Highs and Lows of Cabaret Culture in Paris, 1881-1939,” Baldwin Auditorium, Duke East Campus
Next time you return a book to the library, bring a can of food for the Durham Food Bank!
Help serve the Durham community by participating in the 2013 Duke University Libraries Holiday Food Drive, now through December 18. Donations will be given to the Durham Food Bank, an organization that has served over 6.2 million pounds of food in the last year alone. Currently, over 96,000 individuals are at risk of going hungry; 30,000 of those are children. While the root causes behind hunger in the community may be complicated, the immediate solution is brilliantly simple: feed those who are hungry. Please take a moment to work towards this solution by donating non-perishable food items.
The Durham Food Bank is looking for: canned soups, tuna, ravioli, spaghetti, lasagna, stews, meats, vegetables (pop top cans are a plus!), peanut butter, cereal, rice, pasta, dried beans, fruit cups, dried fruit, applesauce, granola bars, crackers, pudding cups, juice boxes.
Students: Have a bunch of unused food points? Trot over to the Lobby Shop, the East Campus Store, or Uncle Harry’s and pick up any of these items for donation.
Donations will be collected at the Perkins Library Circulation Desk, Smith Warehouse Shipping and Receiving, the Lilly Library Circulation Desk, and the Library Service Center.
Here in the Libraries, we are always trying to improve our game. To help us serve our students and faculty better, we conduct periodic surveys to understand how you view our services, spaces, and materials, and how satisfied you are with your overall library experience.
From now until December 2, we will be conducting a brief user survey, which you can find linked prominently on our library homepage. Please take a moment and tell us how we’re doing.
The survey takes only 4-5 minutes to complete. All responses are completely anonymous.
The more feedback we get, the better equipped we will be to improve our existing services and develop new ones to meet emerging needs.
So please take a moment to complete the survey. We value your feedback. And we look forward to reporting what we learn from the survey results in the coming weeks. Thank you!
Day of Dead Altar, created by Carla Cella (MALS 2014). On display outside the International and Area Studies Office in Bostock Library, 2nd Floor.
Exhibit Opening and Day of the Dead Reception
When: Friday, November 1 Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m. Where: International and Area Studies, 2nd Floor Bostock Library (click for map)
There will be refreshments at the reception, including Pan de Muertos, in celebration of the Day of the Dead.
Two new exhibits will be opening November 1 in Bostock Library, both celebrating the traditional Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead. The first exhibit, assembled by Carla Cella (MALS 2014), is an altar built in the Day of the Dead tradition. Every year Mexicans create altars to honor the lives of those who have died. The altars include foods or objects that were meaningful to the deceased. The exhibit mimics the style of these altars, but is centered around themes of Diaspora and Indigeneity from the 2013 NC Latin American Film Festival. (Read a guest post by Carla about some of the influences behind the altar and those it seeks to honor.)
Part of the exhibit on printmaker José Guadalupe Posada
The second exhibit is titled José Guadalupe Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People, and celebrates his contributions to Mexican art, politics, and society. His work inspired famous Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Posada is best known for his costumed calaveras (skulls) which were often designed as social commentary critiquing the upper classes. However, they have now come to be associated with the Day of the Dead celebration.
Come visit these two fascinating exhibits, while enjoying a taste of the Day of the Dead with some pan de muertos!
Free and open to everyone. Because lunch will be served, please register to help us estimate attendance.
In celebration of International Education Week, please join us for a special international buffet lunch and panel discussion on Duke’s global initiatives at home and around the world. Hear from university leaders across campus and learn more about Duke’s exciting endeavors in global research, study abroad, Duke Kunshan, DukeEngage, support for international students on campus, and more.
Lunch begins at 11 a.m., and the panel discussion starts at 11:30. The event will conclude with a Q&A and open conversation.
Speakers
Welcome:Eve Duffy, Director of Programs and Initiatives, Office of Global Strategy and Programs Moderator:Li-Chen Chin, Director of Intercultural Programs, Center for Multicultural Affairs
The photobook, Iris Garden, combines forty-four photos by Gedney with twenty-two stories written by legendary avant-garde composer John Cage. It was edited by Alec Soth, designed by Hans Seeger, and published by Little Brown Mushroom. Both the Rubenstein Library and Kirston Johnson, curator of the Archive of Documentary Arts, are acknowledged for their help in providing the photographs which beautifully illustrate the book.
The cover of Iris Garden (2013), edited by Alec Soth and designed by Hans Seeger.
The layout of Iris Garden is a complicated arrangement of segments folded and layered inside and around each other. There is no one proper way to read through it. By opening and unfolding different pages, the reader enjoys a new order and experience every time. The structure parallels Cage’s interest in the idea that “all things—stories, incidental sounds from the environment, and, by extension, beings—are related, and that this complexity is more evident when it is not oversimplified by an idea of relationship in one person’s mind.”
The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards are held annually to recognize photobooks of superior quality and content. The ten books that were named to the short list represent, according to judge Vince Aletti, “a particular attention to the book as an object, in which selection of images, sequence, scale, typography, and materials are all carefully considered.”
Duke parent Deborah Norville will speak in Perkins Library on Oct. 26 as part of Duke Family Weekend.
Inside Edition’s Deborah Norville When: Saturday, October 26 Time: 3:30-4:40 p.m. Where: Perkins Library, Room 217 (Click for map)
As part of Duke Family Weekend, the Duke University Libraries are pleased to present our annual event, “The Library Presents Duke Moms and Dads,” this Saturday, October 26, at Perkins Library.
The event showcases a parent of a first-year Duke student, providing them with a venue to discuss their career, life, and being a Duke parent.
This year’s featured speaker will be Deborah Norville, long-time anchor of television’s top-rated news magazine, Inside Edition. Norville is a two-time Emmy Award winner, best-selling author, and lifelong craft enthusiast with her own line of yarns. Her new book—The Way We Are, released October 22—commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Inside Edition and the fascinating stories that defined it.
Norville and her husband Karl Wellner have three children: Nick, a 2013 Duke graduate; Kyle, a first-year student at Duke; and Mikaela, aged 16. She will talk about her experiences as a news anchor, the challenges of balancing work and life, and what it’s like to be a double-Duke parent.
The event is part of Duke Family Weekend and open to everyone. For more activities on campus that weekend, check out the Duke Family Weekend website.
Award Ceremony for Aptman and Middlesworth Prize Winners When: Friday October 25, 2013 Time: 3:30 – 4:40 p.m. Where: Thomas Reading Room, Lilly Library (Click for Map)
The Middlesworth Awards were established to encourage and recognize excellence of research, analysis, and writing by Duke University students in the use of primary sources and rare materials held by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. This year the awards were presented in three categories: first-year students, non-first year undergraduates, and graduate students. The winners include:
First-Year Student: Ashley Gartin for her paper, “Unity and the Duke Vigil: Civil Rights Challenges at Duke University”
Undergraduate (non-first year): Chantel Liggett for her paper, “Divergent Priorities, Diverging Visions: Lesbian Separatist versus Gay Male Integrationist Ideology Surrounding Duke in the 1970s and 80s”
Graduate Student: Tessa Handa for her paper, “The Orientalist Reality, Tourism, and Photography: the Parrish Family Albums in Japan, 1899-1904”
The Lowell Aptman Prizes recognize undergraduates’ excellence in research, including their analysis, evaluation and synthesis of sources, and encourages students to make use of the general library collections and services at Duke University. These prizes are also awarded in three categories, one for first and second year students, another for third and fourth year students, and a final category reserved for fourth year students submitting an honors thesis. This year’s winners are:
First/Second Year: Theodore Leonhardt for his paper, “Finding a Role: The Decision to Fight in the Falklands and the Redefinition of British Imperialism”
Third/Fourth Year: Mary Tung for her paper, “Engraving the Nation: The Decimal Coinage Bill of 1959, the Mint and Coinage Act of 1964, and the Creation of White South Africa”
Honors Thesis: Jocelyn Streid for her thesis, “The Salvation Project: The Secularization of Christian Narratives in American Cancer Care”
All are welcome at the award ceremony, to be held October 25 during Duke Family Weekend. Help us celebrate and congratulate these students on their magnificent work!
Our newly redesigned website will be right back after this short break!
Good things come to those who wait. For those who appreciate a little delayed gratification, we’re pushing back the launch of our redesigned library website by a couple of weeks.
Here’s why. After soft-launching on October 14 during Duke’s Fall Break, we quickly discovered some unexpected problems with people accessing their library accounts through the new site. Rather than cause any undue delays or frustration for our patrons, we decided to leave the old site in place until we could do more extensive testing and resolve the technical issue. We will re-launch the new site by the end of this month, once the problem is fixed.
During this brief intermission, you can still explore the prototype of the redesigned library website on our development server and let us know what you think. We want to thank our library users again for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience to those who reported trouble accessing their library accounts yesterday. Everything should be working normally now.
For more about the library website redesign, check out some of our previous blog posts. And keep an eye out for the unveiling of our new and improved (and fully functioning) website later this month.
This fall the source code for Fantasy Collecting, a pedagogical and research tool inspired by Fantasy Football and developed at Duke University, became publicly available on GitHub.
You may think you “know good art when you see it,” but this online art game will test your mettle as a tastemaker. Art fans, hackers, educators, and economists everywhere can now use Fantasy Collecting to both become the proud owners of masterpieces and attempt to mint new ones.
For those new to the notion of “fantasy art collecting” (which likely includes most of us), the Fantasy Collecting game is a classroom teaching and research tool that uses the pulse-pounding, high adrenaline activity of a virtual art market to teach art history and economics. Students try their hands at strategically increasing their collections’ value by promoting, acquiring, and trading works of art while performing micro-scholarship in the process.
Game co-designers Katherine Jentleson (Ph.D. Candidate in the Art, Art History, and Visual Studies department and member of the Duke Art, Law and Markets Initiative) and William Shaw (Duke University Libraries’ Digital Humanities Technology Consultant with the Humanities Writ Large initiative) developed and tested the game with art history and economics classes before preparing the code for public release under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Thanks to a collaboration with Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art, students were able to play first with works from the world-renowned contemporary art collection of Duke alumni Jason Rubell and later with the 1,000+ permanent collection works that the Nasher has digitized as part of its eMuseum.
Built as a teaching tool with many potential applications, the game can now be used by others as a supplement to classroom and book learning, as a basis for research studies on topics like art preferences and auction behavior, or even just for casual play. The flexibility of the code allows new users to populate the game with images relevant to his or her teaching or research goals, determine the length of desired rounds of the game, and customize game events that incentivize players to meet challenges like writing “vision statements” about their collections. Documentation and explanatory videos provided along with the code offer instruction on how the game and game play work, and specifically how it was used for art history instruction.
The three videos below explain the concept and purpose behind the Fantasy Collecting game, the rules of game play (including video captures), as well as educational outcomes and student engagement.
The Forum for Scholars and Publics will be hosting a panel discussion on Open Access, Oct. 18.
Open Access Panel Discussion When: Friday, October 18 Time: 3:30- 5:00 p.m. Where: Old Chemistry Building, Room 011 (Click for Map) Registration: No registration is required
There will be a reception following the panel discussion.
In celebration of Open Access Week, the Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics will be hosting a panel on Open Access as part of their open house event. The discussion will explore how the push for Open Access to academic journals and other scholarly publications, along with the rapid rise of MOOCs, is reshaping the image of the university in the broader world.
The panelists represent a diverse group of opinions. They include Ken Wissoker from Duke University Press, faculty members Cathy Davidson and Mohamed Noor, and Paolo Mangiafico from the Duke University Libraries. The discussion will be moderated by Mark Anthony Neal, and opening remarks will be made by Dean Laurie Patton.
Free lunch will be provided for participants before the event in the Schiciano Lobby from 12:00-1:00pm.
Come join us on October 22 and learn how to best use IEEE Xplore, one of the premier resources for scientific and technical content.
The IEEE Xplore digital library is a powerful resource for discovery and access to information published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and its partners. IEEE Xplore provides Web access to more than 3-million full-text documents from some of the world’s most highly cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science and electronics. The content in IEEE Xplore comprises over 160 journals, over 1,200 conference proceedings, more than 3,800 technical standards, over 1,000 eBooks and over 300 educational courses.
The training session will teach attendees to use this invaluable resource more efficiently, and will focus on several key points of interest.
Click on the screenshot to see the new Duke University Libraries website.
As we’ve mentioned here before, we’re getting ready to launch our redesigned Duke University Libraries website on October 14, during Duke’s Fall Break.
We’ve been documenting and testing our process for the better part of a year, and we greatly appreciate all the helpful feedback and comments our users have given us along the way. Your participation has made the process smoother and helped us make better-informed decisions about the design and functionality of our new site. Thank you!
With October 14 less than a week away, we’re ready to let the Duke community take our new website for a spin. We’re still tweaking some things and ironing out a few glitches, but we think it’s ready to share. Here’s a preview link on our development server: http://libcms.oit.duke.edu/
(Note: This is a temporary link. Our new site will publicly go live at library.duke.edu on October 14. All old URLs will be redirected to new ones.)
In our last post about the website redesign, we covered some of the major search and navigational differences between the old site and the new one. Here are a few additional improvements you may notice.
1. More emphasis on the search box. Library websites are different from other university websites. This isn’t just our virtual face to the world. It’s a multifunctional tool, as well as the primary way most of our users “go to the library” and get to our resources. You’ll notice that the search box is larger and designed in a way to help you get the information you need more quickly, with fewer distractions on the page.
2. Easier access to important functions. We’ve added a “Quick Links” section on the homepage to emphasize important information and answers to frequently asked questions. You’ll also notice that “My Accounts” is linked consistently in the header throughout the site. This takes you to a page where you can login to all of your library accounts in one place, from renewing books and viewing hold requests, to interlibrary loan and document delivery, to requesting materials from the Rubenstein Library.
3. Better integration with our physical space. This is one new addition we think our students will really appreciate. Duke’s campus libraries are popular places. Study space is in high demand. With that in mind, we’ve created a new “Places to Study” page featuring a comprehensive list of library study spots on both East and West Campus. There are photos of study rooms and descriptions of their features. You can even filter study spaces by location, electrical outlets, nearness to coffee, etc. We’ve also made it easier to reserve a study space or meeting room with the click of a button.
Screenshot of the new Rubenstein Library homepage.
5. Easier access to international research and services. Want to find materials on specific countries, like France, China, or Canada? Or perhaps schedule a one-on-one consultation with a subject or language expert? Click on our interactive International Resources map and see what resources and services we have available for different regions of the globe.
New interactive International Research page.
6. More personalized help. We’ve revamped our list of librarians and subject experts to make it easier for you to find someone who knows your field and can answer questions about particular topics.
7. Enhanced searchability. We’ve already talked about the redesigned search box on the homepage. But we also added some functionality to the website search in the header on every page. By using the drop-down button, you can search for books, articles, or all library materials without having to go back to the homepage.
8. Less jargon. We’re librarians. We love acronyms, proper names, and technical terminology. But we recognize that not everyone else speaks librarianese. To that end, we’ve made a conscious effort to edit all of our site content for greater clarity, simplicity, accuracy, and web-friendliness. We hope it helps.
Again, take it for a spin and let us know what you think! And mark your calendar for October 14, when our new site officially goes live!
The Class of 2017’s summer reading book: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The summer before they arrive on Duke’s campus, every incoming freshman is sent a copy of the yearly summer reading book. Once they have settled into their new dorm, the students will spend time discussing the book in small groups.
This yearly tradition provides the diverse class of freshmen a piece of common intellectual ground. It helps to spark discussion and conversation among a group of unfamiliar faces. It makes the awkward, halting conversations with near strangers just a bit easier, helping to transform those encounters into meaningful friendships.
The Duke Summer Reading Committee is currently seeking book nominations that will facilitate all of these experiences. The book should stimulate debate and discussion among students, encourage thought and personal reflection, engage the intellect of the student population, and grab the attention and interest of the reader.
Past summer reading titles have included The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, My Sister’s Keeper by Judy Picoult, and most recently Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. All nominations will be reviewed by a committee of faculty, staff, and students.
The deadline for nominating a book is October 15, 2013, so if you know of the perfect book—one that will engage, puzzle, and fascinate the Class of 2018—be sure to submit if for consideration using the online nomination form.
After months of development and user testing, we are making final preparations to launch the new Duke University Libraries website on October 14, during Duke’s Fall Break. More user-friendly, easier to navigate, and intuitively organized, our redesigned site comes with additional features we think our patrons will appreciate—because they asked for them! You can take a peek at our new homepage design now.
Notable differences from our current website are based on usage data and patron feedback. They include:
My Accounts link at the top of every page
Updates to the tabbed search box on our homepage
“Books & More” becomes our default search tab scoped to a search of our catalog
We are bringing back the “Articles” tab
The “All” tab is still there for those who want to search our collections broadly, but it’s no longer the default
Our website search box is now included as a tab on the homepage
Other key search tools are in the ribbon just below the tabbed search box
Site navigation via drop-down menus at the top of every page
The drop down menu provides quick access to links throughout the website. Click to enlarge.
We are also adding search pages that will make it easier for you to find your favorite items in our collections, such as film and video or eBooks.
New search pages make it easier to find some of your favorite items. Click to enlarge.
Content throughout the site is being updated to be more current and easier to read. Also new: the entire website has been responsively designed, so it automatically adjusts to different screen sizes, from large computer monitors to smart phones.
We began this group effort a year ago with over 70 library staff plus countless undergraduates, graduate students and faculty who use the Duke Libraries website. It would take a long time to thank everyone who has made contributions to this project through their feedback, research, user assessment, data analysis, planning, designing, coding, and content writing and editing. Their thoughtful work will result in a library website that is just as welcoming and easy to use as our physical stacks and reading rooms.
Next week, we will provide a link with preview access to the site along with a more detailed description of how the new site is different from the old one. So stay tuned…
Patricia Engel will read from her new book, “It’s not Love, It’s Just Paris,” this Thursday, Oct. 3.
Date: Thursday, October 3 Time: 10:05-11:20 Location: Friedl Building, Room 225 (Click for map) Contact: Jenny Snead Williams, jennysw@duke.edu
Take a break this Thursday to wander the streets of Paris and peer into the literary world created by award-winning author Patricia Engel. Engel will be coming to Duke to read and discuss her new novel It’s not Love, It’s Just Paris. The novel tells the story of young Lita del Cielo, the daughter of Columbian immigrant parents busily making their fortune in the Latin food industry, as she is granted a one-year adventure in Paris. In the streets of Paris, she enters into a divided world where the last of the old-blood elite drains between the cobblestones as a new wave of international wealth floods the city. Amid these scenes of change, Lita is swept away by a private romance, forcing her to decide between the ambitious dreams of her parents and the thrill of new love.
Engel’s other works include a collection of short stories entitled Vida, a book that enchanted Duke students and faculty last year when Engel visited campus for a reading. To find out more about her writing or explore her biography be sure to visit her website. This year’s event is presented by the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South and co-sponsored by the Program in Literature, the Spanish Language Program, the Department of Romance Studies, and the Duke University Libraries.
Free and open to the public.Refreshments will be provided.
Scopus Training Session for Duke Faculty, Researchers, and Graduate Students When: Wednesday, October 16 Time: 11:00 – 11:45 a.m. Where: Schiciano Auditorium – Side A, Fitzpatrick Center (Click for map) Contact: Melanie Sturgeon, melanie.sturgeon@duke.edu Registration:Please Register to Attend
Note: Lunch to follow in FCIEMAS lobby, 12:00-1:00 p.m. (provided by Elsevier). We will also be raffling off two iPod shuffles for attendees!
Please join us on October 16 for a Scopus training session on campus with Elsevier.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature from international publishers, open access journals, conference proceedings, and trade publications. Database coverage includes Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology, and Economics; Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
This training session will educate science faculty, researchers, and graduate students about Scopus, which was designed to save you time in finding the right articles.
Duke University Libraries invites you to attend GS711-10 Research Data Management, part of our Managing Your Research workshop series.Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend. Graduate student attendees will be eligible to receive RCR credit for participation in this event.
Workshop Description
In response to expectations for open access to publicly funded research, agencies from the NSF to the NEH require data management plans as part of funding proposals. Increasingly, researchers are expected to provide access to data as part of verifying and replicating research results. This workshop provides a high-level overview of the research data lifecycle, focusing on particular moments and issues to consider in order to effectively and responsibly manage data used in a range of disciplinary projects. Participants will learn about resources available at Duke to support data management and where to go for additional, customized help in planning data management for research.
Topics Covered
Funder requirements and writing data management plans for grant proposals
Records management for collaboratively produced data
Best practices for data description
Data storage options and appropriate back-up procedures
Sharing, publishing, and getting credit for your data
The when, why, and how of data archiving for long-term preservation
Speakers
Elena Feinstein, M.L.S., Librarian for Chemistry and Biological Sciences
Ciara Healy, M.L.S., Librarian for Psychology and Neuroscience and Library Liaison for Bass Connections in Brain & Society
Emily Mazure, M.S.I., Biomedical Research Liaison Librarian, Medical Center Library and Archives
Liz Milewicz, Ph.D., M.L.I.S., Head, Digital Scholarship Services Department, Duke University Libraries, and Library Liaison for Bass Connections in Information, Society & Culture
There are things better than email. Paul Jones, who left email behind over two years ago, will explain.Nearly thirty years ago, Jones began working on and encouraging people to use the unified messaging systems that led up to what we now know as email. That was then, and this is now. Email has become a zombie that doesn’t realize it’s dead and falling apart, a vampire that sucks your life’s blood away slowly each night before bed and each morning as you wake. You’ve probably noticed this yourself. In an attempt to atone for his part for inflicting email on UNC, he has been exploring alternatives to email with a shotgun and a wooden stake (and Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) as his tools. This talk will touch on the sad beginnings of email, offer some atonement for Jones’ part in the mess, but mostly will discuss trends and alternatives needed to achieve the Logic and Destiny of #noemail.
Sponsored by the Professional Affairs Committee of the Duke University Librarians Assembly.
Refreshments provided. This event is free and open to the public.
Paul Jones. Photo by Dan Sears
About Paul Jones: Paul Jones is Clinical Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Clinical Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Jones blogs about research on, opinions of, and work for better communications strategies and services at ibiblio.org, where he also serves at Director. He has published poetry in cookbooks, in travel anthologies, in a collection about passion (What Matters?), in a collection about love (…and love…), and in The Best American Erotic Poems (from Scribner). He has a personal copy of the world’s oldest Web page.
A message from Duke’s University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs
Meeting the needs of nearly 15,000 students, some 1,800 faculty and more than 30,000 employees of a major research university is challenging work. Unlike many private research libraries, we pride ourselves on being open to the public. Gifts to the Duke University Libraries Annual Fund help us to provide the highest level of service to our students, faculty, and the many outside researchers who use our collections and help us advance Duke’s research and teaching missions.
Because of the generous support of alumni, friends, faculty, parents, grandparents, corporations and foundations, the Duke University Libraries Annual Fund set an all-time high total in fiscal year 2013 in donors (1,887) and cash ($744,890). Those are increases of more than 17% and 30%, respectively.
Libraries Annual Fund CashLibraries Annual Fund Donors
Even more important is what these contributions allowed us to do for our students and faculty. Here are just a few things we’ve been able to accomplish this year because of contributions to the Libraries Annual Fund:
Annual Fund gifts help us to provide today’s Duke students and faculty with the very best collections and services and set a standard of excellence that improves the University’s national and international reputation. On behalf of the Libraries’ staff and Duke students, faculty, and researchers around the world, thank you for your continued support.
Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs
Members of these boards will help improve the learning and research environment for Duke University students and advise the Libraries on topics such as study spaces, research resources, integrating library services into academic courses, and marketing library services to students.
All three advisory boards are now taking applications or nominations. Deadlines for applying are:
Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board: September 8, 2013
Undergraduate Advisory Board: September 8, 2013
First-Year Advisory Board: September 10, 2013
Members will be selected and notified by mid-September, and the groups will begin to meet in late September. More information is available on our website, where you will also find links to the online applications forms.
For more information or questions about these opportunities, please contact:
The von der Heyden Pavilion will be closed Aug. 11-16 for floor refinishing. No food or coffee service will be available during this time.
Throughout the week of Sunday, August 11, through Friday, August 16, the von der Heyden Pavilion in Perkins Library will be closed so that workers can refinish the floor and replace floor pads on all furniture in advance of the fall semester.
During this time, Saladelia at the Perk will also be closed and no food or coffee service will be available in the library. The nearest coffee service is at Twinnie’s in the CIEMAS Engineering Building, or at Joe Van Gogh in the Bryan Center.
The von der Heyden Pavilion will reopen on the afternoon of Friday, August 16. Saladelia at the Perk will resume service on Monday, August 19.
Ashley Young (right) won second place in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest for her collection on 19th-century Creole cuisine and culture. She is pictured here earlier this year at the Andrew T. Nadell Book Collecting Contest at Duke, where she won first place in the graduate category.
Congratulations to Ashley Young, Duke Ph.D. candidate in history, who just won second place in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest!
In recognition of her bibliophilic brio, she will receive a $1,000 cash prize (presumably to spend on more books!) and a trip to Washington, D.C., to represent Duke at a special awards ceremony on October 18 at the Library of Congress. As her home institution, the Duke University Libraries also receive $500!
Earlier this year, Ashley took first place in the graduate category of the Andrew T. Nadell Book Collectors Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the Duke University Libraries, for her collection of historic cookbooks and literary sources that chronicle the history of Creole cuisine. That earned her a $750 cash prize and the eligibility to compete on the national level.
In her collection essay, Ashley says that her cookbook collection was inspired by an internship at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, which introduced her to nineteenth-century Creole culture. The books are also tied to her dissertation research on Southern foodways in the early years of American statehood.
“The creation of American culture is best understood not as a purely national phenomenon, but one that is intimately connected to the local and global dynamics at play in Southern port cities—dynamics that food vendors and urban residents interacted with and shaped on a daily basis,” she writes.
She acquired many of the works in her collection through creative searches online and by combing the shelves of Kitchen Witch Cookbooks in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Some of her historical cookbooks are even on display at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum or are housed in their library collection. “I have a strong belief that these cookbooks should be shared with the broader public so that individuals have the opportunity to hold in their hands historic cookbooks that shaped the lives and foodways of generations of Americans,” Ashley says.
Duke has been well represented in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Competition. In 2011, our last graduate-level winner, Mitch Fraas (also a Ph.D. candidate in history), took first place for his collection on Anglo-American legal printing from 1702 to the present.
Here’s a video we made of our own book collecting contest participants earlier this year. Look for Ashley around the 1:46 mark.
http://youtu.be/UmymE8vfXzc
About the Book Collecting Contest at Duke
Since 1947, the Friends of the Duke University Libraries have organized a book collecting contest in alternate years to promote reading for enjoyment and the development of students’ personal libraries. The 2013 contest was named for Dr. Andrew T. Nadell M’74, an avid collector in the areas of Gothic Revival, Doctors of Medicine, and Learned Professions and Occupations. The contest includes an undergraduate and a graduate division. Cash prizes are offered in each division. Collections are judged on the extent to which books and materials represent a well-defined field of interest. The next contest will be held in 2015. See the contest website for more information.
On exhibit July 16 – October 13, 2013
Perkins Library Gallery, Duke West Campus (Click for map)
Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am–7pm; Saturday, 9am–7pm; Sunday, 10am–7pm
Hours may vary during the summer months. Please check our posted library hours for more information.
About the Exhibit
In an instant of geologic time, human beings have exploded into a geologic force, altering the planet’s oceans and fresh waters, atmosphere, soils, plants, and animals.
Our effect on planetary conditions and processes has been so significant, in fact, that many people believe we have crossed the boundary into a distinctly new geologic epoch—from Holocene to Anthropocene—a period in Earth’s history primarily characterized by the growth and impact of the human species.
A new exhibit in Perkins Library considers the human record on planet Earth and asks visitors to consider the implications of labeling our geologic epoch the Anthropocene.
Illustration by Theodor de Bry (1591), showing indigenous Americans in Virginia hand-cultivating and planting fields with maize. One theory holds that the Anthropocene began with the rise of agriculture some 8,000 years ago.
You may not have heard the term Anthropocene before, but you will. It has been taken up enthusiastically across a variety of academic and artistic disciplines. It has inspired major critical and artistic works as well as international museum exhibitions.
Originally coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, the term follows a relatively recent turn in society that has seen human beings increasingly acknowledged to be an integral part of nature.
A proposal to rename our geologic epoch is accordingly being considered by a working group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the scientific body that sets global standards for expressing the geologic history of the earth. The working group includes one of the curators of this exhibit (Professor Daniel Richter of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment) and represents the culmination of intense scientific debates in books, conferences, and exhibits such as this one. A decision on whether to adopt the term is expected in 2016.
Skull of the near-extinct Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). Another theory traces the origins of the Anthropocene to the Stone Age extinctions of large animals that began some 50,000 years ago and have continued ever since.
The widespread recognition that we have had a global-scale impact on the environment is relatively new, as is the idea that we have a special responsibility to the future and to other life forms. Recording the Anthropocene represents an attempt to acknowledge the scale of our impact on the planet and to face the implications of that realization. What difference do you think the adoption of the term Anthropocene would make to you, and to all forms of life on the planet?
The exhibit was curated by a broad interdisciplinary group of Duke faculty, graduate students, and staff from a variety of departments across campus who share an interest in this topic.
For more information, visit the exhibit in Perkins Library, or check out the exhibit website.
In order to make our library resources more mobile-friendly, we’ve picked up a new tool called BrowZine, an app for iPads and Android tablets that lets you browse, read, and monitor current academic journals in your subject areas. And best of all for our Duke users, it’s free!
Here’s a 2-minute video about how it works:
If you want to use BrowZine, you can download it to your iPad or Android device by following these easy steps:
Go to the App Store or Google Play, search for BrowZine, and install it. (It’s free.)
When you open BrowZine for the first time, you’ll see a list of schools – select Duke, then enter your Net ID and password.
Select subject areas, and start browsing journals. That’s it! You can save your favorites to your personal bookshelf.
How many journals are included? BrowZine has relationships with these academic journal publishers, so any journals included in that group and published since 2005 should be viewable through the BrowZine app.
Give it a try and let us know what you think.
BrowZine is compatible with Zotero, Dropbox, Evernote and other services (Mendeley and RefWorks are coming soon), allowing you to organize and manage your research seamlessly. You can also save articles to your BrowZine pin board to read later, even when you’re offline.
The Richard and Nancy Riess Graduate Student Reading Room is located on the second floor of Perkins Library in Room 211, next to the Staff Lounge.
In order to make the lives of our hard-working graduate students easier, we’re setting aside a dedicated library reading room just for them.
The Richard and Nancy Riess Graduate Student Reading Room is reserved for Duke University graduate students only. With seating for 14 people, it is located on the second floor of Perkins Library in Room 211, next door to the library Staff Lounge. (See map below.)
The reading room is accessible by using a keypad on the door. To get the code, simply stop by the Perkins Library Service Desk on the main floor, show us your Duke ID to verify your graduate student status, and fill out a short form.
Access to the Riess Graduate Student Reading Room is available to all graduate and professional school students throughout the university. We encourage you to stop by the Perkins Service Desk for the reading room code.
Students with questions about access to the space should contact Michael Finigan, Head of Access and Delivery Services (michael.finigan@duke.edu), or Emily Daly, Head of the User Experience Department (emily.daly@duke.edu).
Map of Perkins Library, Second Floor, showing the location of the graduate student reading room.
Menri Monastery in Northern India possesses the world’s largest collection of manuscripts relating to Bön, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. All photos by Edward Proctor.
Duke University has received a grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme to digitize and preserve a trove of ancient religious manuscripts related to Bön, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet.
Once digitized, the manuscripts will be made freely available online through the British Library, giving scholars around the world access to an important archive of religious texts that were previously accessible only by traveling to a monastery in a remote part of the Indian Himalayas.
The Menri Monastery, located near the village of Dolanji in the Northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, possesses the world’s largest collection of manuscripts relating to Bön. Most of these materials were rescued from ancient monasteries in Tibet before they were destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The collection includes some 129 pechas, or traditional Tibetan books, comprising more than 62,000 pages of text. A pecha consists of loose leaves of handmade paper wrapped in cloth, placed between wooden boards, and secured with a belt. Also included are some 479 handmade colorfully-illustrated initiation cards, or tsakli, which are employed in various rituals and contain significant amounts of text.
Duke librarian Edward Proctor, second from right, worked with monks at the monastery in 2009 to determine the feasibility of digitizing the Bön manuscripts.
As the name suggests, the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme aims to preserve archival material that is in danger of disappearing, particularly in countries where resources and opportunities to preserve such material are lacking or limited. The Bön manuscripts are an excellent case in point, according to Edward Proctor, the principal investigator for the project. Proctor is Duke’s librarian for South and Southeast Asia. He also works to develop the South Asian Studies collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library through a cooperative arrangement with Duke.
“The Bön manuscripts are subject to a variety of perils,” said Proctor. “They are currently housed in a building that is neither air-conditioned nor humidity-controlled. Having so many unique materials in one location means that a single disaster, such as a massive mudslide or earthquake (not an infrequent occurrence in this area), could quickly extinguish the records of this ancient tradition.”
The Bön manuscripts cover a wide range of subjects, including history, grammar, poetry, rules of monastic discipline, rituals, astronomy, medicine, musical scores, biographies of prominent Bön teachers, and practical instruction manuals for the creation and consecration of paintings, sculptures, mandalas, ritual offerings, reliquaries, amulets, and talismans.
Proctor first traveled to the Menri Monastery in 2009 on a Pilot Project grant from the British Library to investigate the scope and condition of the Bön manuscripts and the feasibility of digitizing them. He will return later this fall and winter to oversee their digitization, which will be carried out by monastery staff. Proctor will provide training in digitization techniques and offer guidance on best practices in archival management. Once the project is complete, the digitization equipment funded by the British Library will remain at the monastery for the future use of the Bön monks.
Pechas, or traditional Tibetan books, consist of loose leaves of handmade paper wrapped in cloth, placed between wooden boards, and secured with a belt.
According to Proctor, this digitization project is essential to the efforts of Bön monks and nuns to preserve their unique culture, as well as the efforts of scholars elsewhere to understand the early cultural and intellectual history of Central Asia.
“These unique documents already escaped destruction once, during the excesses of the Cultural Revolution,” said Proctor. “But there is still a risk that they could disappear. Just last year, a fire in an 18th-century temple in Bhutan reduced its entire manuscript collection to ashes. Tragically, the temple’s collection had been proposed to be digitized as part of a Major Project grant. Thanks to this grant from the Endangered Archives Programme, it will now be possible to ensure the long-term survival of the Bön manuscripts in Menri Monastery.”
To learn more about the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, visit their website.
The collection also includes many tsakli, or handmade colorfully-illustrated initiation cards employed in various rituals.
News, Events, and Exhibits from Duke University Libraries
Join the Duke University Libraries as we celebrate the opening of the 
On exhibit August 14 – December 14, 2014
option.
Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs
