Category Archives: Library Hacks

International and Area Studies Department, Noteworthy Resources

Putting the ‘Global’ Back Into Global Pandemic, Part I

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This is the first in a series of blog posts on global pandemics, edited by Ernest Zitser, Ph.D., Librarian for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, library liaison to the International Comparative Studies Program, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University.

Pandemics, by their very definition (< Greek pandēmos = pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’), affect everyone in the entire world.  They expose the permeability of border walls and remind us of the invented nature of all geopolitical boundaries.  They also provide us with an opportunity to learn something about the lived experience of people from around the globe, those external ‘others’ whom it is all-too-easy to stereotype as strange, exotic, or dangerous.  That is, pandemics invite us not merely to recognize the humanity of, and suffer alongside perfect ‘strangers,’ who speak ‘foreign’ languages and write in ‘squiggly’ scripts, but actually to draw lessons from the way human communities in other parts of the world are dealing and/or have dealt with the same issues as us.

In order to help foster a more informed and compassionate approach to the current global health crisis, the subject specialists of Duke Libraries’ International and Area Studies Department have decided to devote a series of blog posts to the topic of plagues, epidemics, and pandemics in each of the world regions for which they collect materials and about which they offer reference and library instruction.  Our goal is not to provide exhaustive coverage of the topic, but merely to suggest one or two resources—preferably those available online and in English—that each subject specialist has found particularly meaningful or useful in helping him or her to understand the role that infectious diseases have played in the countries, continents, and world areas for which s/he is responsible.

If you would like to get more information about a particular world region or recommendations for additional resources on the topic, please feel free to contact the appropriate IAS librarian.  And do let us know if you have your own recommendations!  Simply leave a reply in the “Comment Section” at the end of this blog post.

___________________________

Holly Ackerman
Head, International & Area Studies Dept. and Librarian for Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies

When the editors of the IAS blog proposed the idea of publishing a series of posts recommending readable, digitally-available, English-language resources on plagues/infectious diseases/moral panics in world literature and/or film, I approached the selection in my role as the Department Head, responsible for covering many world areas. I tried to recall a popular history with global reach that dealt both with politics and medicine. I wanted something that was deeply researched but also genuinely engaging.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, one that would also highlight the other role that I play in IAS, namely, the Librarian for Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies.

John Barry’s panoramic history of the so-called “Spanish” Flu of 1918—the ruthless influenza pandemic that is estimated to have claimed 50-100 million lives (adjusted for population, that would equal 220 million to 430 million people today)—came immediately to mind. I had read it back in 2004 when it first came out and was that year’s winner of the National Academies of Sciences prize for the best book on science or medicine. A re-read this week confirmed its currency.

Barry, a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, seems to be speaking directly to the present when he says that medicine and politics cannot be separated in a pandemic and one is as significant as the other. He describes political leaders in 1918 lying to the public about the severity of the situation in order to maintain the World War I economy and their control over the electorate.  And also of blaming a particular foreign country for being the source of the outbreak, in an effort to shift the blame for their handling of the public health crisis onto a foreign country.  Sound familiar?

The good news in Barry’s sweeping account is the role of medicine in developing vaccines, public health officials broadcasting simple preventive measures (posters read, “Wear a mask; Save your life), the rise of “modern” medical schools such as Johns Hopkins, and the organization of the Red Cross. He offers case examples of communities that suppressed the disease (e.g., San Francisco) and those that failed to do so (e.g., Philadelphia). The “winners” combined truthful leaders, inspiration in public messaging, and stern demand for compliance with best practices. The “losers” combined denial with blaming (calling it “just a common cold” as corpses outnumbered coffins, attacking immigrants as “natural carriers,” and demanding legislation for mass euthanasia of domestic pets).

Anyone wanting to see how pandemics change history will find much to admire here.

___________________________

Sean Swanick
Librarian for Middle East and Islamic Studies

The issue of plague in the Middle East context has not received the scholarly attention that it deserves.  However, there are some excellent books and works-in-progress out there for anyone interested in the topic.

For example, Christopher S. Rose, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, has written an article about how the Egyptian government handled a pandemic in the past, at least partly in order to contextualize the criticism of the way the current Egyptian government has handled the COVID-19 crisis. Rose’s article has been accepted by the Journal of World History, but is unlikely to appear in print until 2021; and Rose’s book will not be out until sometime in the next decade.  That is why it is so great that this young scholar is willing to share some of the results of his research in a WordPress blog post on The “Spanish Flu” in Egypt. Rose argues that “for most of the war, civilian medical needs were a far distant second behind military medical needs” of the colonial occupiers of this strategically-important British protectorate. Consequently, when the pandemic hit, the Anglo-Egyptian government was “caught with its pants down”: hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed; physicians (who were mostly Egyptians, Greek, or Syrian) were overworked; agricultural production (on which the entire economy depended) ceased; religious services were suspended; and at least 130,000 people died. The fact that the flu pandemic—the worst health crisis during World War I in Egypt—came after the end of the war made everything worse. Rose argues that this was one of the “non-political events” in early 20th-century Egyptian history that prepared the ground for the political changes in the years that followed the pandemic.

An even earlier period of environmental, epidemiological, and political history of what is today’s Middle East is the subject of Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: the Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600, by Nükhet Varlik of Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina.  This thorough, ground-breaking book explores the impact of plagues on Ottoman lands beginning with the Black Death, which ravaged the world from 1347 to 1351. One aspect of the work I found particularly interesting is the development of public health vis-à-vis the state. The Ottoman state was very conscious of the need for clean drinking water, hence the development of fountains throughout the empire—including the imperial capital, Istanbul—and the imperative to bury those who had died of the disease outside the city walls, so as to ensure that as much clean air as possible circulated within the city. Varlik’s book is not only well-researched, but also provides fascinating historical insight into a topic that has contemporary resonance, not least because of its insistence on the Western origins of the Plague, as well as its discussion of the pandemic’s effect both on physical bodies and the body politic.  After reading this book, you might also want to visit the Ottoman History Podcast for a discussion on Plague in the Ottoman World, featuring Nükhet Varlık, Yaron Ayalon, Orhan Pamuk, Lori Jones, Valentina Pugliano, and Edna Bonhomme.

___________________________

Luo Zhou
Chinese Studies Librarian

William C. Summer’s book on the Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911, will be an enlightening (and inspiring) read for today’s audience. The Manchuria (Northeast China) plague, which broke out in fall 1910 and killed more than 60,000 people by spring 1911, was caused by transmission from marmots to humans. It spread quickly both among the native Chinese inhabitants and the Russian, Japanese, American, and British diplomats and administrators stationed in Manchuria, a new center of global transportation and fur trade that was of strategic importance to the world powers.  Summer demonstrates that geopolitics—China’s political weakness and Russian and Japanese colonial aspirations in the region—shaped how the plague was contained and managed.  He also highlights the work of individual medical practitioners, such as Dr. Wu Lien-teh—the first medical student of Chinese descent to study at the University of Cambridge—who led the Chinese effort to end the plague.  Dr. Wu promoted the use of cloth facial masks, which were to be worn by doctors, nurses, patients, and anyone else whenever possible: the very first time that such an epidemic containment measure had been attempted and proven effective in the field.  In the end, the “Great Manchurian Plague” highlighted the importance of multinational medical responses and helped to promote the (eventual) establishment of the World Health Organization – an unintended, but welcome by-product of the epidemic.

In order to get a sense of the lived experience of COVID-19 in China today, it is best to turn to non-traditional outlets (e.g. WeChat, Weibo, Twitter, Facebook) and freely available electronic resources.  For example, in The Virus Diaries (疫境日記), a 10-minute YouTube video (in Cantonese, with English subtitles), from late January 2020, ordinary citizens of Hong Kong share their experiences of life during quarantine.

For mainland China, the most obvious (and most controversial) choice is Wuhan Diary (武汉日记) by Fang Fang (方方), the pen name of Wang Fang (汪芳; born 11 May 1955), an award-winning, contemporary Chinese writer. Although this fascinating, first-person account of life at the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis is now available as an e-book, in an English-language translation by Michael Berry, Director of UCLA Center of China Studies, it began life as a series of posts on Fang’s social media page.  The author’s regular, daily entries on WeChat—a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app—offered her personal (and mildly critical) comments on the effects of the deadly epidemic during the government-imposed lockdown. Almost as soon as they were posted, however, each of Fang’s entries about the effect of the coronavirus on Chinese society was consistently deleted by China’s internet censors.  But usually not before the latest entry had itself gone viral, having been shared by millions of WeChatters, both within China and abroad.  That has not slowed Chinese government efforts to stop the spread of the virtual virus unleashed by Fang Fang’s media posts.In an effort to dissuade overseas readers from purchasing the diary, the Global Times—an English-language newspaper published under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily—claimed (falsely) that Fang “fell from grace in late March when many netizens and scholars began to question the authenticity of her diary.”  As if anticipating such politically motivated criticism, the last entry in Fang’s diary was entitled: “There is no tension between me and my country” (我和国家之间没有张力).

Announcement, Duke researchers, Life in the library, Original research

Congratulations to Invited Talk Nominees!

The event “Research as Process: An Undergraduate Research Showcase,” originally planned for April 20, was created by staff of the Duke University Libraries to highlight the exceptional work of undergraduate researchers who utilized library services and/or resources in a project, paper, or other academic work. The showcase put emphasis not necessarily on the impressive products of the nominees’ efforts, but the process of developing their research questions, exploring the existing sources and modifying their inquiry based on them, and learning best practices for academic research methods.

Although the in-person event was unable to take place, we recognize the noteworthy achievement of the nominees and their dedication to academic rigor and furthering knowledge. Conducting a large-scale research project requires developing the ability to effectively to search for and evaluate sources, work that takes time and no small measure of effort.

We extend our congratulations to:

  • Caroline del Real, nominated by Dr. Phillip Stillman for her essay “The Great God Pan and the Horror of the Hybrid” (English)
  • Katherine Owensby, nominated by Prof. Andrew Janiak for her project “Research for Project Vox: Studying Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz” (Philosophy)
  • Bryan Rusch, nominated by Sean Swanic, Librarian for Middle East and Islamic Studies, for his paper “In the Footsteps of Omar Ibn Sayyid: Materials Culture and Folklore” (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)
  • Alex Damian, nominated by Prof. Lenhard Ng for his senior thesis “Theoretical Guarantees for Signal Recovery” (Mathematics)

Citing Sources, Digital Collections, Humanities, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library

Print, Fold, Ponder: A Mini-Zine for This Moment

Mozart once said, “Art lies in expressing everything, the sad as well as the gay, the horrible as well as the enchanting, in forms which remain beautiful.”

We love quotations like that—wise, witty, pithy, and stylish all at once. We love collecting great quotes, and as a library you could say we collect a great many of them. On our digital reference shelves, you can find hundreds of anthologies of quotations, aphorisms, proverbs, epigrams, bon mots, folk sayings, and old saws.

Quotations come in handy, whether you’re writing a paper, working on a presentation, struggling to craft a clever wedding toast—or a dignified obituary—or even just looking for inspiration.

Great quotations have the power to impose perspective and definition on lived experience—or, as the nineteenth-century novelist Samuel Butler put it even better, to “enclose a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.”

There are times when we stumble on a quotation that comes surprisingly close to home, like this verse from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado: “Though the night may come too soon, we have years and years of afternoon.”

It certainly feels that way to many of us right now, with so many monotonous days and weeks trapped at home, and goodness knows how many more stretching out ahead. But there’s something gratifying and almost consoling to see someone else put it so cleverly.

So this week, while our Duke students are busily working on final papers and filling them with illustrative quotations of their own (properly cited, we have no doubt), it seemed like a good time to offer some quotable words of our own.

We’ve put together a little zine anthology of quotations we’ve been thinking about during this difficult time. The title says it all: Print, Fold, Ponder: A Wee Zine of Wise Words We Need Now. It’s a little collection of quotes about optimism, hope, leisure—words that inspire us to look on the bright side of what we’re going through—but also about the seriousness of the situation we’re in. It’s like Mozart said—a little bit of the sad as well as the gay, the horrible as well as the enchanting.

Keep it for yourself, give it to a neighbor, or leave it for a delivery person as a little token to let them know someone’s thinking of them. Just as we’re thinking of you and looking forward to seeing you back in the library one day. You can quote us on that.

Instructions: How to Print, Fold, and Make This Zine

  1. You will need a printer. Or, you can hand-copy what you see on the screen on your own sheet of paper and make your own!
  2. Download and print the PDF.
  3. Follow the folding and cutting/tearing instructions in this video by writer and artist Austin Kleon.

If you’re interested in the book he mentions in the video (Watcha Mean, What’s a Zine?: The Art of Making Zines and Minicomics), we have a digital version you can check out through HathiTrust (Duke NetID required). Enjoy!

Announcement, Duke researchers, Lilly Library, Music Library, Original research, Rubenstein Library, Tips for students

Student Research and Writing Prizes: Win $1,000+

Each year, the Duke University Libraries offer four different prizes to reward excellence in student writing. If you’re a Duke student, consider submitting your work for one of these prizes. The awards carry a cash prize of $1,000 (Aptman, Holsti and Middlesworth) or $1,500 (Rosati).

All submissions must be received by June 30, 2020.

Aptman Prizes

  • The Aptman Prizes recognize undergraduates’ excellence in research, including their analysis, evaluation and synthesis of sources.
  • Any undergraduate student who uses library resources to complete a paper and project as part of his or her undergraduate coursework at Duke may be considered for an Aptman Prize.
  • See the Application Guidelines for more information about how to submit your research for consideration.

Middlesworth Awards

  • The Middlesworth Awards recognize excellence of analysis, research, and writing by Duke University students in the use of primary sources held by the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
  • All papers or projects from Duke undergraduate or graduate students that are based largely or wholly on sources in the Rubenstein Library are eligible.
  • Learn more about submitting your work.

Holsti Prize

  • The Holsti Prize recognizes excellence in undergraduate research using primary sources for political science or public policy.
  • Undergraduate papers that use primary sources and were written for a course, independent study, or thesis in the Political Science or Public Policy departments are eligible.
  • Learn more about submitting your work.

The Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award

East Campus Libraries, Interviews, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, My Duke Library, Uncategorized

Meet Lilly’s Class of 2020: Esha

What is a Vital Lilly Library Resource?

Lilly’s Senior Student Assistants

Young woman with miniature horse
Lilly Senior Esha with Kiwi at Lilly’s Stampede Of Love Study Break

Lilly Library is at the heart of East Campus, the First-Year Campus for Duke Undergraduates. To serve our community (during what used to be a “normal” semester), Lilly Library remains open for 129 hours each week! Our student assistants are an essential element in maintaining a high level of service, and we want to introduce you to one of our “Class of 2020” – seniors who have worked in Lilly Library throughout their Duke careers. Get to know our seniors in these profiles, and you’ll appreciate them as much we do.

If you’ve been in Lilly Library over the past four years, chances are you’ve seen our seniors: Esha, Jessica, Sarah, Toni, and Noelle. Esha is one of our seniors who worked at Lilly Library since she arrived as wide-eyed First-Year student on East Campus way back in August of 2016.
Commencement 2020 may be virtual, but our regard for our student assistants is very real and enduring. Take this opportunity to acquaint yourselves with Esha, one of our treasured Lilly Library Class of 2020.

Senior Esha

  • Hometown: Charlotte, NC
  • Family/siblings/pets: 1 older brother, no pets
  • Academic major: Economics and Political Science
  • Activities on campus: RA (N1 and Craven), Resident
  • Assistant Leadership Council, ULAB, Senior Giving Challenge
  • Favorite on-campus activity, besides working at Lilly: Being an RA!
  • Favorite off-campus activity: Getting ice cream at the Parlour
  • Favorite campus eatery: Sazon
  • Favorite off-campus eatery: Bali Hai
Two women students holding plaque
Lilly’s Class of 2020 Esha and Sarah

Q: If you could have a sleepover anywhere in the libraries, where would you choose, and why?
A: Green couches in Perkins first floor because they are so comfy!

Q: What’s the strangest/most interesting book or movie you’ve come across in Lilly?
A: There were so many but a single one doesn’t come to mind right now!

Q: What is your favorite part about working at Lilly? Least favorite?
A: Favorite part is working with the librarians because they are so nice/helpful, and fun to have random conversations with. Least favorite is when I have to check in/out 20+ books on my own.

Q: Why have you worked at Lilly Library ever since your first year?
A: I love working at Lilly because everyone is so friendly! They make you want to keep coming back.

Q: What is one memory from Lilly that you will never forget?
A: Having to check in two FULL-SIZED suitcases full of books by myself. I think I checked in at least 50 books!

Q: What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done in Lilly?
A: Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything crazy in Lilly.

Q: What was opening an empty (or at least, it was supposed to be empty) Lilly like? Eerie?
A: I worked the Sunday morning shift, which was really nice because there were very few people (unless it was midterm/finals season), so everything was calm and quiet. I absolutely LOVED working Sunday mornings!!

Q: How will your time at Lilly help you in your future pursuits?
A: Working at Lilly taught me to be organized and be better at time management, which is super useful no matter where I end up after leaving.
Q: What will you miss most about Lilly when you graduate?
A: I will definitely miss the librarians the most!

Q: What are your plans after graduation?
A: Who knows!

Q: What is your spirit animal? … well, you don’t expect all the questions to be about Lilly, do you?
A: Definitely an elephant

Graduation in May means Lilly Library will say farewell to Esha and our other seniors, treasured members of our Lilly “family”. We appreciate her stellar work and dedication to Lilly and wish her all the best!

Collection Spotlight, East Campus Libraries, Events, Film, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Uncategorized

Animated April: From a Stellar Sixteen to an Enchanted Eight

From a Stellar Sixteen to an Enchanted Eight

While Round One is over, and some of our stars may have fallen, we still have an Enchanted Eight remaining.  Lilly’s resident (or shall we say currently remote) analyst  Nathaniel offers his take on the results of the first round voting.

It’s Time to Vote in Round Two – HERE

Animated April’s Enchanted Eight

 

What an exciting round of action!

In the Fire Region, The Lion King‘s Simba took Rafiki’s stick and made sure Monsters Inc. did not “feel the love tonight” by trouncing them in the first round! The Incredibles, once again proving their “glory days” are here again, defeated Aladdin!

In the Ice Region, Frozen almost had a “meltdown,” but pulled out the victory over Coco by 2 votes! Meanwhile, Mulan unleashed the “dragon” and easily disposed of Wall-E.

In the Earth Region, Toy Story showed Cinderella she did not have a “friend in them” by taking her glass slippers, ushering in the midnight hour, and dispatching the would-be princess. In a touch and go affair, Belle managed to revive the downtrodden Beast and restore their championship hopes as the Beauty and the Beast rallied to defeat that pesky Ratatouille by just 2 votes!

Lastly, Under the Sea, Finding Nemo defeated Moana and in the surprise of the tournament, Up “rose to the occasion” and desiccated the Little Mermaid in a rout, not even close with a margin of victory greater than two to one!

Make your choices for the Favorite Four SOON!

VOTE

Voting closes Thursday, April 16 8pm (EDT)

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

Written by Nathaniel Brown

Contributor: Carol Terry

 

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Events, Film, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Uncategorized

Animated April

Animated April @ Lilly Library

Team Pixar or Team Disney?

Animated April @ Lilly begins Monday, April 13!

Animated April – Are you Team Pixar or Team Disney?

Brackets aren’t just for March!

Do you like Looney Tunes, the quirkiness of Wallace and Gromit, anime like Spirited Away, French comedies like The Triplets of Belleville? Are you all about Disney classics or the latest offerings from Pixar?

Lilly Library has 100s of animated films. In fact, we have so many animated films, it’s time for you to “toon” in and enjoy our very own Lilly Library Animated April challenge: Pixar versus Disney.

If it’s animated, Disney and Pixar are the dominant players, so we’re highlighting eight films from each studio to face off in a special edition of our Animated April challenge starting Monday, April 13th. Join in the fun, pick your favorites, and maybe  win a prize!

Here’s how:
Vote when you visit our  Lilly Library Animated April cast of characters HERE.

Make your selections and vote for your choice of hot titles in Bracket Fire versus films that landed in Bracket Earth to eventually face the coolest films in Bracket Ice, which challenge the animated gems making waves in Bracket Under the Sea.

Brackets with film titles
All the Characters in Animated April

Voting dates are listed below and on the contest page.
Updates will be posted on Lilly’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts as well as in our blog, Latest@Lilly :

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

Enjoy Bracketologist Nathaniel’s insights for each round:

All votes are to be submitted via Lilly Animated April .

Animated April

  • Round 1: Stellar 16:  CLOSED
  • Round 2: Enchanted 8 : CLOSED
  • Round 3: Favorite 4 : CLOSED
  • Round 4: Perfect Pair VOTE HERE
    Voting opens Monday, April 20 9am
    Voting closes Tuesday, April 21 8pm
  • Champion Crowned:  Wednesday April 22nd

*Did someone say PRIZES?
Participants who provide their Duke NetID and vote for the animated movie “champion” will be entered into drawings for virtual prizes, as well as special prizes for Duke students.

Be sure to make your picks of your favorites  – Pixar or Disney!

East Campus Libraries, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, My Duke Library, Uncategorized

Meet Lilly’s Class of 2020: Jessica

What is a Vital Lilly Library Resource?

Lilly’s Senior Student Assistants

One of Lilly’s Class of 2020 – Jessica

Lilly is at the heart of East Campus, the First-Year Campus for Duke Undergraduates. To serve our community, during what used to be a normal semester, Lilly Library remains open for 129 hours each week! Our student assistants are an essential element in maintaining a high level of service, and we want to introduce you to one of our “Class of 2020” – seniors who have worked in Lilly Library throughout their Duke careers. Get to know our seniors in these profiles, and you’ll appreciate them as much we do.

If you’ve been in Lilly Library over the past four years, chances are you’ve seen our seniors: Jess, Sarah, Esha, Toni, and Noelle. Jessica is one of our seniors who worked at Lilly Library since she arrived as wide-eyed First-Year student on East Campus way back in August of 2016.
Commencement 2020 may be virtual, but our regard for our student assistants is very real and enduring.

Take this opportunity to acquaint yourselves with Jessica, one of our treasured Lilly Library Class of 2020.

Senior  Jessica

Student with 3D Scanner
A model student: Jessica demos a 3D Scanner for a Lilly Library Facebook post
  • Hometown: Glen Rock, NJ
  • Family/siblings/pets: I have one younger brother
  • Academic major: Statistics and Computer Science
  • Activities on campus: Marching & Pep Band
  • Favorite on-campus activity, besides working at Lilly: Playing with the band at basketball games
  • Favorite off-campus activity: Used to be going for cheese and chocolate fondue at the Little Dipper on Ladies’ Night (it’s now closed though)
  • Favorite campus eatery: Div Cafe
  • Favorite off-campus eatery: Sushi Love

Q: If you could have a sleepover anywhere in the libraries, where would you choose, and why?
A: I would say the armchairs in the Thomas Reading Room. It has a very pleasant, relaxing atmosphere, and I’m pretty sure I’ve already taken accidental naps there while doing homework.

Q: What’s the most interesting book you’ve come across in Lilly?
A: The most interesting book I came across at Lilly was a photography book about Jim Marshall. Someone had just returned it and I flipped through all the photos before putting it in the bin of Perkins books.

Q: What is your favorite part about working at Lilly? Least favorite?
A: I loved having time to put down the rest of my schoolwork and thinking about something else for at least a short while. I always found the tasks at Lilly like shelving books and processing holds to be quite satisfying. I don’t think I had a least favorite part!

Q: Why have you worked at Lilly Library ever since your first year?
A: I thought about switching to Perkins after freshman year, but then I wouldn’t get to see Yunyi every week!

Q: What is one memory from Lilly that you will never forget?
A: It’s not one specific memory, but because I’m in the band, a lot of the staff would chat with me about Duke football and basketball with me, especially Yunyi. I always knew that if the basketball team lost, I would get a chance to vent and complain about the team at my next shift. I will never forget how excited the staff always was for me when I got to travel with the teams for tournament games.

Q: What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done in Lilly?
A: It’s not super crazy, but the few times I had to shelve books or straighten the stacks on the 4th level and no one was around, I would listen to music and dance to myself as I worked.

Q: How will your time at Lilly help you in your future pursuits?
A: Lilly provided the first customer service-related job I’ve ever had, and my time at Lilly certainly helped me develop skills in that area, especially with continuing to be polite even when patrons were not (although that was quite rare to encounter). It also helped me with organization, multitasking, and adaptability, skills translatable into all kinds of fields.

Q: What will you miss most about Lilly when you graduate?
A: I will definitely miss Yunyi and the other librarians/staff members the most.

Q: What are your plans for after graduation?
A: I will be working as a Data Scientist for a start-up in New York City.

Q: What is your spirit animal? … well, you don’t expect all the questions to be about Lilly, did you?
A: Always a tough question, but I guess a cat?

Student
Lilly Senior Jessica

Graduation in May means Lilly Library will say farewell to Jessica and our other seniors, treasured members of our Lilly “family”. We appreciate her stellar work and dedication to Lilly and wish her all the best!

Announcement, Collections Highlight, Cool tools, Digital Collections, e-Books, Lilly Library, Music Library, Services, Technology

Good News for Those with Their Nose in a Book

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One of the things people always say they love about libraries is the smell of old books. There’s nothing quite so comforting as the slightly musty aroma of stacks upon stacks of so much accumulated knowledge. Of all the things our students and faculty tell us they miss most during this extended period of home isolation, that ineffable library smell is up there at the top.

Now, thanks to recent advances in digital publishing, we’re excited to pilot a new feature in selected library e-books that lets you recapture that odoriferous experience virtually.

Screenshot of Scratch n Sniff e-Book
Look for the green “Scratch-n-Sniff” button in selected library e-books.

The next time you check out an e-book through our library catalog, look for the green “Scratch-n-Sniff” button in the online interface. Clicking the button will activate a feature that artificially simulates the olfactory experience of reading text on vintage, yellowed paper. Just gently scratch your display as you read to be transported back to your favorite reading nook in the library.

The first time you use the “Scratch-n-Sniff” feature, you may need to lean in close to your monitor and breathe deeply to get the full effect. The application isn’t compatible with all browsers. But if your operating system is up-to-date, you should be able adjust the display settings in the control panel of your PC or mobile device to strengthen the smell.

Library users are also advised to scratch carefully, as sharp fingernails and aggressive scratching may damage your monitor and cause the “Scratch-n-Sniff” function not to work properly.

“Over the years, e-books have represented a larger and larger percentage of library collections, even as some researchers—particularly those in the humanities—continue to turn their nose up at them,” said Jeff Kosokoff, Assistant University Librarian for Collection Strategy. “We understand. Nothing quite compares to the age-old experience of immersing yourself in a physical book. But now that digital is the only option for a while, we’re doing everything we can to replicate the experience Duke’s world-class students and faculty are accustomed to.”

“We had to pay through the nose for this add-on feature,” Kosokoff added, “but it’s worth it to keep our Duke community feeling connected to their library.”

Fans of the classics will be particularly pleased to know that the earlier a book’s original publication date, the mustier it smells. For instance, clicking the “Scratch-n-Sniff” button while reading an electronic copy of David Copperfield (which happens to be our next selection for the Low Maintenance Book Club, by the way) is like holding a real first-edition Dickens up to your nose.

The “Scratch-n-Sniff” e-book feature is available for a limited time for selected e-books in our library catalog and works with most PCs, laptops, Apple and Android devices, and e-readers, including Amazon Kindle, Kobo Libra, and Barnes and Noble Nook. It does not work with Internet Explorer, however.

Library user sniffing ebook screen
Is this fragrant feature for real? Unfortunately it snot. Happy April Fools’ Day, Dukies. Smell ya later!

East Campus Libraries, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, My Duke Library

Meet Lilly’s Class of 2020 – Sarah

2 Comments

What is a Vital Lilly Library Resource?

Lilly’s Senior  Student Assistants

woman looking at stacks of books
Many “happy” book returns greet Lilly Senior Sarah

Lilly is at the heart of East Campus, the First-Year Campus for Duke Undergraduates. To serve our community, during what used to be a “normal” semester, Lilly Library remains open for 129 hours each week! Our student assistants are an essential element in maintaining a high level of service, and we want to introduce you to one of our “Class of 2020” – seniors who have worked in Lilly Library throughout their Duke careers. Get to know our seniors in these profiles, and you’ll appreciate them as much we do.

If you’ve been in Lilly Library over the past four years, chances are you’ve seen our seniors: Jessica, Sarah, Esha, Toni, and Noelle. Sarah is one of our seniors who worked at Lilly Library since she arrived as wide-eyed First-Year student on East Campus way back in August of 2016.

Commencement 2020 may be virtual, but our regard for our student assistants is very real and enduring. Take this opportunity to acquaint yourselves with Sarah, one of our treasured Lilly Library Class of 2020.

Senior Sarah

Woman sitting in front of pumpkins
Sarah at the North Carolina State Fair
  • Hometown: Flower Mound, Texas (north of Dallas)
  • Family/siblings/pets: Mom, Dad, younger sister (in her first year of college)
  • Academic major: Biomedical Engineering
  • Activities on campus: Club Swimming, Sport Clubs Executive Board, RA (in Neighborhood 1 on East, then in Crowell/Wannamaker), former FYLAB / UAB member
  • Favorite on-campus activity (besides working at Lilly): Swimming with Club Swim!
  • Favorite off-campus activity: I love going to sporting events, and my favorite annual event to attend since I have moved here for college is the North Carolina State Fair.
  • Favorite campus eatery: Pitchforks (nothing beats 24-hour service)
  • Favorite off-campus eatery: The Pit (BBQ)

Q: If you could have a sleepover anywhere in the libraries, where would you choose, and why?
A: Probably the Thomas Room, because it has really comfy chairs and the doors on both ends lock so I would feel safer…

Q: What’s the strangest/most interesting book or movie you’ve come across in Lilly?
A: I can’t think of a specific strange example right now, but a special DVD to me is DVD 30,000 (The Princess Bride) which the class of 2020 got to pick!

Q: What is your favorite part about working at Lilly? Least favorite?
A: My favorite part is all the librarians that have been so kind and supportive to me during my time working at Lilly. I always feel so welcome in the library and it became a sort of safe haven for me during my time at Duke. My least favorite part is walking through the library at closing time, because it’s dark and I keep thinking someone will jump out at me and scare me. Also, having to drive back to west campus at 4am.

Q: Why have you worked at Lilly Library ever since your first year?
A: Because of the librarians! I started working at Lilly my first year because I really loved libraries and reading throughout my childhood and had volunteered at my public library in high school. I chose to stay throughout the years (even during the time I spent living on West Campus) because of the friendships I made with the people I worked with and because of the increased trust that everyone placed in me.

Q: What is one memory from Lilly that you will never forget?
A: The little things the staff did for the student workers to make us feel appreciated – candy for every Halloween and Valentine’s Day, and student worker lunches at the end of every semester during Finals week. Even though after my first year I knew these things were coming, they were still always a nice surprise.

Q: What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done in Lilly? A: I don’t know how crazy this is, but I’ve definitely fallen asleep at the desk while working the late night shift a few times more than I’d like to admit…

Q: What was closing, or opening an empty (or at least, it was supposed to be empty) Lilly like? Eerily empty, people reluctant to leave, unexpected people?
A: I worked a closing shift every week for the last three years I worked at Lilly, and most of the time people filtered out on their own within five minutes of closing time (even if they didn’t want to). I did sometimes get some interesting people that would filter through the building or have strange requests of me (for example, one time I got a call from a father who wanted me to find his daughter in the building and give her a message – but didn’t even know if she was actually at Lilly). Most of the time, though, the only spooky part was walking through the library alone and hoping no one was staking out to scare me. I only worked opening shifts at Lilly every once in a while, but it was always nice to come into an empty, quiet building and get to watch the early risers trickle in!

Q: How will your time at Lilly help you in your future pursuits?
A: Lilly has taught me a lot of lessons about how to serve others and how to be a go-getter. Working behind the desk in particular has built a lot of confidence for me in talking to people I don’t know and helping to serve them. As an engineer, I might not always be in a customer-facing position, but having that experience will certainly give me a boost over those who are not as comfortable working in service roles.

Q: What will you miss most about Lilly when you graduate?
A: Both the librarians, who have always been so nice to me, and the space as I remember it in my head. I know with renovations coming to Lilly in the future that when I come to visit as an alum, I might no longer be able to walk around the space knowing exactly where everything is. I will miss that feeling of knowing a place so well.

Q: What are your plans for after graduation?
A: This summer I will be interning at Garmin International in Cary, NC to complete my internship requirement for the Master of Engineering program at Duke, and then I will graduate from Duke again in May of 2021!

Q: What is your spirit animal? … well, you don’t expect all the questions to be about Lilly, did you?
A: My favorite animal is a monkey so I will go with that!

Sarah and her Club Swim teammates

Graduation in May means Lilly Library will say farewell to Sarah and our other seniors, treasured members of our Lilly “family”. We hope to see Sarah while she continues her graduate studies at Duke next year, even if she no longer works with us. We appreciate her stellar work and dedication to Lilly and wish her all the best!

Collections, e-Books, Feature Articles, Humanities, Just for Fun

Overdrive and Libby are always open!

Maybe you’re finding yourself with more free time now that all of of your social events and entertainment/shows have been canceled. Maybe you just need a break from it all. Either way now might be a great time to pick up a good book, and we still have you covered with Overdrive.

Overdrive at Duke

We have ebooks and audiobooks on a variety of subjects and genres, including graphic novels, humor, and fantasy. You just need your netID. You can borrow titles for 21 days, and you can download to  all major computers and devices, including iPhones®, iPads®, Nooks®, Android™ phones and tablets, and Kindles®.

Overdrive at Your Public Library

It’s quite possible that the public library in your area has Overdrive, so take a look there too. Our friends at the Durham County Public Library has a wonderful collection that is worth checking out!

Libby

Duke Libraries is now available on the Libby app, which allows you to consolidate your checkouts across multiple libraries onto a single digital shelf. The app works with both smartphones and tablets. If you like to switch between reading on your phone and tablet, the app will sync your bookmarks and notes between devices so you won’t be left wondering where you last stopped reading. Libby also works with audiobooks!

Database Tip, Library Hacks, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Database Tips & Tricks: Nexis Uni

What do business, criminal justice, political science, company dossiers, and patents all have in common?

All of these can all be found onNexis Uni Image!

Nexis Uni is a database containing over 15,000 credible news, legal  and business sources. Need US Treaties? They have it. Need company profiles? They have it. Need news in general? They have it.

NexisUni is a great resource and it’s relatively easy to use so let’s get started!

Of course, you’ll want to sign up/sign in.

This allows you to:

  • Create, share, & have folders shared with you
  • Create alerts
  • Customize display & document settings and search filters
  • View search history, document history, Shepard’s history,  & a Research map
You’re signed in, you’re set up, so let’s get searching!

Enter terms, phrases, companies, questions, whatever you like and it’ll bring you to the results page.

The Results Page

  • Above the results, you’ll find options to save the results to a folder, print, email, download the list or individual docs, send to google drive or dropbox, export citations, and sort.
  •  On the left is the category (news, law reviews, cases, etc) you’re currently viewing.

Document Page

The document page has different sections depending on the document type, but each page has an “About” and “Notes” section.

  • The about section will have the source information, related content, and the Shepard’s Signal if it’s a legal document.
  • The notes section allows you to annotate, copy, highlight, add to a search or folder your selected text.

Other Helpful Tips

  • If you need help reading the style of their documents:
    1. Go to advanced search from the home page
    2. Choose the tab that applies (All, Legal, Business, or News) and the content you’re looking for under the specific tab
    3. On the right you’ll see a section called, “Search Field Examples,” select to enlarge, and it is a helpful guide on how to read the document in that category.
  • If you see glasses , you’ve viewed the item before.
  • More Helpful Features
  • How to Customize Your Settings

And there you have it! You’ve got the basics of how to use Nexis Uni!

Happy Researching, Friends!

Announcement, Collections, Events, Just for Fun, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library, Tips for students

$1,500 Prize for Book Collecting

NOTE: Due to changes in the university’s operations in light of COVID-19, the Nadelle Prize for Book Collecting has been postponed.

Attention, student bibliophiles!

The Duke University Libraries are proud to present the 2020 Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting. The contest is open to all students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate/professional degree program at Duke, and the winners will receive cash prizes!

First Prize

Undergraduate division: $1,500
Graduate division: $1,500

Second Prize

Undergraduate division: $750
Graduate division: $750

Winners of the contest will receive any in-print Grolier Club book of their choice, as well as a three-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America.

Winners 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.

You don’t have to be a “book collector” to enter the contest. Past collections have varied in interest areas and included a number of different types of materials. Collections are judged on adherence to a clearly defined unifying theme, not rarity or monetary value.

Interested in entering? Visit our website for more information and read winning entries from past years. Contact Kurt Cumiskey at kurt.cumiskey@duke.edu with any questions.

Entries must be received by March 30, 2020.

Foreign languages, International and Area Studies Department

Part 2: How can Librarians Teach with Materials in German Script?

This post is contributed by Heidi Madden, Librarian for Western European and Medieval/Renaissance Studies.

The Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds  the papers of Oskar Morgenstern, whose diaries span the years 1917-1977. The diaries were digitized, a few years ago, in a collaboration between the Rubenstein Library  and  the University of Graz, Austria, and can be seen at the Oskar Morgenstern Website.  This 50-year-long personal archive of a renowned scientist is an ideal Open Educational Resource for teaching with primary sources. How can librarians help students use this wonderful material in courses at Duke and at other institutions?

An understanding of  the historic development of German Script will show why the Morgenstern Papers are very approachable, even though they look difficult to decipher at first.  The older, pre-1900 versions of German Script allowed for many individual and regional variations for forming letters. The chart below shows the many ways in which an individual writer might have shaped their letters in the18th and 19th century:

The reason why 20th century Script is easier to read is because, between 1910 and 1915, several regional German-language  school systems simplified German Script to make it easier for students to learn. Ludwig Sütterlin, a graphic artist working in Berlin, designed a script for the Prussian educational ministry that became popular very quickly. This script was known as the Sütterlin Script (Sütterlinschrift), and became the handwriting taught in most German schools until 1941, including the ones attended by the young Oskar Morgenstern.

Taking a closer look at Morgenstern’s handwriting, it is interesting to compare the cover page inscription with the first page of the diary.  It is immediately clear that the loose leaf inscription was added later, when Morgenstern’s handwriting had become more modernized.  It would be totally possible for students to learn to decipher Morgenstern’ s hand (with some human help and some charts) during a session with these materials. Furthermore, as the team at the University of Graz continues their transcription, students can use the website to improve their German reading skills by comparing the scans of the original pages with the transcription, and they can copy and paste the plain text into a translating tool like DeepL.

German Script and Blackletter have an ideological association with nationalism in 1871 (see “Antiqua-Fraktur debate”) and a visual association with fascist propaganda under Hitler. It is understandable that American students associate Blackletter with fascism.  In fact, today Germans themselves recoil whenever populists and rightwing groups use Blackletter in their event publicity. However, Nazi Germany did not invent these styles. The historical  irony is that the Nazi government first embraced  German Script and Blackletter typeface as “German” and then outlawed the styles in 1941 as “Jewish.”  That is why it is important to teach reading German Script and Blackletter with circumspection and as an auxiliary tool of historical research.

While the styles have that tainted heritage, students should not forget that these styles were also used by diverse German-language communities across the centuries. Rubenstein Library has an amazing collection of German Studies materials and interdisciplinary materials in the German language  across several of the Rubenstein Centers serve to prove this point. Outstanding collections in German Studies are German Americana, the Harold Jantz Collection, German Judaica and Religion, Alchemy, Science, and Medicine, World War II and National Socialism, and collections for the study of Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries, including important literary editions, and editions that illustrate the history of printing.  Other examples of German-language materials across the disciplines are the Heschel Collection, the J. Walter Thompson archives in advertising, and the Viennese Economists’ Archives. In fact, a search for German-language materials in the Rubenstein Collections comes up with over 300,000 hits. Our teaching with Rubenstein Library materials ensures that these archival collections never become a  Library of  the Unreadable. The Morgenstern example shows just what efforts and resources are needed for transcription and translation, as well as what treasures may be uncovered in the process.

What follows are some resources for learning to read  and write German Script. The  Geist Institute  in Winston Salem, NC, offers a week long Script course every year. The course draws researchers and genealogists from across the country, as well as staff and volunteer researchers from the Moravian Archives in Winston-Salem, an archive for the local community of Moravians, founded by German protestants (the Herrnhuters) in 1753.  Other German Script workshops in the US are held at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA. , and at the Center for Family History & Genealogy and Department of History at Brigham Young University, Utah, which also offers a thorough online tutorial, the German Script Tutorial.

The  Geist Institute in Winston-Salem, NC will hold the workshop again this year, from July 25 to August 1, 2020. The workshop leader, Julie Tomberlin, Ph.D., recommends the following key resources to prepare and deepen the study of  German Script:

  • Dearden, Fay, and Leland K. Meitzler, 2013, Deciphering Gothic records: useful hints for helping you read “Old German” script!, provides tables of Old German Script alphabet variations.
  • Digitale Schriftkunde, Bavarian State Archives, provides examples and transcription by century, and is a good addition to the the German Script Tutorial from the Center for Family History & Genealogy and Department of History at Brigham Young University, Utah.
  • Minert, Roger P. 2013, Deciphering handwriting in German documents: analyzing German, Latin, and French in historical manuscripts, provides a history of German Script, and gives many tips on best practices in reading German Script, including reference works.
  • Schober, Katherine, 2018, Tips and tricks of deciphering German handwriting: a translator’s tricks of the trade for transcribing German genealogy documents, provides a good starting point for understanding strategies for working on German Script documents efficiently. For example, a reader can start by looking at how a particular writer forms the common words like articles and question words, they can look for distinctly formed letters across several documents by the same writer, and build a register of how particular letters are formed.
  • Süß, Harald. 1991. Deutsche Schreibschrift Lesen und Schreiben lernen (2 volumes: Lehrbuch and Übungsbuch)  Augsburg: Augustus-Verl., is a highly visual introduction to German Script together with many examples and detailed notes on stroke order. Learning the stroke order for each letter helps trace older more varied forms of handwriting when working with original documents.
  • Verdenhalven, Fritz, 1994, Die deutsche Schrift: ein Übungsbuch = The German script. Frankfurt/M.: Verl. f. Standesamtswesen, offers many examples of script and transcription side by side, which is very helpful in training the eye of the reader.

Digital Tools for reading Script are emerging. For example, the archive for German Colonial History has developed a reading tool called  Old German Script-Typewriter (Kurrent-Schreibmaschine). You type in the letters you can decipher, and the tool looks in various historical dictionaries for a term that might fit.  Another tool, Alte Deutsche Schrift allows you to enter words in plain text, and see the Script version underneath; this makes it possible to double check a transcription, by mapping every transcribed letter back to what the word should look like in Script. The site also helps to train the eye; enter your name in the text field and and click through results in several styles:

For more information about Script resources, especially more detail about the Geist Institute Script course in Winston-Salem, NC, contact Heidi Madden.

 

 

Foreign languages, International and Area Studies Department

Part 1: A Library of the Unreadable?

This post is contributed by Heidi Madden, Librarian for Western European and Medieval/Renaissance Studies. 

Documents in German Script (cursive handwriting) and books and pamphlets  printed in Blackletter typeface (Fraktur) represent the lives of many diverse German-language communities from the 15th to the 20th century. However, as many scholars can attest, these Scripts are notoriously difficult to read. So how can libraries and librarians help students and researchers learn paleography?

Rubenstein Library (RL) has a very active instruction  program and  I frequently collaborate with Rubenstein librarian Elizabeth Dunn on teaching with materials in old handwriting, both in English and German. We work with faculty to  “literally”  help students read the Script and Blackletter.  In fact, Elizabeth began building  a small library of transcriptions that she sets up alongside the original documents. Students are always fascinated by the idea of immersing themselves in these unique materials, especially pieces of correspondence recounting private lives, which make the past come alive.

While brainstorming ideas about possible materials for a recent RL session, Elizabeth and I  decided that making the  Oskar Morgenstern papers more approachable could be a wonderful pedagogical project. Oskar Morgenstern was a German-born economist, university professor, and author in Austria and the United States. Together with John von Neumann, he founded the mathematical field of game theory and its application to the field of economics. The Rubenstein collection includes Morgenstern’s handwritten diaries, spanning the years 1917-1977. The diaries were digitized,  a few years ago, in a collaboration between Rubenstein Library  and  the University of Graz, Austria, and can be seen at the Oskar Morgenstern Website.

German Script and Blackletter are notoriously resistant to machine reading, i.e. scanning with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.  This means that all  of the Morgenstern documents have had to be transcribed manually, word by word and letter by letter. A team of researchers at University of Graz has already transcribed entries from the late 1930s to 1976; they have also built an index of Morgenstern’s  network of collaborators. However, the published results of their labor have appeared only in German.  Nevertheless, this combination of unique , local, manuscript holdings and an active, freely accessible,  digital project presented an ideal opportunity for creating a meaningful and memorable Rubenstein Library session.

Assuming that college students would  relate particularly well to documents from the author’s early years,  I decided to transcribe the inscription on the cover sheet and the very first page of the diary, dated March 14, 1917, and  written when Oskar Morgenstern was just 15 years old. Here is an image of the inside cover page of Oskar’s diary:

Image Label: Oskar Morgenstern Diary entry from March 14, 1917.

After transcribing the diary entry, I translated it as follows:

March 14, 1917 

“So, you shall be my diary, you shall hear all that is important to me and be a trustworthy keeper! On Monday the 12th my father brought home Gloy: Train your Memory. And I am very grateful to him. It is excellent, and I need to work through it. Tomorrow we have a Latin test. Schmitzi thinks it will be “child’s play,” but he says that about everything that he can translate. I have no confidence when it comes to this, and I just need to study so much harder, because I must get a C (3= Genügend).  The German Emperor is right when he calls exams in Latin inane nonsense. Yesterday we were in the chemistry laboratory because the academic High School building saw a case of Scarlet fever, and the classrooms had to be disinfected. Today we were once again in the usual classroom.The idea of auto suggestion from Gloy is excellent. I must adhere to all instructions. I convinced myself that I would succeed in the Latin exam. Will that be of any use?

 Thank God that the cursed exam is over. Of course Feldman is right again. I maintain that it is “patiaris” and he says “passiusis”. Wechs says I am right. But he won’t concede the point, stupid games. Tomorrow we will probably get back the math exam. How will it turn out? Let’s hope for the best. In Petersburg a revolution broke out, hopefully the French will imitate this, and hang all the crooked ones!!
I am going to train my left hand. I have to be able to write as well with the left as with the right hand, that will double the power of my brain. Why should I ignore that possibility, and not use it to my advantage? Enough for today, especially since I have nothing else to report, and I want to go to bed. I will wake up at 6 am. Auto suggestion.”

This is just the first entry in a diary spanning 50 years. Yet even this single entry shows how many questions one might pursue when working with students in a session on the use of primary (archival) sources. Putting aside young Oskar’s laudatory reference to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it may be best to focus on something smaller and closer to home.  For example, the reference to training your memory is to Hans Gloy, Gedächtnis-Ausbildung, 1913. Gloy (born in 1888) was a German merchant, who also wrote advice pieces for trade journals.  The table of contents of the Gloy volume shows that the book is a training manual, organized into daily exercises, spaced over the course of seven weeks.  The training, however, is not physical, but intellectual.  Indeed, Gloy’s manual is part of a long tradition of practical memory training (also known as  mnemonics, memory sports, mental discipline, study skills, or cognitive learning,–) an area of study that is curiously located between Greek philosophy and self-help books.  And now, thanks to our transcription and translation of Oskar’s first diary entry, we know that such mental gymnastics also informed the ideas of the man who invented game theory.

Image Label; Cover of the book by Hans Gloy Gedächtnis-Ausbilding. 1913, and biographical entry in Degeners Wer ist’s? 1935

In Part 2 “How Can Librarians Teach with Materials in German Script?” We will discuss the digitized Oskar Morgenstern diaries as an Open Educational Resource, and will offer some resources for teaching German Script for students and teachers at Duke and beyond. For questions, contact Heidi Madden

Announcement, Duke researchers, Events, Lilly Library, Music Library, Original research, Tips for students

Nominations Open for Undergraduate Research Talks

Nominations are now open for a new undergraduate invited speaker event featuring students who have shown excellence in using the Libraries’ materials as part of their coursework, honors thesis, or other capstone project. Nominated students may be invited to present about the process of conducting their research at the event “Research as Process: An Undergraduate Research Showcase.”

Participants will be selected from a variety of disciplines, featuring research conducted on varied topics and with different methods (from data visualization to papers to websites), all of which have unique processes for research.

Nominees must have conducted their research between the Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters for consideration.

To nominate a student, faculty must submit a letter of support on the student’s behalf.

Additional information and the nomination form may be found here:
https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8kssGkDfILK3DN3

Important Dates & Deadlines

  • March 15: Nominations must be submitted by the end of the day
  • April 1: Invited participants will be notified

The event is scheduled for Monday, April 20, at 11:00 a.m. in The Edge Workshop Room (Bostock 127).

For Questions and Additional Info

Please contact Ciara Healy (ciara.healy@duke.edu).

Collections, East Campus Libraries, Exhibits, Just for Fun, Librarians, Lilly Library, Uncategorized

The Big Book in Lilly Library

THE BIG BOOK

by Lee Sorensen
Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance, Lilly Library

Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company / Featured plate: Eugene Atget Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve [PC: Metropolitan Museum of Art: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis Gift, 2005]
What is that “big book” on display in the lobby of Lilly Library? Its proper title is  Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company. This book is a gift to Duke University Libraries from the Nasher Museum of Art, and will remain in Lilly through the spring semester.

With the rise of e-books and readers, one of the most uncommon and increasingly rare printed formats is the folio book, defined by one student as, “too damn large to carry.” In the days before book criteria included portability, giant books were produced to contain actual-size documents such as building plans and engravings, detailed scientific renderings and later, photography.

 

man with big book
Librarian Lee Sorensen with the book Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company

The “big book” on display is a modern edition of photographs from the Gilman Paper Company, New York. The firm had one of the best private collections of photographs in the world,  which was acquired by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 . This magisterial book contains reprinted photographs of photographers such as Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Fox Talbot, Eugene Atget and Edward S. Curtis.  The edition was curated by Pierre Apraxine, with plates created  by renowned photographer and printer Richard Benson (who was also the Dean of Yale School of Art), and notes contributed by photography consultant Lee Marks. This volume, printed by Stamperia Valdonega in Verona, Italy, and half-bound in leather, is the only one in North Carolina outside of the Mint Museum, Charlotte.

Pages are turned periodically to show new images. 47 cm in length, the volume  consists of 480 pages with 199 offset lithographs plus an offset lithographic frontispiece.

Contributor: Carol Smolka Terry
Lilly Library

Cool tools, Database Tip, Instruction, Knowledge Bytes, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources, Technology, Tips and Tricks

Find Article PDFs Faster with This Browser Plugin

Guest post by Amanda Rizki, Cary Gentry, and Sujeit Llanes, practicum students in our Assessment and User Experience Department.

Are you one of the many students who prefer to browse the web for scholarly articles? 

Do you use Wikipedia as your starting point for research? 

Do you do most of your research before you come to the library’s website?

Maybe you are frustrated by having to relocate each article you find cited on scholarly websites within the Duke Libraries’ databases? 

Nomad Plug-In for Chrome is the tool for you! Nomad is a browser plugin for Google Chrome that helps you find journal article PDFs quickly and easily. Nomad connects your Duke Libraries access to articles found while browsing in Wikipedia, PubMed, or directly on publishers’ websites. 

Once you install the plugin, it will scan the sites you read online for journal article identifiers. When it sees an article that is available through Duke, it provides easy PDF or link access with a consistent, easy-to-find button. Links bring you to a fully accessible article page – no further login required. PDFs can be downloaded directly to your computer. 

Nomad was created by Third Iron, the same company that makes LibKey and BrowZine. The plug-in does not collect any information about you, so the tool is safe to use with your personal information and Duke log-in. While Nomad reads web pages for articles that Duke Library provides access to, it is still your Duke credentials that allow the link or download to move forward. 

An example of Nomad at work in a Wikipedia article about cardiovascular disease.

 

Nomad provides one-click access to articles in PubMed search results.

 

Get Nomad for Chrome today!

Need more assistance setting up this plug-in?  Keep reading!

Plug-ins are extra bits of software that you can add to your internet browser – in this case, to Google Chrome. Google organizes all of the plug-ins available for their browser on a site called Chrome Web Store. This plug-in, Nomad, is free, but some plug-ins must be purchased. 

1. Open Google Chrome. If you have not already installed it, Chrome is available via Google. 

2. In Chrome, type “Chrome libkey nomad” in the address bar and choose the first result. Or open this link.

3. Click the “Add to Chrome” button in the upper right corner of the page:

4. A small popup window will appear. The browser will ask for you to verify that you want to add the plug-in (called the extension) to your computer. 


5. After the plug-in installs, it will prompt you to select your institution.  Choose “Duke University” from the dropdown menu. 

6. The plugin is now ready to use. You can close the window and proceed to browse normally. 

Announcement, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library, Services, Tips for students

Students: Take Our Survey. You Could Win a $150 Amazon Gift Card!

1 Comment
Happiness meter
Your feedback matters! We use data from this survey to make service enhancements, expenditures, and other library improvements. See the list of examples below for changes we’ve made in response to previous user surveys.

Here in the Libraries, we’re always trying to up our game. That’s why every two years we invite Duke students to take part in a brief user survey to help us better understand their experiences and thoughts on library spaces, collections, and services.

The survey takes no more than 5 minutes to complete and will remain open between now and February 12, 2020.

As a special thank you for participating, all student respondents will be entered into a raffle for a $150 Amazon gift card.

When libraries and students work together, everybody wins. Take a look at some of the improvements we’ve made over the last four years as a direct result of our user surveys.

Changes We Made in Response to Our 2016 and 2018 User Surveys

  • Oasis Perkins: You asked for a space to relax and de-stress. We worked with DuWell to develop Oasis Perkins on the fourth floor of the library.
  • Prayer & Meditation Room: You asked for a private place to pray and meditate while in the library. We converted a study room into a space for quiet reflection.
  • Hot/cold water dispensers: You asked for access to hot filtered water 24/7. We added two hot/cold water dispensers to Bostock (floor 3) and Perkins (floor 4).
  • Increased textbook lending: You asked for more textbooks to be available from the library. We purchased textbooks for the 100 highest enrollment classes at Duke and made them available for three-hour checkout at the library.
  • Coffee vending machine: You asked for access to coffee 24/7. We added a coffee and hot beverage vending machine to the lounge in The Edge.
  • Office supplies vending machine: You asked for easy access to important supplies like whiteboard markers and charging cables. We stocked a vending machine in The Edge with school supplies.
  • Better signage for reservable study rooms: You asked for clearer policies so you know when to reserve a room and when you can drop in without advance planning. We revamped our room reservation policy and added eye-catching signage to study rooms.
  • Clearer policies for study spaces: You asked for noise norms so you know where to go when you need to get work done. We added colorful signage to indicate which floors are for gabbing and which are for stuff done.
  • E-newsletter: You asked for more info about library events and research tools. We developed a regular e-newsletter, chock full of handy tips and interesting tidbits about library exhibits, programs, collections.
  • Inclusive spaces statement and signage: You asked for visible confirmation that Duke Libraries are open to everyone. We worked with students to develop an Inclusive Spaces Statement and created “Libraries are for everyone” buttons for staff to wear and posted signs in Lower Level 2.
  • Quiet study zones, food-free spaces: You asked for quiet study zones and spaces where food is not permitted. We designated distraction-free spaces and added signage.
  • Lower Level 2 improvements: You asked for a better vibe in Perkins Lower Level 2. We replaced the carpet, changed the paint color, and added brighter lighting.
  • Better WiFi access on the patio: You asked for more study spaces with natural light. We enhanced WiFi access on the patio outside Perkins & Bostock so you can study in the sunshine.

Feedback is what helps the Libraries grow, and the more input we get, the better we’ll be able to renovate, rethink, and improve.

So please, take a couple minutes of your time to complete the 2020 survey—and thank you for your help in making the Duke University Libraries a better place.

Collections, Foreign languages, International and Area Studies Department, International Trips

The Frankfurt International Book Fair 2019. Part 1

This post is by Heidi Madden, Librarian for Western European and Medieval/Renaissance Studies, and Sarah How, European Studies Librarian at Cornell University. 

International book fairs provide great opportunities for librarians to discover new books and other media; learn of new trends in publishing, translation, design, and book production; and build personal connections that directly benefit both their own work and that of their home institutions. Being abroad, being there in person, immersed in the language and culture of another place, is in itself of significant benefit, although one that is difficult to quantify. That is why we are grateful for the opportunity afforded by this library blog to write about our experiences at the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair, and thereby to describe some of those benefits.

For international and area studies librarians, book fair visits are an essential component not only of professional development but also of collection development.  That serious research libraries need materials that would not — could not, economically — be provided by our standard commercial supply channels is accepted wisdom in the profession. Book fair visits are an efficient way to address this need, since they make it possible to interact with many publishers at once, in a single exhibition space. In addition, cultural and linguistic immersion at international fairs strengthens the skills and knowledge that support research services and give academic librarians “street cred” with international students and faculty, as well as researchers engaged in foreign-language humanities, social sciences, and area studies. Visits to specialized bookstores, meetings with local librarians, and visits to local libraries and cultural institutions can be squeezed-in around a busy fair schedule for additional benefit.  This is especially true for those librarians who are able to attend an international book fair in a place as rich in resources as Frankfurt, Germany.

The logo of the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair. 

The Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse), an annual international event for the publishing trade community, is the world’s largest book fair.  This Fair is fundamentally a commercial event, focused as it is on the business of publishing and related industries. It is the place, for example, where publishers, agents, authors, illustrators, film makers, translators, printers, authors, media specialists, book distributors, and libraries negotiate and license rights for distribution, publishing, translation, and film and media versions of the items on display. However, the Frankfurt Book Fair is also the occasion for substantial programming related to contemporary literature and, as we shall see, can even serve as a forum for robust cultural and political debates. Similarly-designed book fairs, more regional in scope, are held in Paris (Salon du livre), Bologna (Bologna Children’s Book Fair), Madrid (Liber), Guadalajara (International Book Fair), Beijing (International Book Fair), Hong Kong (Book Fair), and Moscow (International Book Fair), to name just a few.

According to established tradition, the Frankfurt Book Fair lasts for 5 days, from Wednesday to Sunday. The first three days are usually focused on exhibiting books. On those days, a European Studies librarian can, for example, peruse the publishing program of dozens and dozens of publishers from every European country, including small, independent presses. On the weekend, the fair is open to the public, and books are sold directly to individuals. On those days the sections of the fair devoted to publishers of graphic novels, cookbooks, travel literature, zines, and German language fiction are jammed with people and cosplay participants. In October 2019, 302,267 individuals from 100 countries visited the Frankfurt Book Fair. There, they were met by 7,500 exhibitors and encountered 400,000 individual books, maps, manuscripts, visual materials, and digital media objects (audio and e-books).

The special exhibit of the guest country Norway combined nature imagery, mirrors, and book tables designed to represent poems in spatial dimensions. Norway also celebrated 500 years of the printed book (Nidaros Missal and the Nidaros Breviary, from 1519) in the exhibit.

Each year, Frankfurt hosts a “Guest of Honor” country: Norway was the 2019 Guest. The guiding theme for the Norwegian events and exhibits was “The Dream We Carry.” The theme title was inspired by the famous Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge, and his poem “It is that Dream.”  Norway sponsored prominent Norwegian writers, who spoke and schmoozed with the attendees, while fair organizers produced a free bibliography of new publications from Norway in German translation to promote writers and publishers to the German reading public. Karl Ove Knausgård, a Norwegian author who has been described as one of the 21st century’s greatest literary sensations, spoke in several different settings, both about his own work and about his recent experience curating an exhibit on Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, whose best known work, The Scream, has become one of the most iconic images of world art. In other interviews, contemporary Norwegian authors Erik Fosnes Hansen and Erika Fatland covered a diversity of topics, from the Oslo cultural scene to food science, which is at the heart of Hansen’s novel Et Hummerliv (“A Lobster’s Life”). Maja Lunde spoke about her forthcoming book The End of the Ocean, while Jo Nesbø was interviewed about Knife, the next installment in his Harry Hole series of crime novels.  More highlights and full listing of authors can be found in the online program.

Karl Ove Knausgård amd Jurgen Boos (CEO of the Frankfurt Book Fair)

Norwegian literature was represented by many authors reading from their work.

In addition to lectures and authors’ talks, the Frankfurt Book Fair also hosts special celebrations for the winners of the Nobel Prize, the German Book Prize, and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Overall, ninety-three prizes were awarded by various organizations during the book fair in 2019. Polish-born 2018 Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk (awarded in 2019) spoke at the opening session of the Fair. Oddly, Austrian-born Peter Handke, the 2019 Nobel Laureate, was not present in person, and was only represented by his publisher’s special display. Handke’s absence did not prevent him from becoming the subject of intense controversy. Saša Stanišić, the winner of the 2019 German Book Prize, who fled to Germany with his Bosnian mother and Serbian father in 1992, was the most prominent voice at the book fair, taking Handke to task for his sympathetic attitude toward former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes.

World newspapers, including The Guardian, chronicled the Handke debate.  One of its articles, entitled “A troubling choice: authors criticise Peter Handke’s controversial Nobel win. reported on the views of famous international writers, such as Salman Rushdie, Hari Kunzru and Slavoj Žižek who opined that the 2019 Nobel laureate “‘combines great insight with shocking ethical blindness’.” Another article, entitled “Peter Handke’s Nobel prize dishonours the victims of genocide,” referenced the Austrian writer’s stance on the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, which has been characterized by some critics as genocide apologism. At some point during October 2019, Peter Handke announced that he would no longer speak to journalists, so for now the debate will continue in literary circles, and will most likely re-emerge around the December 10, 2019 Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.

The 2019 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was awarded to Sebastião Salgado, the first ever photographer to receive this prize.  During the course of several interviews, the Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist introduced his book Gold, which showcases haunting images of Amazonia taken in the 1980s. As with his other work, Gold highlights environmental and human rights issues by investigating habitats and communities with his camera.

Cultural events inspired by Norway as the Guest of Honor were only a fraction of the international author events and talks at the Fair and in the city of Frankfurt. The gala of literary stars included Margaret Atwood, Maja Lunde, Elif Shafak, Colson Whitehead, Ken Follett, and Jo Nesbø (video Highlights can be seen on the Fair’s website). More media outlets broadcast from the book fair than can be mentioned here. The two outlets with the most video content are ARD Mediathek and  ZDF Mediathek, especially the venue “Das Blaue Sofa,” which gives access to 90 interviews with authors from the Frankfurt 2019 fair alone.  Social media followed along under #fmb19, and have already transitioned to the hashtag for the 2020 fair, #fbm20, as planning for the next fair gets underway. Canada will be the Guest of Honor at the 2020 Frankfurt Book Fair.

On Saturday and Sunday, while the public floods into the fairgrounds, specialized, ticketed, professional events are held at the Frankfurt Book Fair.  The two that we attended this year were the 7th International Convention of University Presses 2019, which focused on the European Accessibility Act, and an event for non-fiction editors. The non-fiction publishing event “Non-fiction Publishing: It’s a Women’s World,” consisted of a panel and discussion with female publishers from Morocco, Turkey, India, and Norway, who spoke about their experiences with producing important works documenting and giving voice to issues and experiences which might not find a home with large commercial publishers.

Look for more on Frankfurt hot topics in the next blog post on Welcome to the VUCA World! The Frankfurt International Book Fair 2019. Part 2

Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 publisher displays

On Saturday, cosplay fans come dressed as their favorite characters.

“Stellt das Buch her / Make the book”: three containers stacked on top of each other, with exhibits on each level in the courtyard of the book fair.

 

Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Database Tips & Tricks: PubMed

Another day another research paper, am I right?

And your professor said you could use any sources within biomedical or life sciences, as long as the sources are peer-reviewed.

Well we have the database for you!

PubMed is a database full of peer-reviewed articles focused around biomedical and life sciences and here’s how you get to it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.

So first let’s and that can be found at the top right.

After selecting Log in, choose Duke as your university and then it’ll prompt you to either create an account with your Duke email or sign into an account you already have, choose whichever is appropriate.

Some benefits of logging in:

  • View Recent Activity
  • Create/Manage Bibliographies
  • Create/Manage Collections
  • Create Custom Filters
Results Page

And after you’ve logged in and started searching, the results page gives you a helpful bar that look like:

 

More options for each sections looks like:
 

But it should be noted that the when choosing “Save” or “Email” you’re saving/emailing  citations and not the search or its results.

Helpful hints:

  • Clipboard expires 8 hours after being added
  • You can save all the search results to your Collection

 

On the left is a column containing your filters and if you’re looking to get more specific in your search use this!

Article Page

On this page you’ll find some of the same features listed from the results page, but you’ll also be able to:

  • Download citations to RIS file
  • Add articles to favorites
  • A link to the full text (but beware, some of the links don’t always work)

The bottom of this page also gives you similar articles, a list of articles that cited the one you’re viewing, and a list of MeSH terms to aid you in your search.

And congratulations, you now have the tools you need to start or finish your paper!

Happy researching, friend!

And if you have more questions, feel free to reach out to a librarian at https://library.duke.edu/research/ask

Cool tools, Feature Articles, Film, Humanities, Just for Fun, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources, Tips and Tricks

Take the Library Home with You

handout

As you are preparing for your much needed break, I hope you remember that the library will still be here for you!  Maybe you already know that you can access many of our online resources from home or that you can check out books to take home with you.  We also have movies and music that you can stream and some e-books that you can download to your devices.  Here are some of the resources we have to do this!

Streaming Videos

Alexander Street Video Collection: Find and watch streaming video across multiple Alexander Street Press video collections on diverse topics that include newsreels, documentaries, field recordings, interviews and lectures.

Docuseek2 Collection: Find and watch streaming video of documentary and social issues films.

Films on Demand: Find and watch streaming video with academic, vocational, and life-skills content.

Kanopy: Watch thousands of award-winning documentaries and feature films including titles from the Criterion Collection.

SWANK Digital Campus: Feature films from major Hollywood studios.

Go to bit.ly/dukevideos to access these video collections.

Streaming Music

Contemporary World Music: Listen to music from around the world, including reggae, Bollywood, fado, American folk music, and more.

Jazz Music Library:  Access a wide range of recordings from jazz classics to contemporary jazz.

Medici.tv: Browse an online collection of classical music, operas and ballets.

Metropolitan Opera on Demand:  For opera fans, a large selection of opera videos from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

Naxos Music Library:  Huge selection of classical music recordings—over 1,925,000 tracks!

Smithsonian Global Sound: Find and listen to streaming folk and related music

All of these streaming music sources can be accessed at library.duke.edu/music/resources/listening-online

Overdrive Books

Go to duke.overdrive.com to access downloadable eBooks and audiobooks that can be enjoyed on all major computers and devices, including iPhones®, iPads®, Nooks®, Android™ phones and tablets, and Kindles®.

Announcement, Events, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library, Services, Tips for students

Got Library Fines? Give Food and We’ll Waive Them

Looking for an easy way to help people this holiday season?

From November 15 – December 15, you can exchange “Food for Fines” at the Duke library nearest you.

For every unopened, unexpired, non-perishable food item you donate, we will waive $1 of your library fines (up to $50 max).

All libraries on East and West Campus are participating except for the Duke Law Library, and it doesn’t matter which library you owe fines to. You can drop off your donation at the library of your choice, and we’ll apply it to any library fines at any Duke library.

Donations will be collected and distributed by the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC. The Food Bank serves a network of more than 800 agencies across 34 counties in Central and Eastern North Carolina, including soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and programs for children and adults.

You can also donate non-food essentials for infants, kids, and seniors, such as diapers, wipes, cleaning products, and paper towels. The chart below lists the items currently needed most.

No library fines? No problem! You can still donate and help North Carolinians in need.

The fine print

  • Limit $50 in forgiven fines per person.
  • Any fines already paid or transferred to the bursar cannot be waived.
  • No expired food items or glass containers, please.
  • Waived fines only apply to late fees. Charges for damaged or lost books cannot be waived.
  • All Duke libraries will waive fines for other Duke libraries (except the Duke Law Library). For example, if you owe $5 to the Divinity Library, you are not required to drop off your donation at the Divinity Library. You can visit any library on East or West Campus and your Divinity Library fines will be waived.

 

Database Tip, Library Hacks, Tips and Tricks

Database Tips & Tricks: Google Scholar

 

So you received a topic for your paper and you don’t know where to start? Google it!
But wait…what if you Google Scholar it instead?

Google Scholar is basically Google but with scholarly sources. How do you get to it?

scholar.google.com – super easy, super simple.

Before you start your search there’s two things you’re going to want to do to make your research easier.

  • First go into the settings (under this button on the top left), and choose library links. You’re going to search for Duke University and choose the “Duke University Libraries – Get it at Duke and then save. This makes it so that any article found on Google Scholar that Duke has access to you’ll be able to go straight to that article. You’ll know it worked when you search an article and see this in the right column.
  • Secondly, you’ll want to go back into the savings option and make sure that you’re signed into an account so you’ll be able to save your articles into your library.

Now you’re all set to do your research! But just a few more things to make note of:

  • The star button will save the article to your library
  • The quotation button will give you the citation for that article in MLA, APA, etc and also allows you to link to several citation management tools (they’re sometimes slightly incorrect so double check your citation!)
  • The “Cited By” shows how many people have cited that article via Google Scholar
  • Advanced search is found under the menu option

And that is it! You are prepared to do Grade A research, friend!

If you have more questions, feel free to reach out to a librarian at https://library.duke.edu/research/ask

Or join us in the lobby of Perkins for our 5 Minutes to becoming a Google Scholar Power User on any of these dates:

  • Nov 6, 2019: 11a – 12p
  • Nov 12, 2019: 1:30p – 2:30p
  • Nov 22, 2019: 11a – 12p

Announcement, Collections, Duke researchers, Lilly Library, Music Library, Original research, Rubenstein Library

Congratulations to Our 2019 Library Writing and Research Award Winners!

Gothic Reading Room

Every year the Duke University Libraries run a series of essay contests recognizing the original research of Duke students and encouraging the use of library resources. We are pleased to announce the winners of our 2018-2019 library writing and research awards.

Lowell Aptman Prize

Recognizing excellence in undergraduate research using sources from the Libraries’ general collections.

  • First/Second-Year Prize: Veronica Niamba for “The Day Man Stood Still,” nominated by Gray Kidd
  • Third/Fourth-Year Prize: Jess Chen for “Post-Modern Folk Chronicler,” nominated by Dr. Paul Jaskot
  • Honor Thesis Prize: Jack Bradford for “Errand into the Water Closet,” nominated by Dr. Tom Ferraro

Chester P. Middlesworth Award

Recognizing excellence of analysis, research, and writing in the use of primary sources and rare materials held by the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

  • Undergraduate Prize: Sierra Lorenzini for “Fair Haired: Considering Blonde Women in Film and Advertising,” nominated by Dr. Kristine Stiles
  • Graduate Prize: Michael Freeman for “P. Duke Inv. 664R: A Fragmentary Alchemical Handbook,” nominated by Dr. Jennifer Knust

Ole R. Holsti Prize

Recognizing excellence in undergraduate research using primary sources for political science or public policy.

  • Amanda Sear for “To Smoke or to Vape? E-cigarette Regulation in the US, the UK, and Canada,” nominated by Dr. Ed Balleisen
  • Yue Zhou for “Learning Languages in Cyberspace: A Case Study of World Languages Courses in State Virtual Public Schools,” nominated by Dr. Leslie Babinski

Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award

Recognizing outstanding undergraduate creative writing.

  • Valerie Muensterman for “Did You Forget Your Name?”
  • Caroline Waring for “The Roof”
  • Blaire Zhang for “Sapiens”

Join Us at the Awards Reception!

We will be celebrating our winners and their achievements at a special awards reception coinciding with Duke Family Weekend.  All are invited to join us for refreshments and the opportunity to honor the recipients.

Date: Friday, October 25
Time: 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Location: Rubenstein Library 349 (Breedlove Conference Room)

Life in the library, My Duke Library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Boyang Zhang’s Perspective

Boyang Zhang, who is from a small city in Northern China, is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Pratt School of Engineering. His research interests are in the safe guidance and control of multiple agents, such as autonomous ground vehicles and unmanned quadrotor aerial vehicles, in dynamic and uncertain environments.

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?

I have found that Duke University Libraries offer many useful resources and tools to assist me in my research. They also provide a friendly and welcoming environment, and I thoroughly enjoy studying and researching there.

Boyang stands in front of the writings of one of his favorite authors, Jin Yong
Boyang stands in front of the writings of one of his favorite authors, Jin Yong (金庸)

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library or library’s collections?

I’ve had many pleasant experiences in the library, including its free access to numerous online research databases, notably IEEE, Web of Science, and Science Direct, that I can search and from which I can instantly download relevant articles. Moreover, it offers a variety of interesting and helpful workshops such as how to use the citation management software EndNote and how to find suitable journals to publish my research work. I’ve also enjoyed participating in advanced lectures on machine learning and data visualization in The Edge.

What’s a favorite space or service? And why?

I greatly appreciate the document delivery and interlibrary loan services. The libraries locate books and articles I request and deliver them directly to me in a timely manner. 

Boyang’s library pro tip:

Don’t hesitate to ask for help! The librarians are friendly and supportive, and are always willing to help.

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department.

My Duke Library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Zhuoyu Li’s Perspective

Zhuoyu Li is a first year master’s student in the Electrical & Computer Engineering program at Pratt. She came from Taiyuan, China a month ago to study at Duke. She instantly connected to the Duke University Libraries because of her love of libraries and books.

Zhuoyu enjoys a jigsaw puzzle at the Oasis on the fourth floor of Perkins Library.

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?
I’ve been at Duke for only a few weeks, but I’ve already found that the Perkins and Bostock Libraries are amazing places to study and get help with research. I am glad that I came to Duke.

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library?
I’ve realized that the library isn’t limited to self-study space. The Libraries provide so much more than just study space and books. I’ve found exhibit galleries, the OIT service desk, multimedia project studio, group study rooms, and meditation rooms, places where I can meet, study, and take a break from studying.

What’s a favorite space or service? Why?
It is challenging to pick only one. I love Oasis! It is a space on the fourth floor of the Perkins Library where I can relax from studying and enjoy puzzles.

Zhuoyu’s Pro Tip
Enjoy the sunshine and warmth in a comfy chair on the bridge between the Perkins and Bostock Libraries.

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department.

Collections, Feature Articles, Humanities, Noteworthy Resources

August 2019 Collection Spotlight: Microhistories

microhistory sign

This month’s Collection Spotlight is featuring microhistories.  In order to create what we hope is a far ranging and interesting selection of titles for people to browse, we decided to approach microhistory both from the academic and popular side of things.  We hope you will forgive us if in our enthusiasm we stray into some titles that might not meet the strict definition!

Here is a selection of some of the titles that we are showcasing:

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

To Free a Family: The journey of Mary Walker by Sydney Nathans

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay

Poverty and Piety in an English Village by Keith Wrightson and David Levine

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

If some of these titles spark your interest, consider getting involved with Duke’s own MicroWorlds Lab this year!  They even have a section called “What is Microhistory” if you want to explore further what this method of study means.

Please check out the Collection Spotlight rack near our Perkins Library Service Desk on the first floor of Perkins to find your next read!

microhistory book covers

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Services, Tips for students

Join Our Student Advisory Boards!

Help us improve the library experience at Duke and make your voice heard by joining one of our student advisory boards.

The Duke University Libraries are now accepting applications for membership on the 2019-2020 student library advisory boards.

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 three 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 the advisory board website, where you will also find links to the online applications forms.

For more information or questions about these opportunities, please contact:

Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board
and Undergraduate Advisory Board

Angela Zoss
Assessment & Data Visualization Analyst
angela.zoss@duke.edu
919-684-8186

 

 

First-Year Advisory Board

Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian and Supervisor, Lilly Library
ira.king@duke.edu
919-660-9465

 

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Events, Film, Just for Fun, Librarians, Lilly Library, Music Library, Services, Uncategorized

Duke 2023 – When in Doubt, Go to the Library

When in Doubt, Go to the Library!

How can you make the most of your first-year?  We have the answer: Jump into the First-Year Library Experience. On August 20th, the newest Blue Devils, the Class of Duke 2023, will arrive on East Campus for Orientation.

What will Duke 2023 find in their new neighborhood? Two libraries are on East Campus, Lilly Library and Duke Music Library  which can introduce the First-Year “Dukies” to the powerful resources of all the Duke Libraries. While Lilly Library is home to the film collection, as well as a range of other materials, the specialized Music  Library plays a different tune. Both libraries offer research support as well as study space for our new East Campus neighbors.

Cast your eyes upon our exciting schedule of events for Orientation 2019:

Movie poster of Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse with three figures
Enjoy Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse on Wednesday August 21st

Orientation Week

  • Blue Devil Delivery in Lilly:
    pre-ordered textbooks & computers
    When: Tuesday, August 20th 9am to 4:30pm
  • Movie on the Quad:
    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    co-sponsored by Duke University Student Affairs
    When: Wednesday, August 21st at 10 pm
    Where: East Campus Quad between Lilly & the Union

First Big Week on East Campus

Overwhelmed at the beginning of the semester? Lilly and Music will host a Harry Potter Open House the first week of class. We’ll get you “sorted” out! Duke 2023 will be captivated by our powerful library services: our research wizards, 3D labs, streaming media, study spaces – No Restricted Sections, please – as well as enjoying free food, prizes, and MORE!

Library Open House for Duke 2023

Even in Hogwarts, research is magical!

• When: Tuesday, August 27th at 7pm
• Where: Lilly Library
• Fun: the Blue Devil, Duke Quidditch Club, food, and more

That’s Not All!

The East Campus Libraries — Lilly and Music — invite the Class of 2023 to conjure up library magic with the Duke University Libraries in these ways:

• Follow us on  Lilly Facebook, Lilly Instagram, Lilly Twitter, and Duke Music Library Facebook
• Join the First-Year Library Advisory Board  – Duke 2023 only!
• Residence Hall Librarians – Yes, your East Campus dorms have librarians! We may not live in your dorm, but we’re ready to help you. Check your email for important library events, tips, and insider info from us.
• Work in the Libraries – Work/Study Students

Here’s to a spell-binding start of
the fantastic adventure of your education
as a Duke Blue Devil!

Database Tip, Feature Articles, Humanities, Instruction, Rubenstein Library, Student Exhibits, Tips for students

The Art of Writing Letters: A Q&A with Joanna Murdoch

“Working with the Library” is an occasional series of stories highlighting collaborations between librarians and the people around campus whose teaching and research we support.

Joanna Murdoch is a Ph.D. Candidate in the English Department. She taught a Thompson Writing Program first-year writing seminar called “The Art of Writing Letters” in the spring of 2018. Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head of the Humanities Section and Librarian for Literature and Theater Studies, served as the course librarian for this class. She had the pleasure of asking Joanna a couple of questions about how the library has supported her teaching and research.

What were your primary goals for your students in working with letter writing in this course?

Teaching for the Thompson Writing Program’s first-year writing seminar, I wanted to foreground the tangible longevity of academic writing. The claims we make and the words we use in essays, exhibits, or online forums can last a long time. Against the odds, a lot of written material survives! The assignments in my course ask students to think about their writing and research as taking part in conversations with long histories and long futures, too.

Letter writing, it turns out, is a good tool for cultivating the blend of voice, personhood, and responsibility that is crucial for compelling academic work but isn’t always explicitly handled in writing instruction. In almost any century, letters open with an address to a named person and close with the writer’s signoff. Between those extremities, letters and their composers do everything they can to try to reach their readers. For their part, the letter’s recipients face literal response-ability: they have to decide whether and how they are able to respond. Writing and reading in this view are intimate, implicating activities: words can’t convey ideas unless two human beings have already agreed to connect.

It’s easy to forget this interpersonal grounding when composing a college essay. But even the strictest cautions surrounding intellectual property and the respect and defense of human rights require us to acknowledge the voices of others. That’s why my students have been practicing discerning and responding to the historically situated human voice in other people’s writing over three major assignments—a close-reading analysis of a single letter, a research project on a letter exchange held at the Rubenstein or in Perkins’ collections or databases, and a letter to a public figure, exhibited on the Campus Club Wall for three weeks in April of 2018. 

How has the library supported your teaching?

In so many ways! Duke’s subscription to databases like North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories provided rich exploratory ground for my students in all stages of their writing projects. The library’s collections of World War I letters available in book form in the stacks gave students who stumbled across them the foundation they needed for their research on soldiers’ letters in the Rubenstein’s holdings. Then, in April, the Campus Club Wall in Perkins became a live part of our writing and learning space when students received permission to exhibit some visually enhanced selections from their letters to public figures.

But it was the library’s gifted specialists who really brought Perkins and Rubenstein to life for my class. Our designated Perkins librarian Arianne Hartsell-Gundy very graciously showed us how to use the library guide she had designed especially for our course, and she supported students with exercises for crafting a focused research question and building an annotated bibliography with reputable sources. I’ll always remember Perkins 118 as the place where Arianne showed us the lines from Alexander Hamilton’s letter-esque The Farmer Refuted (1775) that live on in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton (2015).

A major highlight of the semester was when Rubenstein’s Elizabeth Dunn and Mandy Cooper introduced us to the historical letters and letter-writing guides they had hand-picked to match the students’ research interests. The hours these librarians spent selecting, transcribing, arranging, and expertly talking us through the materials were a huge gift to the class. Thank you, Perkins and Rubenstein!

How about your research?

For my research on medieval religious lyric poems, I lean heavily on Duke Libraries and their Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan relationships. My carrel is overflowing with Perkins, Divinity, and Lilly titles, plus others shipped in from Yale, the University of Chicago, or even our basketball competitor down the road. Thanks to the bases covered by Duke and these other library collections, this spring I was free to buy only the works I knew I would return to, rather than every single title on my comprehensive exams’ reading lists. The best part was when Perkins bought a collection of essays on Chaucer’s poetics at my request! I’d better go check it out, now that it’s on the shelves . . .

Another enormously helpful tool has been the library’s subscription to Oxford Bibliographies Online. Since I’m still in an early stage of dissertation research, I need all the overviews I can get of major contours in scholarly publishing. OBO is a great place to start.

What are three things you think that undergraduates should know about using information and the library?

I) You’re responsible for sniffing out the stories and scholarly drama behind the materials you see. If you do a lot of reading around for a project, you’ll start to see the same names and references to the same group of 10–30 major academic works. Then it’s like you’re pulling a necklace up out of the sand, revealing the links of a single, if complicated, structure. It’s one of the best feelings early on in graduate school, being not-at-the-mercy of the infinite-seeming database search results.

II) I said above that written material lasts longer than we think it will. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to actually use it once you’ve consigned it to your files. You may have terabytes of notes and essays on your computer or in the cloud, but you’ll never find any of it again unless you’ve tagged it all thoroughly or you like to spend your free time randomly clicking through old files. Some people love reference management software like RefWorks or Zotero. I can’t stand the way those services look, so I build massive searchable folders in an awesome writing program called Scrivener. Whatever you decide, leave yourself a lot of breadcrumbs. Don’t be like me and spend years searching for a half-remembered, haunting line that turned out to be from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem“: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in”—I spent so long searching for the note I had made about it back before I learned to cite cite cite even passing references in journal-type notes. The best breadcrumb of all is a full bibliographic citation, including the date you found and read/listened to the material, plus a quick personal note on what you thought about it. The “find” function on your computer will do the rest.

III) If you need part-time work during a heavy course-load year, reshelving books for the library is a fantastic way to find a meditative groove while filling your muscle memory with clues about the way information is structured and accessed in a major university library—which boils down to the shape of academic discourse itself. That’s how it went for me, at least, in the basement stacks of the Yale music library. Maybe Duke will even let you listen to Hamilton or Leonard Cohen while you set some Perkins shelves to rights!

Database Tip, Feature Articles, Library Hacks, Tips and Tricks

Database Tips and Tricks

 

It’s a familiar feeling: you only need one more scholarly source for your paper due at 8:30 the next morning. It may also just so happen to be 2:30 am, and at a certain point, there’s only so much caffeine in the world. However, by knowing how to utilize the number of databases available at Duke, one can seek relief. Even better, utilizing databases will grant you access to full-text scholarly articles, popular sources, and a multitude of additional resources (all without having to leave your dorm room and trek across campus). In this blog series, procrastinators and planners alike will find recommendations, tips, and tricks on how to navigate the amazing range of databases Duke Libraries have to offer- without wanting to tear your hair out.

There are two primary categories of databases you will find in academic libraries: general databases and specialized databases. If you are just beginning to explore your research topic, a general database, such as Academic Search Complete or JSTOR, can help guide your initial research. These databases are multidisciplinary and draw from a wide range of journals. However, once you have started the research process, you may find that general databases no longer offer the content you need. For example, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month; if you had a research assignment related to the history of sexual assault in the United States, you may want to first use a general database such as Academic Search Complete to help guide your research before delving into specialized databases. However, after you have discovered some possibly relevant sources that could help guide your keyword search, you may then want to pursue sources in specialized databases- for this example, specialized databases in History or Women’s & Sexuality Studies.

On Duke Libraries Research Database guide, the most popular general databases are directly linked at the top of the guide. One of those, and indeed one of the most popular general databases in academic libraries, is Academic Search Complete. Academic Search Complete is hosted by EBSCO. Note that EBSCO itself is not a database; rather, EBSCO hosts a multitude of databases, including both general and specialized varieties, and across a variety of disciplines. As discussed above, Academic Search Complete would be an ideal database with which to begin the research process for many of your classes. Through Duke Libraries’ subscription to Academic Search Complete, you can access full-text scholarly articles, popular sources, as well as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

There are a variety of factors you may consider when choosing a database- among them should be exactly what type of source you are looking for. If a database only offers abstracts, but you require a full-text journal article as a source, it would not be an appropriate database option. Finding the right database for your research is not necessarily always a seamless process; however, Duke Libraries have many resources available in order to help you conduct your research and access the best articles and journals.

Quick tip: Know what citation style your professor wants/requires before beginning your research. Many databases will provide formatted citations based on the style needed (MLA, APA, etc), While you should double-check the citation provided in order to ensure it is formatted correctly, using that citation as a foundation should save you some time.

Additional resources:

  • Be sure to check out Duke Libraries’ Research Guides. These guides, created by Duke University librarians, offer specialized tips centered around your area of research.
  • As always, if you are ever stumped by navigating databases or wondering where to go next in your research, Duke’s librarians are here to help. Here is a quick link to get help via chat, email, or phone: https://library.duke.edu/research/ask

Announcement, Collections, Collections Highlight, Noteworthy Resources, Rubenstein Library

Locus Collection Tracks the Stars and Universe of Sci-Fi

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The Locus collection includes some 16,000 rare and noteworthy monuments of science fiction and fantasy, many in their original dust jackets.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has acquired the archives of the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, publisher of Locus, the preeminent trade magazine for the science fiction and fantasy publishing field.

The massive collection—which arrived in almost a thousand boxes—includes first editions of numerous landmarks of science fiction and fantasy, along with correspondence from some of the genre’s best-known practitioners, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Octavia E. Butler, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Dean Koontz, Robert A. Heinlein, and hundreds more.

Locus started out in 1968 as a one-sheet science fiction and fantasy fanzine. Since then, it has evolved into the most trusted news magazine in science fiction and fantasy publishing, with in-depth reviews, author interviews, forthcoming book announcements, convention coverage, and comprehensive listings of all science fiction books published in English. It also administers the prestigious annual Locus Awards, first presented in 1971, which recognize excellence in science fiction and fantasy.

Over the course of five decades in print, the magazine’s editors and staff have collected and saved correspondence, clippings, and books by and about science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. What emerges from this trove of material is a tapestry of a diverse and thriving community of writers, publishers, and editors, all working to create new and modern genres of speculative literature.

This rare advanced reader’s copy of the first edition of Game of Thrones has a distinctly different look and feel from the popular HBO series.

Of the magazine’s original three co-founders—Charles N. Brown, Ed Meskys, and Dave Vanderwerf—only Brown remained after the magazine’s first year. He would continue to edit the publication until his death in 2009, earning the magazine some thirty Hugo Awards in the process and becoming a colorful and influential figure in the publishing world. A tireless advocate for speculative fiction, Brown was also a voluminous correspondent and friend to many of the writers featured in the magazine. Many of them wrote to him over the years to share personal and professional news, or to quibble about inaccuracies and suggest corrections. The letters are often friendly, personal, humorous, and occasionally sassy.

Reacting to a recent issue of Locus that featured one of her short stories, the science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler wrote, “I am Octavia E. Butler in all my stories, novels, and letters. How is it that I’ve lost my E in three places in Locus #292? Three places! You owe me three E’s. That’s a scream, isn’t it?”

One also finds frequent remembrances and retrospectives of departed members of the Locus community, such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s poignant reflections on the passing of Philip K. Dick. After Brown’s own death, the magazine continued publication under the auspices of the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, a registered nonprofit. The magazine launched a digital edition in January 2011 and has published both in print and online ever since.

In addition to the correspondence, story drafts, and other manuscript material (which has now been processed), the collection includes some 16,000 rare and noteworthy monuments of science fiction and fantasy from Brown’s extensive personal library, such as first editions of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and hundreds more.

“Historical literary treasures abound in the Locus collection, from full runs of the pulps to vintage first editions to contemporary works,” said Liza Groen Trombi, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Locus Magazine. “And its preservation is deeply important. It is the product of decades of collecting and curating, starting in the 1940s, the Golden Age of science fiction, when Locus’s founding publisher Charles N. Brown was an avid reader with a deep love of genre, through his time working within the science fiction field, and up to the present day under the current Locus staff. Housing those core works in an institution where they’ll be both accessible to scholars and researchers at the same time as they are carefully preserved is a goal that I and the Locus Science Fiction Foundation board of directors had long had. I am very happy to see them in the dedicated care of the curators and librarians at Duke.”

In its new home in the Rubenstein Library, the Locus collection complements existing collection strengths in the areas of science fiction and popular literature, including the Glenn R. Negley Collection of Utopian Literature, and the Edwin and Terry Murray Collection of Pulp Culture.

“The opportunity to acquire the Locus Foundation library is a tremendous one for Duke,” said Sara Seten Berghausen, Associate Curator of Collections in the Rubenstein Library. “Because it’s a carefully curated collection of the most important and influential works of science fiction of the last several decades—most in their original dust jackets, with fantastic artwork—it complements perfectly our existing collection of utopian literature from the early modern period through the mid-twentieth century.”

Locus started out as a one-sheet science fiction and fantasy fanzine and grew into the most trusted news magazine in science fiction and fantasy publishing.

Berghausen notes that Brown and Locus created not only this collection, but a community of writers, and those relationships are documented throughout the archival collection as well. “The research and teaching possibilities are almost unlimited,” she said. “From political theory to history, art, anthropology and gender studies, there are materials in the collection that could enrich the study of so many topics.”

The collection is already being used in courses at Duke. This semester, English professor Michael D’Alessandro brought his class on utopias and dystopias in American literature to the Rubenstein Library to examine some of the Locus materials first-hand.

“It’s a curious strength Duke has that I didn’t expect,” said D’Alessandro. “I taught this course previously at Harvard, and even the archives there didn’t have anything like this collection, which adds a whole new breadth and depth to the class.”

Duke researchers, Librarians, Life in the library, Original research, Tips for students

Publishing Tips for New Engineering Students

Victoria Nneji
Victoria Nneji is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science.

Guest post by Sarah Park, Librarian for Engineering and Computer Science, and Ciara Healy, Librarian for Psychology & Neuroscience, Mathematics, and Physics.

This spring, the Duke Libraries’ Natural Science and Engineering Group worked with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering to invite Ruth Wolfish to give a presentation for Duke students. Wolfish is a trainer from IEEE, the world’s largest professional association in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, and Computer Engineering. Her presentation was titled, “How to Write a Technical Paper for Publication with IEEE.” The event aimed to answer questions such as:

  • How to select an appropriate IEEE periodical or conference, organize your manuscript, and work through peer review
  • How to structure quality work to improve their chances of being accepted
  • How to avoid common mistakes and ethical lapse that will prevent your manuscript from being accepted

The information was eye-opening for many of the students in attendance. Ms. Wolfish offered tips on how to scope a research paper submission, as well as emphasizing how to demonstrate “significant difference” between posters, conference papers, and journal articles. Students and faculty engaged in lively discussions and shared their own research publishing experiences.

Following the events, we visited workshop attendee Victoria Nneji, a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Victoria is a Durham native and was a member of the Duke Libraries Graduate Student Advisory Board. She graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham and finished her undergraduate work at Columbia University in New York City before earning her masters degrees and joining Duke’s Ph.D. program. During our tour of the Duke Robotics Lab, Victoria talked about her life-long love of libraries. Libraries have also been instrumental to her research accomplishments.

Speaking of her own publishing experience, Victoria explained that her first manuscript to an IEEE journal took over a year from the submission to acceptance. Victoria emphasizes the need for reaching out and proactively communicating with the journal and incorporating reviewer comments.

We asked if she had advice for incoming engineering graduate students, and she did. Here’s what Victoria advised: work with a team to publish; connect with your research advisor, a postdoc or a professor and learn to collaborate by writing drafts; and receive feedback and take ownership of your work. Given that faculty and postdocs are often busy and have little time for carrying the paper forward, students should expect to take the initiative, even following up with your contact at the journal.

In addition, Victoria suggests:

  • Learn how to receive feedback (maybe come back to it in a day or two) and integrate the reviewer’s comments to improve revisions.
  • Communicate in a way that is accessible to those who are not as close to your research as you are — this grows your potential audience of people from different fields around the world.
  • Publish early and often — this gives you a sense of how your research fits into the broader, ever-developing science community. It also helps others develop their research.

Victoria successfully defended her dissertation and is graduating this May. She will stay connected to Duke Libraries as an alum and is looking forward to the Durham Public Library’s downtown branch, where she began volunteering in 2002, reopening in the summer of 2020.

Announcement, Digital Scholarship, Duke researchers, Humanities, Uncategorized

Project Vox publishes du Châtelet’s “Essay on Optics”

Project Vox, a collaboration between Duke University Libraries and the Department of Philosophy, recently announced the publication of the first English translation of Émilie Du Châtelet’s Essai sur l’Optique, or “essay on optics.” Duke doctoral student Bryce Gessell played a pivotal role in making this translation—and the transcription that preceded it—publicly available and accessible to scholars, instructors, and students worldwide. You can read more about Bryce’s work on the translation on the Duke Graduate School’s website.

Image shows handwritten text from the original manuscript
Excerpts of Emilie du Châtelet’s handwritten “Essai sur l’Optique” that were used to construct the translation. (Images courtesy of Project Vox)

Scholars have known about Du Châtelet’s Essai sur l’Optique for many years, but until recently the text has been unavailable because all copies were thought to be lost. In 1947 Ira O. Wade published the first known edition of the Essai’s fourth chapter, which was held among Voltaire’s papers in Russia. Sixty years later, Fritz Nagel, Director of the Basel Research Center of the Bernoulli Edition, discovered the first complete copy of the Essai in the Bernoulli archives in Basel. Two other complete copies, which had previously gone unnoticed, were then discovered among Du Châtelet’s surviving manuscript material.

Working with Nagel and with Duke Philosophy professor Andrew Janiak, Gessell helped produce and publish a transcription of du Châtelet’s Essai on Project Vox in 2017. The translation, more accessible to undergraduate philosophy students, helps the next generation of scholars recognize and follow the development of Châtelet’s ideas about natural philosophy.

Project Vox seeks to transform the discipline of philosophy by making the lives, works, and ideas of early modern women philosophers available for research and classroom use. Since its inception in 2014, this open educational resource has been produced by a cross-professional, cross-disciplinary, and cross-institutional team made up mostly of students, with review and advisement from philosophers worldwide. Learn more about how Duke University Libraries increase access to scholarship at ScholarWorks.duke.edu.

Life in the library, My Duke Library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Christine Wei’s Perspective

Christine Wei is majoring in Public Policy with a minor in Education. About her Duke experience she says, “Duke’s been a big part of my life since 2013; I was originally in the Class of 2017 and had to take two years off because I went through a mid-college-career crisis. Since then, I’ve shifted my priorities to put health first ahead of everything else and found myself happier and healthier than before. The only project I’ve been working on is a kindness and happiness-based one. I try to look for one to three positive moments in each day and document those to focus more on the positive rather than the negative, particularly in a world dominated by tragic news.”

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?

Librarians have helped me with my research in almost every class. I’ve needed to access databases and refine searches for peer-reviewed articles and more. Duke Libraries also offered employment through my work-study, and that’s been helpful beyond words.

Duke student Christine Wei in Perkins Library

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library?

I’ve rediscovered my innate curiosity for the way things work and why things are the way they are. For instance, I haven’t taken many natural science courses since high school, so learning more about popular science can be eye-opening.

What’s a favorite space or service? And why?

I love talking to librarians by the Perkins Service Desk. Doing so reminds me I’m always a part of something more and that collaboration trumps competition every time.

Christine’s library pro tip:

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! You’ll often find more than you expected.

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department.

Announcement, Collections, Events, Humanities, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Rubenstein Library

Richard Brodhead Returns to Duke with a “Whitman Sampler”

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WHEN: Thursday, April 25, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
(Reception at 4:00, with program starting at 4:30 p.m.)

WHERE: Korman Assembly Room (Perkins Library Room 217), Perkins Library 2nd Floor, Duke West Campus (Click for map)

Walt Whitman, who was born 200 years ago this spring, once wrote:

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring.

He was probably not talking about chocolate. But that won’t stop this proud library from bringing some to his birthday party!

Join us on April 25 as we celebrate Whitman’s bicentennial, with readings and remarks by Richard H. Brodhead, Duke’s ninth president, on why he loves the “Good Gray Poet” and you should, too. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about America’s most famous bard, now is your chance to take a short course (with no grades or quizzes!) from one of the foremost experts on the subject.

Guests will also be invited to view original Whitman manuscripts and materials from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which holds one of the largest and most important Whitman collections in the world, right here at Duke.

Free and open to the public. And yes, there will be chocolate.

About Richard H. Brodhead

Richard H. Brodhead served as President of Duke University from 2004 to 2017. As President, he advanced an integrative, engaged model of undergraduate education and strengthened Duke’s commitment to access and opportunity, raising nearly $1 billion for financial aid endowment.  Under his leadership, Duke established many of its best-known international programs, including the Duke Global Health Institute, DukeEngage, and Duke Kunshan University. Closer to home, Duke completed major renovations to its historic campus and played a crucial role in the revitalization of downtown Durham.

Brodhead received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where he had a 32-year career as a faculty member before coming to Duke, including eleven years as Dean of Yale College. A scholar of American literature and culture, he has written and edited more than a dozen books, including on Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, and he was named the Co-Chair of its Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences and co-authored its 2013 report, “The Heart of the Matter.” He has been a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2013.

Brodhead’s writings about higher education have been collected in two books, The Good of this Place (2004) and Speaking of Duke (2017). For his national role in higher education, Brodhead was given the Academic Leadership Award by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He is currently the William Preston Few Professor of English at Duke.

Life in the library, My Duke Library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Elizabeth Smithwick’s Perspective

Hello! My name is Elizabeth Smithwick and I’m from Jacksonville, Florida. I am a senior at Duke studying chemistry. My undergraduate thesis focuses on calculating the redox potentials of iron-sulfur proteins. After graduation, I will be pursuing my Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Outside of school I enjoy hiking, painting, and reading science fiction. My favorite book currently is The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?  

For me, the libraries have always been a place to connect with other people while also tackling my courses at Duke. In contrast to being in my room studying all the time, I feel a sense of camaraderie with my peers in the library that I don’t always feel in other spaces at Duke. I am reminded that everyone here at Duke is working hard to do their very best.

Duke senior Elizabeth Smithwick

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library? 

My sophomore year I was enrolled in an Italian Renaissance art history class and as a research project, we were assigned to investigate an obscure Italian painter. For the painter I received, Marco Basaiti, the amount of information online was sparse, and I was unsure where to go next. Thankfully I was able to find a few physical books on art in the Renaissance that made brief mention to Marco Basaiti in the collection at Lilly library which opened a few more avenues of investigation. Specifically it was a book of drawings by old masters that led me to a few of his more well-known contemporaries that allowed me to find more material on Basaiti himself. Most of the research I had done in the past had mainly been in the form of online journal articles so exploring the stacks in Lilly was a novel experience and gave me a much greater appreciation for the large collection Duke already possesses.

What’s a favorite space or service? And why?

My favorite service of the library is the Document Delivery Service. The ability to access almost any scientific article reasonably quickly and easily is an extremely powerful tool and one I wouldn’t know what to do without.

Elizabeth’s library pro tip: 

Reach out to the librarians for research help with class projects and independent studies. Odds are they know of something that will help make research easier or more efficient. I know my life was forever changed as soon as I learned about EndNote which is a way to manage references for papers.

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department.

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Exhibits, Just for Fun, Lilly Library, Music Library

Grammy Nominees – and Winners! – in the Music Library

Grammys at the ML
Grammy Awards Collection Spotlight

The 61st Annual Grammy Awards wrapped up in February, and now is your chance to catch up with some of the critically-acclaimed recordings that you may have heard about but haven’t had a chance to audition yourself. The Duke Music Library is pleased to unveil a new collection spotlight of recordings nominated for the 2019 Grammy awards, featuring more than 80 albums from just about every category you’ve heard of – and some you might not have!

In addition to some of the finest recordings from the last year in Opera, Musical Theatre, and Classical, this collection spotlight includes Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Fred Hersch, Drake, Joshua Redman, Kurt Elling, Buddy Guy, High on Fire, and many more.

Check out our very own “staff picks”:

Philippe Jaroussky and Artaserse, The Handel Album

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is among the most famous countertenors in the world right now, and it’s a voice range that has attracted growing interest in recent years. The high range of the countertenor voice and the manner in which its unusual qualities are produced results in a sound that has often been described as unearthly – it’s also a powerful and flexible voice type, able to handle music of stunning virtuosity and highly expressive pathos. All of these qualities are beautifully demonstrated in this album of arias selected by Jaroussky from among lesser-known Handel operas, highlighting pieces which he says “reveal a more intimate, tender side of Handel.”

Preview an incredible aria from the album, “Sussurrate, onde vezzose” from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula, which evokes the limpid and gentle murmuring of waves. Jaroussky begins with an almost impossibly hushed suspended note on the word “whispering.”

-Laura Williams, Head Librarian, Music Library

 

Fred Hersch Trio, Live in Europe

Fred Hersch and company continue to find new and innovative modes of expression within the jazz piano trio context. Featuring new Hersch originals alongside fresh interpretations of a few standard tunes, this album really shines, both in recording quality and inspired live performance.

-Jamie Keesecker,  Stacks Manager and Student Supervisor, Music Library

 

High on Fire, Electric Messiah

Metal lifer Matt Pike gets the big nod after a year in which this release was not even the best thing he put out (that distinction would go to his other band Sleep’s album ‘The Sciences’). It was also a year in which he had a public struggle with diabetes that cost him a toe and grounded a large part of the tour for ‘Electric Messiah’. That said, when the award was announced early in the Grammy ceremony, the cameras spent many long seconds scanning back and forth looking for the winners in a mostly-deserted theater. Finally, from way in the back, Pike hobbled forward with the help of a cane, and accompanied by his metal peers, to accept his shiny statue. “We never really need an award for doing what we love…” was part of Pike’s on-stage comment, but the commendation was very cool all the same.  

– Stephen Conrad, Order Specialist for Music and Film and Team Lead for Western Languages, Monographic Acquisitions

 

James Ehnes, Violin Concertos by James Newton Howard and Aaron Jay Kernis

The new Kernis Concerto was written for Canadian violinist James Ehnes, and it really serves as a showcase for Ehnes’ strengths. He comes across as such an intelligent musician, really playing with (not just in front of) the other members of the orchestra – Kernis gives them some great moments of interplay here. This work also balances Ehnes’ ability to deliver beautifully straightforward, unfussy lines one minute and astoundingly virtuosic cadenzas the next. Oh, and apparently he watched his Grammy win on a live stream in his neighborhood grocery store parking lot. How much more Canadian and unpretentious can you get?

-Sarah Griffin, Public Services Coordinator, Music Library (and, yes, a violinist)

 

Come over to East Campus to see these and browse through many more on our display of CDs. Don’t have a CD drive on your laptop anymore? No, neither do we! Borrow a portable DVD/CD drive while you’re here.

Fans of accompanying visual materials may find these albums to be of particular interest:

  • Wayne Shorter’s immersive Emanon, packaged with its accompanying graphic novel by comic book artist Randy DuBurke.
  • The Berliner Philharmoniker’s 6-disc box set (4 CDs and 2 Blu-ray discs), The John Adams Edition, featuring the music of legendary minimalist composer John Adams, with photographic artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans. Recorded during the orchestra’s 2016/2017 season during which Adams served as Composer in Residence.
  • At the Louisiana Hayride Tonight, a massive 20-CD box set with 224-page hardcover book documenting the storied radio program broadcast live from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana between 1948 and 1960. Includes a previously unreleased recording by Hank Williams, as well as rare gems from Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Elvis Presley, and many more.
  • Battleground Korea: Songs and Sounds of America’s Forgotten War brings together an assortment of songs, news reports, public service announcements, and other spoken-word audio (including a plea for blood donations from Howdy Doody) on four CDs, accompanied by a full-color hardcover book featuring song and artist information, record covers, advertisements, propaganda posters, and rarely-seen photographs from the war.
Battleground Korea and Louisiana Hayride

Announcement, Collections, Collections Highlight, Events, Exhibits, Librarians, Life in the library, Rubenstein Library

From Shipping Crate to Exhibit Case: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

Please join us for an event celebrating the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection and the work of our amazing staff!

Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Phillis Wheatly, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Lisa Unger Baskin Collection.

Date: Friday, April 12
Time: 11:00-11:45 am
Location: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room, Rubenstein 153

In April 2015, the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection arrived at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Comprising over 11,000 rare books and thousands of manuscripts, journals, ephemera, and artifacts, the Baskin Collection includes many well-known monuments of women’s history and arts as well as lesser-known works produced by female scholars, printers, publishers, laborers, scientists, authors, artists, and political activists. “From Shipping Crate to Exhibit Case” looks at the comprehensive work of libraries, including how we organize, conserve, describe, and exhibit, through the lens of this unique collection.

“Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection” will be available for viewing after the program, in the Mary Duke Biddle Room.

This event is free and open to the public.

 

Life in the library, My Duke Library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Tyler Chery’s Perspective

Tyler Chery is a junior studying Mechanical Engineering and Religion.

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?

Ironically, I have never thought of myself as a “library person.”  I always appreciated the “college feel” that university libraries provide, but I never truly believed that I would identify with such a stressful and business-oriented establishment.  This all changed when I first discovered the wonders of The Link during the second semester of my freshman year.

Duke student Tyler Chery

Every Monday and Wednesday after my 8:30 am EGR 121 lecture I would commandeer group study room 11, grab a huge bean bag, and sleep like a baby until my next class. I still remember the awkward looks I would get as people walked into the study room only to find me sprawled on the floor knocked out. On Fridays I would return and crank out hours of homework before the weekend began. The Link became my productivity secret. 

As sophomore year rolled around I challenged myself to find all the nooks and crannies of Perkins and Rubenstein. Now, as a junior I consider myself to be an expert at finding study (and sleep) spaces in Perkins, Rubenstein, Bostock, and even Lilly on East Campus. In addition, I have had the pleasure of meeting a lot of the library staff now that I have a work-study job in the collections department of Perkins. I practically spend half of my time in the library these days.

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library?

RESERVE TEXTBOOKS! I literally checked out a reserve textbook 20 minutes before taking one of the rare open-book examinations in all of my time here at Duke. I still remember reading off a few exam answers word for word in the text.

Also, I highly recommend going on the Duke Libraries website and taking the time to search for online resources and databases before wasting your time on Google when writing essays. I have found some serious gems for my religious studies papers just by searching the online catalog.

What’s a favorite space or service? And why?

The Link!  Naps, vending machines, technology support; it has everything you need to complete an abundance of work over the course of one day. I have spent hundreds of hours in there.

Tyler’s library pro tip:

If you are someone who supposedly can only study in your room, or where no one else is watching, I challenge you to try any of the above locations that I have mentioned. You may feel uncomfortable for the first 30 minutes but eventually you will realize that you cannot afford to watch an hour of YouTube videos if everyone else around you is doing actual work.

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department.

Announcement, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Services, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Introducing a New Library Space: The ZZZone

When it comes to college, sleep schedules can be a real nightmare. It’s no surprise to see Duke students catching some extra z’s whenever and wherever they can, especially here in the library.

We get it. We respect “the grind” and understand that sometimes a mid-morning nap can help you restart your day with a fresh “Good morning, let’s get this bread!” attitude.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Duke Wellness to make one of our “absolute quiet zones” even quieter. We’re happy to announce our newest makeover of library space: The ZZZone.

Sleep masks will be available for your catatonic convenience.

We’re transforming the 4th floor of Perkins Library into a cozy, peaceful sleep space guaranteed to make every Duke student’s dreams come true. Renovations are scheduled to begin in June 2019.

The ZZZone will build on the popularity of the Oasis, a dedicated meditation and mindfulness space in Perkins Library that is also a collaboration with Duke Wellness. Approximately 10,000 square feet of book shelving throughout the floor will be converted into bunk-beds. Additional enhancements will include ergonomic recliners, drool-proof pillows, and a vending machine for sleep essentials: eye masks, ear plugs, lavender essential oil spray, sleepy-time teas, and more! Blankets and a selection of stuffed animals will be available at the Perkins Library Service Desk and can be checked out for up to three hours at a time.

Snoozers won’t be losers in The ZZZone!

The ZZZone will be staffed by librarians available to quietly read excerpts from your textbooks until you drop off to slumberland, as well as to gently shush any snorers or sleep-talkers. Special arrangements are being made to convert group study rooms into solo sleeping quarters for somnambulists, who can rest assured they won’t wander far.

All you need to enter The ZZZone is your Duke ID and a spare hour or two.

Floorplan of the 4th floor of Perkins and Bostock Libraries, showing the location of The ZZZone.

“Our hope is that The ZZZone will be a place where students can hit the hay in between hitting the books,” said University Librarian Deborah Jakubs, stifling a yawn. “We will be assessing usage statistics carefully, and if this new service proves popular with our users, we may consider expanding it to other floors, perhaps even the entire building.”

The ZZZone is set to open for students at the start of the fall 2019 semester, said Jakubs. “Until then, we’re counting the sheep—I mean days!”

Prepare yourself–naps are coming.

Like these photos? They’re courtesy of @devilswhonap. Check them out on Instagram for all kinds of dormant Blue Devils across campus (more than a few in the library).

Like this post? Sadly, it’s all been just a dream. For now, you’ll just have to settle for our regular yawn-inducing tables and chairs. Happy April Fools’ Day!

Life in the library, My Duke Library, Services, Tips for students

My Duke Library: Tyler Goldberger’s Perspective

Image

Tyler Goldberger is a senior studying History, Spanish, and Jewish Studies. He’s writing his double honors thesis on Spain’s difficulty in commemorating all of the victims of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism dictatorship and the work of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica to actively confront this history. Tyler recently authored the Duke Chronicle editorial Confronting Being a Low SES Student At Duke.

How has the library impacted your Duke experience?

The Duke Libraries have provided me with incredible opportunities to perform well in my classes and conduct research. As a low SES (socioeconomic status) student, I thought I would struggle with purchasing the necessary books to excel in my coursework. However, through the help of the librarian staff and search queries, I have never had to pay for a textbook, reducing my financial burden and allowing me to concentrate fully on my classes. Through the library system, especially through the ILL opportunity, I have also been able to retrieve necessary primary and secondary sources for various research projects over my four years. Duke Library System has greatly enhanced my academic journey, and I am so thankful for all of the resources it has provided me.

What’s something you’ve discovered in the library?

The library has allowed me to really learn what research is all about. Before entering the library, my vision of research was limited to high school experiences that really just made me synthesize secondary sources. Once coming to Duke, I have realized that research is alive, especially with the incredible resources provided by Rubenstein. I have had the opportunity to engage with local election results in Durham, abolitionist pamphlets from the 19th century, human rights policy in Spain, and so much more!

What’s a favorite space or service? And why?

The Chat a Librarian function on library.duke.edu has been extremely helpful. There have been many times when I am stuck somewhere but need to know the various resources that exist at the library. This service has saved me time and has helped me locate great sources for a project or personal research.

Tyler’s library pro tip

Utilize the specialist librarians. They will help you formulate questions and find resources for your next great research project!

My Duke Library is a project of the Research and Instructional Services department

Collections Highlight, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Tips for students

Meet Our Mystery Dates! The Complete Book List

Link

Thank you to everyone who enjoyed going out on a Mystery Date With a Book this month! If you didn’t get a chance to check out our display, or if you’re just curious to know what books we selected, here’s a complete list of our mystery picks, along with the library staff member who recommended them. Add them to your Goodreads list. Happy reading!

Selected by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head, Humanities Section and Librarian for Literature and Theater Studies:

Selected by Sara Seten Berghausen, Associate Curator of Collections, Rubenstein Library

  • Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise: “Love and loss in Nazi-occupied France.”
  • David Sedaris, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: “Dark and wickedly funny animal love stories.”
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me: “A father’s heartfelt letter to his 16-year-old in an existentially unfair world.”
  • Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones: “A teenage girl and her brothers strive to protect and love one another as Hurricane Katrina looms.”

Selected by Ciara Healy, Librarian for Psychology & Neuroscience, Mathematics, and Physics

Selected by Kelli Stephenson, Coordinator, Access and Library Services

Selected by Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications

  • Gabriel Garcia Maquez, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: “What it’s like to be lost at sea, fending off sharks, thirst, and insanity.”
  • Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road: “Heart-warming long-distance friendship develops over books and the lost art of letter-writing.”
  • J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country: “A gem of a book: a quaint English village, a WWI vet, and a shimmering summer of youth.”
  • Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence: “History, travel, and the pleasures of the quiet life. Best savored slowly and antisocially.”
  • Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever: Stories: “Beautifully written stories about the love of science, and the science of love, set in the 19th century.”
  • Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: “The strangest museum you’ve never heard of is a real place, and you’re going to be obsessed with it.”
  • Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia: “Despite what you read in the news, Russia is actually a pretty funny place.”
  • Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation: “Hilarious, irreverent road trip that brings American history to life (and death).”
  • Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere: “A love letter to a city 4,000 years old.”
  • Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World: “A deep dive into deep time offers a glimpse of our possible future.”

Selected by Brittany Wofford, Coordinator for The Edge and Librarian for the Nicholas School of the Environment

Selected by Andrea Loigman, Head, Access and Delivery Services

Selected by Holly Ackerman, Head, International & Area Studies Dept. and Librarian for Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies

  • Leonardo Padura, Havana Red: “The first of a 5-part detective series set in Cuba.”

Selected by Katie Henningsen, Head of Research Services, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

  • Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows: “Ocean’s Eleven meets Game of Thrones.”

Selected by Kristina Troost, Librarian for Japanese Studies

  • Lynne Kutsukake, The Translation of Love: a novel: “A portrait of post-war Japan, where a newly repatriated Japanese Canadian girl must help a classmate find her missing sister.”
  • Ann Waswo, Damaged Goods: A higher education mystery: “An art fraud investigator based in Tokyo, responds to a request from an old friend and soon arrives at Thaddeus Hall, England.”
  • Min Jin Lee, Pachinko: “Follows one Korean family through the generations.”

Selected by Megan Crain, Annual Giving Coordinator

Selected by Sarah Park, Librarian for Engineering and Computer Science

  • Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis: “Where are you going?”
  • Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek: “A recipe for happiness: ‘a glass of wine, a roast chesnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.'”
  • Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise: “For a phenomenal woman.”

Selected by Lee Sorensen, Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance, Lilly Library

  • Collin Thurbron, Night of Fire: a novel: “John Banfield and I think this is the best book we’ve read in years. Zen meets Spoon River Anthology.”

Selected by Laura Williams, Head, Music Library

Selected by Keegan Trofatter, Communications & Development Student Assistant

  • Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, “Being a smart (like really smart) girl in a rough Italian neighborhood is easier with a friend by your side—or is it?”
  • Neil Gaiman, American Gods, “My favorite part of a cross country road-trip? A bunch of gods fighting one another.

 

Collections, Events, Exhibits, Rubenstein Library

New Exhibit: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work

On display February 28 – June 15, 2019

Mary Duke Biddle Room,
Stone Family Gallery, and Trent History of Medicine Room

Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus
Get directions and parking info

Please check our website for current library hours.

Visit the exhibit website and explore the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection online.

About the Exhibit

Women’s work. The phrase usually conjures up domestic duties or occupations largely associated with women—such as teaching, nursing, or housekeeping. The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection upends those associations. By bringing together materials from across the centuries, Baskin reveals what has been hidden—that Western women have long pursued a startling range of careers and vocations and that through their work they have supported themselves, their families, and the causes they believed in.

In 2015, Lisa Unger Baskin placed her collection with Duke’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Comprising more than 10,000 rare books and thousands of manuscripts, journals, items of ephemera, and artifacts, it was the most significant collection on women’s history still in private hands—an enormous body of material focusing on women’s work in all its diversity.

This exhibition provides a first glimpse of the diversity and depth of the collection, revealing the lives of women both famous and forgotten and recognizing their accomplishments.

After its premiere at Duke, the exhibit will travel to New York City and be on display at the Grolier Club, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles, December 11, 2019 – February 8, 2020.

To accompany the exhibition, the Rubenstein Library and the Grolier Club have co-published a 160-page full-color catalog, which will be available for sale at the opening reception on February 27, and at a related symposium on “Women Across the Disciplines,” scheduled for April 15-16, 2019, at the Rubenstein Library.

Free guided tours of the exhibition will be offered every Friday at 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., March 8 – June 14. Sign up for a tour online.

The exhibition catalog was co-published by the Rubenstein Library and the Grolier Club.

Exhibit Opening and Reception: Please Join Us!

Date: Wednesday, February 27
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Location: Gothic Reading Room and Ahmadieh Family Commons, Rubenstein Library 2nd Floor

Featuring collector and exhibit co-curator Lisa Unger Baskin in conversation with Naomi L. Nelson, Associate University Librarian and Director, Rubenstein Library. Also featuring introductory remarks by Edward Balleisen, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. Free and open to the public.

More details and R.S.V.P.

Learn More About the Baskin Collection

For more about the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, we encourage you to visit the exhibit website.

We have also pulled together a sampling of articles and stories about the collection’s significance as well as selected highlights found within it.

Collections, Collections Highlight, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Humanities, Noteworthy Resources

Celebrate Black History All Year Round with “The HistoryMakers”

Duke historian John Hope Franklin (left) and political scientist Samuel DuBois Cook, both of whom are featured in the HistoryMakers database of oral history interviews.

Guest post by Heather Martin, Librarian for African and African American Studies

Looking for oral history interviews of African Americans? Try The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, a new subscription database available through Duke University Libraries.

HistoryMakers contains over 10,000 hours of video interviews with African-Americans distinguished in the categories of education, media, science, politics, law, the arts, business, medicine, the military, sports, religion, entertainment, and other areas of public life. Interviewees discuss memories from the 1890s to the present. The project currently includes original interviews of more than 2,000 individuals, with a goal of collecting 5,000 interviews.

By creating story segments from each interview, HistoryMakers allows users to find relevant discussions on specific topics. Interview transcripts are searchable, but you can also choose from a list of story topics (e.g., leadership, desegregation/integration, public health issues, philanthropy, role models, gender identity, faith, humorous story quality, and arguing a position). You can also create shareable playlists by selecting stories from your search results.

A search for “Duke University” reveals hundreds of interviews with noteworthy individuals, including Paula McClain, current dean of Duke’s Graduate School.

A search for Duke University retrieves 321 stories, including interviews with noted historian John Hope Franklin;  Samuel DuBois Cook, the first African American professor at Duke; Vera Ricketts, the first black female pharmacist at Duke University Hospital; and Paula D. McClain, current dean of the Graduate School at Duke.

HistoryMakers complements Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South and other oral history materials in the Duke Libraries’ collections. It is a substantial addition to our primary source collections.

To learn more about the creation of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, visit the organization’s website.

 

Announcement, Events, Humanities, Original research, Rubenstein Library

Duke Announces Winner of 2018 Juan E. Méndez Human Rights Book Award

Award Goes to There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia by María McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

The Duke University Human Rights Center@the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Human Rights Archive at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library have named María McFarland Sánchez-Moreno’s book, There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia (Nation Books, 2018) as the winner of the 2018 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. McFarland will visit Duke University during spring semester 2019 to accept the award.

There Are No Dead Here is a deep dive into key human rights cases that exposed the murderous nexus between right-wing paramilitaries, drug lords, and Colombia’s military and political establishment. Through dogged reporting, in part as a Human Rights Watch researcher, McFarland unravels the links that led to the murders of Colombian rights investigators by powerful interests that reached as high as military leadership and even the Colombian presidency.

When notified of the award, McFarland stated, “It was a joy and privilege for me to tell the stories of some of the many Colombians who stand up for truth and justice every day. So it’s tremendously satisfying that those stories are now getting the recognition they so deserve, thanks to the Mendez Award, which itself is named after a brave fighter for human rights.”

First awarded in 2008, the Méndez Human Rights Book Award honors the best current, fiction or non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy, and social justice in contemporary Latin America. The books are evaluated by a panel of expert judges drawn from academia, journalism, and public policy circles.

“Colombia is often portrayed as a place where violence is endemic and unstoppable,” said Robin Kirk, the Committee Chair and co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center@the Franklin Humanities Institute, “McFarland’s riveting story shows that the truth is much more complex. Again and again, Colombians step up to fight for justice even though they face daunting odds. Their story is well told in her astonishing book.”

Other judges include Holly Ackerman, Librarian for Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a Studies at Duke University Libraries, who commented, “McFarland’s’ book highlights a fundamental tool in the struggle for justice — people who will not look away. The determination and sacrifice of three individuals moved Colombia toward historical truth and a still-fragile peace. There Are No Dead Here demonstrates a clear linkage between individual courage and the collective awareness that creates the possibility for justice to triumph over impunity.”

James Chappel, Hunt Assistant Professor of History at Duke University, also offered praise: “McFarland does a wonderful job contextualizing the stories of these human rights defenders. As we focus so incessantly on the structure of unequal neoliberal globalization, human rights progress depends on incredibly brave men and women on the front lines.”

Other judges include Kia Caldwell, Associate Professor of African, African-American, and Diaspora Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill; and Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of History at Harvard University.

About the Author

Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno is an activist, writer, and lawyer. As the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Maria is at the helm of the leading organization in the U.S. fighting to end the war on drugs in the United States and beyond.

Previously, Maria held several positions at Human Rights Watch, including as co-director of its U.S. Program, guiding the organization’s work on U.S. criminal justice, immigration, and national security policy; and as deputy Washington director, working on a broad range of U.S. foreign policy issues. She started her career there as the organization’s senior Americas researcher, covering Colombia’s internal armed conflict and working on the extradition and trial of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori.

Maria grew up in Lima, Peru, and now lives in Brooklyn.

Previous Méndez Award Recipients

  • 2017 – Matt Eisenbrandt, Assassination of a Saint, The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice
  • 2016 – Chad Broughton, Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
  • 2015 – Kirsten Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala
  • 2014 – Oscar Martínez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
  • 2013 – Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck That Went By: How The World Came To Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster
  • 2012 – Héctor Abad, Oblivion: A Memoir
  • 2011 – Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade
  • 2010 – Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, with Jorge Enrique Botero, Hostage Nation
  • 2009 – Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz, The Dictator’s Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet
  • 2008 – Francisco Goldman, Who Killed the Bishop: The Art of Political Murder

For more information, contact:

Patrick Stawski
Human Rights Archivist, Rubenstein Library
patrick.stawski@duke.edu
919-660-5823

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Events, Exhibits, Humanities, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Rubenstein Library

New Exhibit! Duke Kunshan University: From the Ground Up

On exhibit through February 3, 2019
Chappell Family Gallery, Perkins Library, Duke West Campus

Public Hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 pm; Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.; Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Please check our posted library hours for the most up-to-date information.

About the Exhibit

A new exhibit in Perkins Library celebrates Duke Kunshan University, a partnership between Duke University, Wuhan University, and the city of Kunshan with the mission to create a world-class institution embodying both Chinese and American traditions of higher education. The continued process of learning how to strike balance between differing cultures has made Duke Kunshan’s brief history quite complex.

Duke Kunshan  has integrated the study of kunqu, one of the oldest classical styles of Chinese opera, into its humanities curriculum and extracurricular activities. On display: a gown worn by DKU students in the Kun Opera Club.

This exhibition offers up the story of Duke Kunshan’s development – its accomplishments, opportunities, challenges, and risks – and brings an important perspective to our understanding of how international partnerships can address the changing needs and challenges of global higher education.

Walking through the exhibit, a visitor can explore a timeline of key events, read articles on the collaboration, and explore the rich curriculum that has come out of Duke Kunshan. The sounds of new and traditional Chinese music against the backdrop of a beautiful, architectural mural welcomes visitors to partake in their own peaceful, contemplative discovery of Duke Kunshan.

Reception Celebrating the Exhibit: Please Join Us!

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Time: 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

Location: Rubenstein Library Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room 153

The reception program will begin at 5:00 p.m. with welcome remarks by Provost Sally Kornbluth. Mary Brown Bullock, Executive Vice Chancellor Emerita of Duke Kunshan University, will speak about the internationalization of China’s higher education system and current China-US education relations. Peter Lange, Provost Emeritus of Duke University, will discuss the development of Duke Kunshan.

Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

Announcement, Duke researchers, Events, Services

It’s Open Access Week! Oct 22-28, 2018

It’s International Open Access Week! We’ll have librarians out at Perkins and Lilly Libraries a few times this week to talk about it, but if you don’t catch up with us that way, here’s a glimpse of what’s on our minds.

What is Open Access?

Open Access is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. At Duke, we put knowledge in the service of society. This means making the fruits of Duke research available as broadly as possible — to anyone who might benefit from the scholarship being done here. You can read about Open Access at Duke here.

Paywall (The Movie)

Come to a screening and panel discussion of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship on November 5, 7:30pm, at Rubenstein Arts Center von der Heyden Studio Theater. More details are here.

Big News Out of Europe

In July 2018, there was a joint announcement by Science Europe, various European national research funding organizations, and the European Commission. Dubbed Plan S, it stated that, “from 1 January 2020, all scholarly publications resulting from public research funding must be published in Open Access journals or on Open Access platforms.” In September 2018, a group of funders launched cOAlition S, an agreement to implement the 10 principles of Plan S in a coordinated way. Find out more about this important development: http://scieur.org/coalition-s

Supporting Duke Authors

Duke COPE Fund

The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE) seeks to reduce barriers by underwriting publication fees for authors who want to make their scholarly articles available in an open access journal. Duke’s fund supports faculty, graduate students, and postdocs publishing with fully open access publishers.

Duke Open Monograph Award

Part of the larger collaborative project called Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem, this award funds Duke faculty members to publish open access scholarly books through more than 60 of the world’s leading university presses.

Duke Open Access Repositories

Duke Libraries supports sharing scholarship openly through two repositories, which are open to any Duke researcher: DukeSpace for publications and the Research Data Repository. These repositories preserve your work for the long haul and provide a persistent link that you can put on your website or share with colleagues. See instructions for submitting publications to DukeSpace here and policies and procedures for research data here.

Consultation

In addition, the library has resources to help you understand and negotiate your publishing contracts, so that you can retain the rights to distribute your work and use it in your teaching. Book an appointment through copyright-questions@duke.edu.

Investing in the Open Publishing Ecosystem

Another way that Duke University Libraries supports open access publishing is by setting aside 1% of our collections budget for open initiatives. The following are just some of the projects and organizations the Libraries contribute to:

  • Knowledge Unlatched: provides open access to books in various disciplines
  • Open Library of Humanities: publishing platform that supports journals from across the humanities disciplines
  • arXiv: preprints database for physics, math, computer science, statistics, and computational disciplines

If you’re interested, you can read more here.

 

You can contact us any time (not just during Open Access Week!) to talk about these issues. Reach out to your subject specialist librarian or write to open-access@duke.edu.

Announcement, Collections, Collections Highlight, Cool tools, Noteworthy Resources, Services, Technology

Expanded Access to Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)

We are pleased to announce that the Duke University Libraries have greatly expanded access to the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)!

This comes in response to numerous requests over the last few years. We have a new deal for all current JoVE titles (see title list and details below). While the official start date is January 2019, JoVE has already opened up full access to Duke IP addresses.

What is JoVE?

JoVE publishes peer-reviewed videos of people doing real-world scientific experiments. By letting you watch the intricate details of experiments rather than just read about them in articles, JoVE helps you understand how to recreate those experiments, thereby improving research productivity, reproducibility, and student learning outcomes.

How and why to use it

JoVE funded a study of the impact on student performance of watching their videos prior to lab classes. A description of the study and a link to download the resulting whitepaper can be found here.

The JoVE blog also has a number of posts giving examples of how faculty are using JoVE in their teaching and research. For example:

  • Dr. Dessy Raytcheva at Northeastern University uses JoVE videos as pre- and post-assignments in her undergraduate biology course, in order to save class time for higher impact teaching activities.
  • Marilene Pavan, manager of Boston University’s DAMP lab credits publishing video protocols in JoVE with significant increases in experimental success rate and reduction in errors.

You can see all of those case studies here.

Assessment

Given the high subscription costs for this product, we will be looking at usage statistics and impact stories to determine whether to continue after an initial three years. So if you use JoVE in your research or teaching, please let us know!

Journal Title List

  • Behavior2
  • Biochemistry3
  • Bioengineering2
  • Biology1,2
  • Cancer Research2
  • Chemistry3
  • Developmental Biology2
  • Engineering2
  • Environment3
  • Genetics2
  • Immunology & Infection2
  • Medicine3
  • Neuroscience1,2

Science Education Collection List

  • Advanced Biology1
  • Basic Biology1,3
  • Chemistry
  • Clinical Skills3
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Physics
  • Psychology

1 Previously subscribed
2 Perpetual access
3 Temporary access (2019 only)

Details of our access

Our new deal includes perpetual access to video articles published under most of the JoVE journal titles, even if we don’t continue subscribing to new content. For a few titles (those that are more clinical in focus or for which we have received the fewest requests), we will only have access through December 2019, unless we decide to expand even further. For the remaining titles, we will have access as long as we continue to subscribe.

Please contact DUL science librarians at askscience@duke.edu if you have any questions or comments. We are also happy to provide links to support documentation, such as instructions for embedding JoVE videos in Sakai.

Announcement, Duke researchers, Events, Humanities, Just for Fun, Life in the library

A Conversation with Legendary Editor Bob Loomis, Oct. 24

Many of the books Bob Loomis edited during his career at Random House continue to be read and discussed decades after their publication.

WHEN: Wednesday, October 24
TIME: 4:00-5:00 p.m.
WHERE: Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room (Rubenstein Library 153)

Join the Duke University Libraries and Department of English for an informal conversation with Bob Loomis, the legendary Random House editor and Duke alumnus (T ’49), as he discusses the lively literary culture on campus during his post-war undergraduate years.

Loomis worked for Random House from 1957 to 2011, eventually rising to Vice President and Executive Editor. He holds a revered place in the publishing industry as an editor known for nurturing writers whose books went on to great success, including Maya Angelou, William Styron, Shelby Foote, Calvin Trillin, Edmund Morris, Daniel J. Boorstin, and many others.

Loomis’s fellow students at Duke included Styron, Guy Davenport, and New York Magazine founder Clay Felker. He was also a student of celebrated Duke English Professor William Blackburn.

Refreshments provided. Please register to help us estimate attendance.

Free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by the Department of English.

More about Bob Loomis:

Register to attend this talk.

Announcement, Events, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library

Got Library Fines? Give Food and We’ll Waive Them

1 Comment

Looking for an easy way to help people affected by Hurricane Florence?

From October 10-26, you can exchange “Food for Fines” at the Duke library nearest you.

For every unopened, unexpired, non-perishable food item you donate, we will waive $1 of your library fines (up to $25 max).

All libraries on East and West Campus are participating, and it doesn’t matter which library you owe fines to. You can drop off your donation at the library of your choice, and we’ll apply it to any library fines at any Duke library.

Donations will be collected and distributed by the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC. The Food Bank serves a network of more than 800 agencies across 34 counties in Central and Eastern North Carolina, including soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and programs for children and adults.

You can also donate non-food essentials for infants, kids, and seniors, such as diapers, wipes, cleaning products, and paper towels. The chart below lists the items currently needed most.

No library fines? No problem! You can still donate and help North Carolinians in need.

The fine print

  • Limit $25 in forgiven fines per person.
  • Any fines already paid or transferred to the bursar cannot be waived.
  • No expired food items or glass containers, please.
  • Waived fines only apply to late fees. Charges for damaged or lost books cannot be waived.
  • All Duke libraries will waive fines for other Duke libraries. For example, if you owe $5 to the Law Library, you are not required to drop off your donation at the Law Library. You can visit any library on East or West Campus and your Law Library fines will be waived.

 

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Services, Tips for students

Join Our Student Advisory Boards!

Help us improve the library experience at Duke and make your voice heard by joining one of our student advisory boards.

The Duke University Libraries are now accepting applications for membership on the 2018-2019 student library advisory boards.

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:

Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board
and Undergraduate Advisory Board

Emily Daly
Head, Assessment and User Experience Department
Librarian for Education
emily.daly@duke.edu
919-660-5879

 

 

First-Year Advisory Board

Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian and Supervisor, Lilly Library
ira.king@duke.edu
919-660-9465

 

Digital Scholarship, Humanities, Research Help

Launching Digital Projects from Scratch – Some Advice

Guest post by Adrian Linden-High, PhD student in Classical Studies, Humanities Writ Large research assistant with Digital Scholarship Services at Duke University Libraries in the spring of 2017.

Image tiles of Polygonal Wall: Zach Heater (CC-BY).

Getting a digital project off the ground by yourself can be challenging. With rare exceptions, digital projects rely on collaboration – for the simple reason that it is impossible to unite in one person all the skills needed to deliver a digital product of which fellow scholars will take any note. Still, if you come up with an idea for a digital project, you will almost certainly first have to build prototypes and mock-ups on your own to communicate your vision to potential collaborators. Even this preliminary work in the digital arena represents a challenge for most of us. In this post, I summarize what I have learned from going through the process of starting a digital project from scratch and offer some general advice that will take you to the next, more collaborative, stage of your digital project.

Set realistic goals

Especially if you are new to digital humanities (DH), your project will most likely take much longer to complete than you expect. There are always unforeseen hurdles along the way. Even simple tasks, such as transferring data from one hard drive to another, can be plagued by snags: the data volume in digital projects is often much larger than you encounter in day-to-day computing tasks; if you are working across operating systems (in my case, Mac and PC), you have to make sure you are using a compatible file system for your external hard drives. You get the point. For your project to be a success later, it is shrewd to set realistic goals at the outset. Be ready to scale back your expectations for the initial phase of your project. Just get something up and running. To be sure, this won’t be your final product!

An image stitching project I am working on easily fills 75% of a 1TB external hard drive. I formatted it using the exFAT file system, which is read/write compatible between Windows and OS X and also supports unlimited file size. Click on image for more info on file systems.

Seek out help

Tenaciously seeking out help is vital in the early stages of a digital project. Don’t be satisfied with one answer; get multiple opinions and choose the one that seems the best fit for your abilities, your project goals, and the current phase of your project. It’s worth exploring several tool kits and workflows. There are at least three pools you can dip into for opinions:

  • At your own institution you will most easily have access to students and faculty at your department who are working on digital projects. There may also be a DH unit embedded in your institution’s library (for example, the Digital Scholarship Services department at Duke University Libraries). Beyond this, most colleges and universities have IT professionals who can be extraordinarily helpful, though they may have less time for individual consulting or training (for example, Trinity Technology Services at Duke University).
  • Digital humanities training institutes and conferences are a phenomenal way to connect with people who can help you think critically about your project and connect you with other projects that have a similar vision. Don’t expect to be proficient at any digital technology after only a week or two of training. Most of these skills are acquired and honed over the course of years, not weeks. Premiere digital humanities summer institutes include the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria, Canada, and Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching (US). The best outcome you can expect from attending one of these institutes is to have your eyes opened to what is possible and to return home with a welter of new contacts in your address book.
  • Industry is another sphere worth exploring for solutions to your problems. When I was looking for a way to publish and annotate ultra-high resolution visualizations online, I reached out to a company called GIGAmacro that has created such a platform as part of an imaging solution it markets to entomologists, geologists, and manufacturing. I described my project to them and they agreed to let me use their platform free of charge (see GIF demo at the end of this post).

Generate prototypes

It is hard to overstate the value of generating prototypes, especially if you are starting your project as a one-person show and need to drum up interest and funding. Prototyping helps you get a more realistic sense of what is possible and on what time scale. In addition, you will quickly discover how much help you need for a full-scale product and in which areas collaborators are indispensable. Perhaps most importantly, a prototype gives you something to show and share. There is no better way to communicate your idea.

In an initial phase of my digital project focusing on a wall of inscriptions in Delphi, I built an admittedly somewhat clunky mock-up using Lucidchart. Despite many shortcomings, it allowed me to demonstrate what I had in mind and get key advice on how to move forward.

Keep a log

Yes, I know, this one sounds like drudgery, especially for folks from the humanities who aren’t familiar with lab notebooks. But keeping a log for a digital project will save you much time and frustration, believe me. Here are a few reasons why:

  • Tool comparison: When testing tooling options for your project, you will benefit from recording the positives and negatives of each potential digital tool, perhaps even in a table or spreadsheet. It is easy to get confused as to which tool offers which feature. A log also helps you keep track of which ones you have already tried.
  • Reproducibility: Once you have made tooling decisions and are working with the software solution of your choice, you might want to record all the settings you are adjusting in the program. This is especially advisable for things like image processing or stitching where it might take many iterations of fine-tuning settings and rendering to get the desired result. You need an exact record of what you did not only for the sake of convenience and reproducibility, but also methodological transparency. Some programs can generate logs. Take advantage of them!

    If specialized software does not allow you to save a log, consider making screenshots of your tweaked settings for later reference. In this case, I was experimenting with the sliders at the bottom and needed a record of which combinations I had already tried.
  • Project management: A more prosaic reason for keeping a log is that for many of us digital projects are not the main thing we do. They are often side projects and not our bread and butter, at least not yet. And when you haven’t worked on something in a long time, you naturally forget where you left off. A log entry can serve as a great springboard to get back into a slumbering project.
An excerpt from a log I kept while working a visualization of Delphic inscriptions. This entry reflects my struggles with file systems (I had to reformat to exFAT because I was working cross-platform) and preserves some code (a terminal command) I later referred to multiple times.

Start with a small sample of your data

As with any research project, digital or analog, test your idea with a small sample of your data. This is particularly relevant in the digital sphere where you most likely will not have all the necessary skills to tackle all the components of your projects. In the early stages, you can often bridge these gaps temporarily with mock-ups made with less than suitable tools. With a small sample, processing times will be shorter, and data will be more manageable. You are less likely, overall, to get overwhelmed right at the outset. Remember as well that you are testing whether a process will work or not. If you try to be as comprehensive as possible with the first iteration, you run the risk of wasting time and resources on a flawed approach. You can always scale up your project once something small works well. Starting with a small sample, finally, is a great reality check in terms of your hardware capabilities. If your current hardware configuration struggles to process a small sample, you know you will need to find more powerful computers to tackle the next stage.

The animated gif above illustrates how I progressively added more tiles to an image stitching task, going from three to ca. fifty. My laptop crashed when I attempted to stitch 100 tiles, whereupon I had to migrate to a lab with beefier machines. There I finally succeeded in stitching my entire batch of 600 image tiles.

Prioritize project components

Once you have determined the building blocks your project falls into, it is time to decide what to tackle first. Many variables enter this equation and they will be weighted differently from project to project, so it is hard to give general advice. One thing worth thinking about is what potential collaborators and funders are interested in. More likely than not, they will not be looking for a flashy demo, but solid ground in terms of planning and project feasibility. Some Digital Humanities grant programs focus on social infrastructure, planning, and collaboration as much as (or more than) technology per se. Having said that, a prototype of your project can be a phenomenally effective way to communicate your idea. If it is visually appealing, all the better. Above all, as I stated at the outset, remember to be realistic: you have time and resource constraints, and everything will take longer than you expect. Projects can get derailed by focusing too much on creating something flashy to the exclusion of more essential project components, like content creation, target audience assessment, data structuring, or rights/fair use assessment, to name a few.

A more advanced prototype of the visualization of the wall of inscriptions in Delphi using the GIGAmacro Viewer which includes features such as support for extreme resolution images, polygon annotations, and many more. Click on the image to have a look yourself!

 

Good luck!

For a project management perspective on developing a digital humanities project see this excellent overview published by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Another valuable resource is the Development for the Digital Humanities website.

 

Adrian Linden-High is a sixth-year Classical Studies PhD student at Duke University whose research centers on inscriptions and papyri that capture what everyday life was like in the ancient world. Currently, he is working on a rich archive of inscriptions from Delphi recording more than 1,000 slave manumissions (see digital visualization prototype). In the spring of 2017, he served as a Humanities Writ Large research assistant with Digital Scholarship Services at Duke University Libraries.

Announcement, Digital Scholarship, Duke researchers, Events, Instruction, Services, Technology, Tips for students

Library RCR Days!

The Duke University Libraries will be offering a suite of RCR workshops for graduate students over Fall Break, October 8-9, 2018, including:

Monday, October 8

Ethics and Visualization
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
This session introduces participants to core ideas in the ethics of visualization—designing to avoid distortion, designing ethically for broad user communities, developing empathy for people represented within the data, and using reproducibility to increase the transparency of design.
Learn more and register

Digital Publishing: Multimodal Storytelling
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
This session will provide an overview of common options for publishing sound and video on the web, focusing on the benefits of various platforms, licensing and rights issues, accessibility issues to consider, and methods of integrating multiple media into research publications.
Learn more and register

Research Impact Concepts and Tools
1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
This workshop is designed to help you, as a graduate student, better understand how research impact is currently measured and outline Duke’s resources for assessing impact, from Web of Science to Altmetric Explorer. The workshop will include hands-on exploration of research impact tools, so please bring your laptop to participate.
Learn more and register

Digital Publishing: Reaching and Engaging Audiences
1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Who are the intended users of your digital publication? How can you reach new audiences and keep your existing audiences actively engaged? We’ll learn about some of the ways successful projects connect with their users and promote their work to potential audiences. Participants will leave this session with a solid grounding in the ethical and logistical dimensions of engaging audiences and incorporating audience involvement into their own publication practices.
Learn more and register

Image Copyright and Acquisition for Scholars
1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Visual literacy standards and the law are necessary for nearly every humanities and social-sciences project.  This workshop addresses two aspects of image use in scholarship: 1) techniques in obtaining scholarly images (what a scholarly image is, determining original resolution, searching free- and free-to-use images for scholarly research, and when you should pay), and 2) a brief course on image copyright and intellectual property—both the scholar’s and the user’s rights and how each can be asserted.  Relevant case history examples will be cited to back up a scholar’s use of images.
Learn more and register

Tuesday, October 9

Retractions in Science and Social Science Literature
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
This workshop will discuss the burgeoning phenomena of retractions in the scientific and social scientific literature. No one plans to have an article retracted, so we will cover what to do to avoid or address a retraction or expression of concern and what the existing editorial literature can offer if you do find yourself dealing with a retraction as an author or one of a group of authors.
Learn more and register

Text/Data: Acquiring and Preparing a Corpus of Texts
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
This session focuses on the technical dimensions of corpus development.  Using an array of printed matter—from digital facsimiles of incunabula to modern letterpress/offset books—we will explore the risks and benefits of optical character recognition (OCR); file formatting and naming issues; organization strategies for large corpora; and problems of data cleaning and preparation. While this session will not examine legal issues in detail, we will discuss some common legal concerns around the use of textual corpora.
Learn more and register

Text/Data: Topic Modeling and Document Classification With MALLET
1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Participants in this session will acquire a general understanding of topic modeling, the automated analysis technique often referred to as “text mining.”  In addition to topic modeling, this session introduces the concepts of sequence labeling and automated document classification, both of which are also possible with MALLET.
Learn more and register

Shaping Your Professional Identity Online
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
This workshop is designed to help you consider the best ways to navigate how you want to present yourself online.  We will discuss topics such as what to share and how to share, the ethical issues involved, and how to maintain the right balance of privacy.  We will also examine some steps you can take, such as creating a profile on Google Scholar, creating a Google alert for your name, creating an ORCID ID, interacting professionally on Twitter, and creating an online portfolio.
Learn more and register

Collections, Collections Highlight, Exhibits, Humanities, Just for Fun, Student Exhibits

New Exhibit: Graphic Narratives from Around the World

A new exhibit on the second floor of Bostock Library, next to the East Asian Magazine Reading Room, explores the truly global popularity of graphic novels.

Since ancient times, human beings all over the globe have been bringing text and images together to tell stories. The term “graphic novel” connotes a full-length graphic narrative that uses sophisticated artwork to address serious literary themes for mature audiences. Starting in the 1980s, it gained popularity as an alternative to comics in Britain and America. However, this distinction between “lowbrow” comics and “highbrow” graphic novels is not relevant to Europe, Latin America, and Asia, which have long histories of narrative art that appeals to a wide range of audiences in many genres.

In this selection of graphic novels and cartoons from Duke’s collection, you will see retellings of classics and tales of adventure that have gained massive popularity in Japan and China. You will see stories of revolution and bold political movements from Russia, India, South Africa, and Colombia. You will see tales of atrocities, survival, and redemption in Germany and Israel. You will see humor, both lighthearted and political, in Turkey, Portugal and Spain, and everyday life in Korea and Côte d’Ivoire. This variety demonstrates the power of graphic narratives to reflect and lend new visual interpretations to all aspects of the human experience. We welcome you to explore one of the world’s most popular modes of storytelling in the Duke collection.

The exhibit was curated by Katie Odhner, a graduate student in the UNC School of Information and Library Science who is interning this summer with our International and Area Studies department.

Announcement, Cool tools, Duke researchers, Librarians, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Notes, Noteworthy Resources, Services, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Take Our Survey. You Could Win a Library Tote Bag and Journal!

Here in the library, we’re taking the summer months to evaluate some of our communications efforts.

In particular, we’re asking for your feedback on our email newsletter, which goes out every other week during the academic year. (What’s that? You don’t subscribe to our email newsletter? We can fix that right now!)

You know you want these!

Will you please take 3-5 minutes to complete this short anonymous survey?

Your responses will help us make sure we’re sending you the most interesting and relevant library news from Duke.

At the end of the survey, you’ll have the option to enter a drawing for this handsome Duke University Libraries tote bag and journal. Guaranteed to make you look even smarter!

Thank you for your time and valuable feedback. The survey will close on July 20, 2018.

Feature Articles, Just for Fun, Librarians, Life in the library, Rubenstein Library

Earning While They’re Learning: Archiving Valuable Experiences

“Earning While They’re Learning” is an occasional series of stories celebrating our library student workers. The Duke University Libraries employ more than 250 undergraduates and graduate students every year, making us one of the largest student employers on campus.

What goes on behind those mysterious Rubenstein doors? For junior Ines, it’s a learning that goes beyond the classroom.

Hired in her freshman year, Ines works several days a week in the David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. On a typical day, you can find her shelving and retrieving books, manning the service desk, and helping patrons from all over the world find materials for various research projects. Amazed at the ideas behind the research, Ines remarks that her favorite part of the job is interacting with researchers and getting a glimpse into their worlds of discovery.

For Ines, every rare material in Rubenstein Library is like a hidden treasure with a story that is just waiting to be brought back to life. As a current double major in Art History and Political Science, she has come to appreciate the value of tangible sources both through her travel and her experiences working at Rubenstein.

“You can’t underestimate what it’s like to hold a resource in your hands, really see it, and personally engage with it on your own time,” she said.

And these aren’t just any sources; they are some of the best in the country.

“Duke has an amazing rare books collection,” she said. “That’s something undergrads sometimes forget or don’t even realize is available.”

Working in the Rubenstein has given Ines a better understanding of the infrastructure behind Duke’s research, and has made her a better researcher. Though sometimes having a job can fall low on Duke students’ list of priorities, she finds it incredibly valuable.

“What my peers don’t realize is that being a student-worker doesn’t detract from my Duke experience—it amplifies it. I’m able to work with adults and be responsible. It’s character development as much as anything.”

Ines believes in enriching her education beyond the classroom and strives to constantly expose herself to new things. The Rubenstein Library has provided her with a space to explore these pursuits, and that wouldn’t be possible without funding from programs like the Grody Challenge and the Libraries’ Annual Fund. Last year, she was informed there might not be enough funding to renew her position, but she stuck it out.

For Ines, Duke’s special collections are more than just musty old repositories. While there is some dust (of course), she views the Rubenstein as a dynamic place. The staff have become inspiring mentors and friends, and even the oldest of documents have captured her imagination.

“There’s some stuff people never take out,” she pointed out. “Those are stories just waiting to be told.”

About this Series: Students like Ines are an indispensable part of our library workforce. Their employment provides Duke students with valuable financial aid to support their education, and they learn useful skills that enhance their academic studies and careers after college. This year, to encourage senior giving to the Libraries, George Grody (Associate Professor of Markets and Management Studies) has set up the Grody Senior Challenge. Every gift made by the Class of 2018 to the Libraries Annual Fund will be matched by Professor Grody. All funds will directly support library student workers who provide research and instructional help.

Collections Highlight, Foreign languages, Just for Fun, Librarians, Life in the library, Original research, Rubenstein Library

Help Identify the Antioquia 32!

34 Comments

Scroll down to the Comments section for the latest updates! 

Guest post by Holly Ackerman, Head of International and Area Studies and Librarian for Latin America, Iberia and Latino/a Studies. This post is in Spanish as well as English. Scroll down for the Spanish version.

The photo below depicts thirty-two distinguished Colombian gentlemen whose individual and collective identities have been lost with the passage of time. We are hoping you can help us restore them. Are they politicians? Club members? Businessmen? Crusading newspaper journalists?  Where did they fit in the life of their times? Where do they stand in history?

Who are these mysterious men? Click on the image to see the full-size version.

Take a look at the image made by Jorge Obando Carmona, one of Colombia’s most famous photographers, who specialized in panoramic views. We suspect the photo was taken in the 1930s or ‘40s, but Obando worked in the 1950s as well. He photographed primarily in Medellín and other sites in Antioquia. This photo is labeled Medellín.

The large photo (7.5” x 28.5”) was given to Deborah Jakubs, the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian & Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University, by Rod Ross, who prior to his 2016 retirement was an archivist with the National Archives. Jakubs describes the circumstances of the gift: “I did not know Rod Ross until we crossed paths purely by chance in January 2018 in Armenia, Colombia, at a small hotel.  He later wrote and mentioned the mysterious photo, offering it to Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.  He reports that his late wife discovered the rolled-up photo in a shoebox with other photos when she cleaned out her parents’ apartment following their deaths.”

Ross’s late wife, Clara Restrepo (1933-2010), was the daughter of Juan María Restrepo Marquez and María Luisa Ramos Restrepo. Juan María was born in Medellín, son of Pedro Restrepo, who served as a minister in the administration of his uncle, President Carlos Restrepo.  Young John/Juan spent part of his very early childhood in the presidential palace during the administration of his great uncle.  Ross knows nothing further about the photo but has an archivist’s curiosity about these men in suits.

If you recognize one or more of the Antioquia 32, please let us know. By clicking on the “+” symbol, you can enlarge the photos to see each person more clearly.

Send identifying information to Holly Ackerman, Head of International and Area Studies and Librarian for Latin America, Iberia and Latino/a Studies, at holly.ackerman@duke.edu.

As identities are verified, we will update this post.

¡Ayúdenos a identificar a los Antioquia 32!

La foto de abajo es de 32 distinguidos caballeros colombianos cuyas identidades individuales y colectivas se han perdido con el paso del tiempo. Esperamos que nos puedan ayudar a restaurarlas. ¿Son políticos? ¿Miembros de un Club? ¿Periodistas de cruzada? Hombres de negocio? ¿Dónde encajan en la vida de la época? En la historia?

¿Quiénes son estos hombres misteriosos? Haz clic sobre la imágen para ver la versión grande.

Echa un vistazo a la imagen hecha por Jorge Obando Carmona, uno de los fotógrafos más famosos de Colombia, que se especializó en vistas panorámicas. Sospechamos que la foto fue sacada en la década de 1930 o 1940 pero Obando trabajaba también en los años cincuenta. Hacía fotos sobre todo en Medellín y otros lugares de Antioquia.

Esta foto grande (7.5 por 28.5 pulgadas) fue presentado a Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway Directora y Vice Provost de Bibliotecas en Duke University por Rod Ross, hasta su jubilación en 2016 archivista en el Archivo Nacional de los Estados Unidos. Jakubs describe las circunstancias del regalo: “Yo no lo conocía a Rod Ross hasta encontrarlo por casualidad completa en enero del 2018 en Armenia, Colombia en un pequeño hotel.  Más tarde Rod me escribió sobre la foto panorámica, ofreciéndola como regalo a la David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library de Duke University.  Me contó que su esposa finada había encontrado la foto arollada en una caja de zapatos con otras fotos cuando limpiaba el departamento de los padres después de sus fallecimientos.”

La esposa finada de Ross, Clara Restrepo (1933-2010), fue hija de Juan Maria Restrepo Marquez y Maria Luisa Ramos Restrepo. Juan María nació en Medellín, hijo de Pedro Restrepo, quien se desempeñó como Ministro de la administración de su tío, el Presidente Carlos Restrepo.  Juan pasó parte de su niñez en el palacio presidencial durante el gobierno de su tío abuelo. Ross no sabe nada más acerca de la foto pero tiene la curiosidad de un archivsta sobre estos hombres vestidos de traje.

Si reconoces a uno o más de los 32 de Antioquia, por favor háganoslo saber. Haciendo clic sobre el símbolo “+”,  puede ampliar las fotos para ver a cada persona más claramente. Favor de enviar información a Holly Ackerman, jefa del Departamento de Estudios Internacionales y Bibliotecaria para Latinoaméria, Iberia, y Estudios Latino/a, holly.ackerman@duke.edu  Cuando se verifiquen las identidades, actualizaremos este post.

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Exhibits, Film, Humanities, Lilly Library, Uncategorized

Forever Duke – Alumni in Literature and the Arts

Lilly Collection Spotlight

Duke Alumni Authors and Artists

Oh, the places they have gone!

Our Lilly Collection Spotlight shines on talented Duke Alumni including authors, broadcasters, researchers, as well as many who are accomplished in popular entertainment – both on screen and behind the scenes. Their studies while at Duke are varied, and for many, their majors were not directly related to their career. The featured books encompass a range of genres and styles – from sociological research to critically acclaimed fiction to sports journalism. Duke alumni working in film and television produce and appear in a variety of films including comedies, drama and thoughtful documentaries. Actors, directors, writers – they experience success both in front of the camera and behind. What they all have in common is their “Duke experience”.

Check out the entire list of books in the Lilly Collection Spotlight  and visit Lilly Library to view the exhibit Duke Alumni on the Screen and Behind the Scenes.

Among the Duke Alumni  Books in the Collection Spotlight:

Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold

Vinegar girl : The taming of the shrew retold

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler’s inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies. Tyler graduated from Duke in 1961.

The Legends Club : Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an epic college basketball rivalry
In the skillful hands of John Feinstein (Duke 1977), this extraordinary rivalry–and the men behind it–comes to life in a unique, intimate way. The Legends Club is a sports book that captures an era in American sport and culture, documenting the inside view of a decade of absolutely incredible competition.

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter
Bestselling author  (Predictably Irrational) and behavioral economist Dan Ariely  (PhD Business 1998) teams up with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler to challenge many of our most basic assumptions about the precarious relationship between our brains and our money.

The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian culinary journey

This is a richly illustrated and researched cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District–and that of the many refugees who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. In summer 2010, Laila El-Haddad  (Duke 2000) and Maggie Schmitt traveled throughout the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes and shoot the stunning photographs presented in the book.

Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes

Accompanying the books in the Collection Spotlight, the current exhibit in the Lilly Library foyer is Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes. The works of Duke alumni filmmakers, writers and actors featured  include films and series found in the Lilly Library collections. A few of the more well known titles or personalities:

We Were Soldiers – directed by Randall Wallace (’72)

We Were Soldiers
Directed by Randall Wallace (’72) Wallace wrote and directed We Were Soldiers. Nominated for an Oscar as screenwriter for Braveheart, he also worked on films such as Pearl Harbor and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Community and The Hangover

Community featuring Ken Jeong

Ken Jeong (’90) was a premed student at Duke.  A licensed physician, Jeong found fame in comic roles in both television and film.

Other Duke luminaries include actress and Baldwin Scholar  Annabeth Gish (’93) who stars in the current X-Files, Martin Kratt (’89), the co-creator of the beloved children’s series Zoboomafoo and Wild Kratts, Oscar and BAFTA nominee cinematographer Robert Yeoman (’73) , film editor Alisa Lepselter who has worked on Woody Allen films such as Midnight in Paris and Match Point, and documentary filmmakers Ryan White (’04) and Rossana Lacayo (’79).

The Duke campus and Durham have also been featured in film and television; productions include Bull Durham, The Handmaid’s Tale (the film), The Program, Main Street, Iron Man 3, Kiss the Girls, Brainstorm and the late 1990’s  coming-of-age television series Dawson’s Creek.  Whether it’s American Pie 2,  Mystic Pizza, The Squid and the Whale or Parks and Recreation, you will find a Blue Devil!

 

 

 

East Campus Libraries, Feature Articles, Humanities, Just for Fun, Librarians, Life in the library, Music Library

Earning While They’re Learning: Getting in Tune with the Music Library

“Earning While They’re Learning” is an occasional series of stories celebrating our library student workers. The Duke University Libraries employ more than 250 undergraduates and graduate students every year, making us one of the largest student employers on campus.

Tucked inside the Mary Duke Biddle Building on East Campus, the Music Library is not like most other libraries at Duke. It’s small, quiet, and out of the way. Many students might not even know it exists. But for senior Rachel Thompson, the library has become something of a second home over the past three years.

Rachel is one of the first people you typically see at the front desk when you walk into the Music Library. As a student employee, she does a bit of everything—working with patrons, stacking and reshelving, sorting through books, scores, microfiche, and CDs. In all her time at Duke, she’s never considered applying for any other job.

“A lot of times people complain like, ‘Ugh, I’ve got to go to work,’ ” she says. “But I’m like, ‘I can’t relate!’ ”

As you descend the steps from the library’s main floor into the stacks and study rooms below, it’s not hard to see why. Perfectly peaceful and still, it’s a little oasis of sanity, tucked away from the chaos of academic life.

“I really like the aura of this place,” she says when asked about why she enjoys working here so much. “I typically only study in this library.”

For Rachel, a pre-dental philosophy major with a minor in chemistry, working in the library gives her a chance to get in touch with some parts of herself that can be hard to find other places. She played trombone in high school and has played piano for most of her life, and she’s currently part of Duke’s gospel choir. Working in the Music Library lets Rachel immerse herself in music—not just scores, she’s quick to point out, but also books on music theory, music history, and music’s evolution across different genres and cultures.

When asked about her future plans, in fact, Rachel says her work in music libraries may not necessarily end with graduation.

“I actually wouldn’t mind working in a library later in life,” she says. “I like books, I like music … and music libraries are fun because you get to see the scores, which is a little bit different than just your run-of-the-mill book.”

When asked about an especially good day on her job, Rachel has a hard time picking out just one.

“Well, towards the end of the semester, the person who’s over us typically will have an end-of-semester party, which is always nice—free food, you know… but, let’s see…” her voice trails off. “Most days are pretty good!”

About this Series: Students like Rachel are an indispensable part of our library workforce. Their employment provides Duke students with valuable financial aid to support their education, and they learn useful skills that enhance their academic studies and careers after college. This year, to encourage senior giving to the Libraries, George Grody (Associate Professor of Markets and Management Studies) has set up the Grody Senior Challenge. Every gift made by the Class of 2018 to the Libraries Annual Fund will be matched by Professor Grody. All funds will directly support library student workers who provide research and instructional help.

Database Tip, Digital Scholarship, Feature Articles, Instruction, Original research, Student Exhibits

Engaging Students in Neurodiversity Activism: Q&A with Marion Quirici

“Working with the Library” is an occasional series of stories highlighting collaborations between librarians and the people around campus whose teaching and research we support.

Dr. Marion Quirici is a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program and a faculty advisor for the Duke Disability Alliance. This semester she is teaching Writing 101: Neurodiversity, Narrative, Activism. Her students are working on projects that fight stigma by educating the public about the social contexts of mental and psychiatric disabilities. Kim Duckett, Head of Research and Instructional Services, has been Marion’s course librarian for three semesters.. She recently asked Marion a few questions about how the library has supported her teaching and research in the area of disability studies.

What are your primary goals for your students working on their neurodiversity activism projects?

Student Sydny Long with her graphic novel, “The Lonely Brain.”

The goal is to train students to communicate an impactful message to a broad audience beyond the classroom. Their message should challenge mainstream assumptions and stereotypes about mental disabilities, and generate deeper understanding of the social contexts that make mental differences meaningful. The assignment is flexible in terms of format and medium. Students have a lot of freedom in figuring out what they want to say, how they want to say it, and whom they want to address. Some of their projects may involve more traditional forms of academic writing (articles, blogs, or op-eds), but students can also communicate their message through visual art, film, creative writing, posters, websites, social media campaigns, and dialogic forms of activism such as canvassing and teach-ins. What every project has to do is take the knowledge and skills cultivated in my course and transfer them into real-world situations. Through this assignment, I want students to come to terms with their own power and learn to use their research and writing skills to enact change.

What unique challenges does this assignment present?

Because my courses are situated in the field of disability studies, there are two main challenges that we reckon with as a group when designing these projects. The first is upholding the mantra of the disability rights movement: “nothing about us without us.” In the “disability rights are human rights” conversation, we must center disabled perspectives. While some of my students identify as disabled and incorporate their own experiences into their activism,

Student Laura Benzing with her visual art piece, “Language of Autism.”

the majority identify as nondisabled and neurotypical. It is therefore essential that students rigorously consider the lived experiences of psychiatric consumers, survivors, and ex-patients in order to challenge their own assumptions. In advocacy work and activism, it is important not to place an onus of recovery on the individual. Instead, I ask students to research the social structures and cultural conditions that contribute to the challenges individuals face. To be good allies, students have to resist thinking of “us” and “them” — it’s just “us.”

The second challenge is accessibility. The activism project must be accessible not only to a general audience that is unfamiliar with the neurodiversity paradigm, but also to people with all kinds of disabilities. Students learned to use accessibility software to caption their videos, and create audio descriptions of the visual components of their projects. Some thought about ways to incorporate tactile elements into their artwork, while others created accessible maps and navigational aids to help guide participants to their events. I organized the projects into a website here: tinyurl.com/disabilityart.

How has the library supported your teaching?

The Thompson Writing Program follows a “writing in the disciplines” model, which means that every faculty member designs writing courses within a specific discipline in which they have advanced training and expertise. We each have an assigned course librarian with specialized knowledge of our discipline–you, in my case–who visit our classes once or twice a semester to train students in their research methods. This semester you visited twice: once to discuss non-traditional forms of research for the activism projects, for which students were expected to find first-person perspectives on topics relating to mental health, and a second time to train students to use the library databases to compile and analyze a variety of critical sources for their research papers.

Student work from Dr. Quirici’s class last year featured on the Campus Club wall in Perkins Library.

Duke’s librarians have collaborated on a number of resources that are useful for the teaching of writing, which they organized into a “Library 101 Toolkit.” The toolkit contains worksheets that help students choose a topic, consider their audience by identifying stakeholders, and evaluate their sources. My favorite handout is called “Classifying Sources: The BAAM Method.” It outlines four different ways a student might engage with a source in their writing: Background, Artifact, Argument, and Method. I find that having students organize their sources into these categories during the research process helps them structure their papers, and situate their own ideas alongside the work of others.

A really unique way that the library has supported my teaching has been their willingness to provide opportunities for my students to exhibit their work. Last year, the students who created visual art for their activism projects had their work featured on the Campus Club Wall in Perkins Library for a month, thanks to the help of Meg Brown. This year, librarians in Lilly helped one of my students organize a shelf display of recommended reading for Disability Pride Week and contribute a post to the Libraries’ blog.

How about your research?

The Duke Libraries have an online database called “Disability and the Modern World” that I have found useful for browsing for the kinds of resources I would not have known to search for, including periodicals, film and television sources, and archival materials. Resources are organized by subject, discipline, geographical

Students Jay Patel and Nick Saba with their children’s book, “New Friends.”

location, and people, which always makes for a really generative browsing experience. I was so excited to discover an Australian chat show called “No Limits,” which covers a range of topics on disability representation in the media, and features one of my favorite disability activists, Stella Young.

The Rubenstein Library also has an extensive History of Medicine Collection that has been useful to my research. When I was writing a lecture on Psychiatric Degeneration Theory for the Neurohumanities Research Group this past February, I was able to consult a first edition of Bénédict Morel’s 1857 treatise on the so-called “physical, intellectual, and moral degeneration of the human race,” and study the development of a harmful theory that would later be used to justify eugenics and racial cleansing.

What are three things you think that undergraduates should know about using information and the library?

First, to generate as many questions as possible about your topic before you start searching. It’s important at the beginning of the research process to consider your topic from all angles, and to keep an open mind about what you might argue until you’ve learned what other scholars have already written. The more questions students ask about their topic at the beginning of the process, the more options they will have for taking a unique approach on the subject.

Second, not to be overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. Disability is a topic people initially perceive as marginal, but this is a misconception, and there is scholarship connecting disability to almost anything you can think of. Students can feel daunted by this. But once they take the time to comb through what’s out there by engaging in distant reading, they find more sophisticated ways to articulate what exactly interests them. It can be really exciting to watch them discover the originality of their own ideas.

Third, to be comfortable asking for help. Research should never be done in total isolation. Having a conversation with a librarian, classmate, or professor can help you not only articulate your project to yourself, but also to get feedback on how well others are understanding your ideas. They might raise questions, introduce perspectives you had not considered, and help you define your topic. Think of the librarians as extra professors outside the classroom. They have many years of experience organizing research and gaining access to information, and students should take advantage of all that expertise!

Announcement, Events, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

You’re in Fur a Treat: Puppies in Perkins! April 30

Classes are ending, food points are running out, and the school year is officially coming to a close. You might be saying, “I’m so over this semester.” Well, we’re here to tell you we’ve got one last treat for you before you dig into finals week.

Did someone say “treat”?

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of collars jingling, tails wagging, and all of your stresses melting away.

I heard it’s going to be pawesome!

That’s right. It’s doggo time. Puppies in Perkins is back!

Come join us in Perkins 217 on Monday, April 30 for some quality time with Student’s Best Friend. From 1:00-3:00 pm, therapy dogs will be visiting the library to provide you with the study break —and snuggles— you need to finish this semester strong. There will also be fun, finals-themed button-making! Because who doesn’t love buttons?

We look furward to seeing you there!

Finals are ruff, but you can do it!

Announcement, Duke researchers, Services, Technology

Launching the Data Curation Network

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant will fund implementation of shared staffing model across 7 academic libraries and the Dryad Digital Repository.

The Duke University Libraries will greatly expand data curation services to the Duke community as part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Data Curation Network (DCN).

Designed to support researchers seeking data curation assistance, the three-year DCN grant will establish a shared network of data curation staff across seven academic libraries and the Dryad Digital Repository that expands the curation capabilities of all the members.

Researchers at Duke will be able to draw on a wide range of data experience with the DCN, extending the data curation staff beyond those in the Duke Libraries as established from the recommendations of the Digital Research Data Services Faculty Working Group. As data curation becomes more discipline-specific, the DCN will allow a much more specialized level of curation than is possible at any one institution.

DCN members include the following partners: University of Minnesota Libraries, Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan Library, University Library at University of Illinois at Urbana­-Champaign, Cornell University Library, Penn State University Libraries, and the Dryad Digital Repository.

Currently, staff at each of these institutions provide their own data curation services. But because data curation requires a specialized skill set — spanning a wide variety of data types and discipline-specific data formats — institutions cannot reasonably expect to hire an expert in each area.

The intent of the DCN is to serve as a cross-institutional staffing model that seamlessly connects a network of expert data curators to local datasets and to supplement local curation expertise. Data curators bring the disciplinary knowledge and software expertise necessary for reviewing and curating data deposits to ensure that the data are reusable. The project aims to increase local capacity, strengthen collaboration between libraries and disciplinary projects, and ensure that researchers and institutions ethically and appropriately share data.

“The Data Curation Network allows Duke Libraries to expand its deep commitment to research data management through a partnership that will empower Duke researchers to share their data with the wider academic community,” said Joel Herndon, Head of Data and Visualization Services in the Duke Libraries.

Data curation is a relatively new service at universities as funders increasingly require that the raw data from sponsored research be preserved and shared. In addition, many publishers now either require or encourage that data sets accompanying articles be made available through a publicly accessible repository. Finally, many researchers wish to make their data available regardless of funder requirements both to enhance their impact and also to propel the concept of open science.

This project builds on previous work that includes the July 2017 report: “Data Curation Network: A Cross-Institutional Staffing Model for Curating Research Data,” which is available on the project website, datacurationnetwork.org.

For more information about the grant and/or data curation in Duke Libraries, please contact askdata@duke.edu.

 

Announcement, Events, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library

Send a Postcard from the Library (Since You Pretty Much Live Here)

Exam season is coming. The nights are getting longer, the assignments bigger. Do you ever feel like you basically live in the library?

Now you can prove that you actually do! It’s National Library Week, and we’re celebrating with retro-looking postcards that you can mail to family and friends from your “home away from home” here at Duke.

Rediscover the lost art of postcard writing.

Join us Monday (Apr. 9) and Wednesday (Apr. 11) in Perkins Library and Tuesday afternoon (Apr. 10) at Lilly Library on East Campus. Choose from one of four attractive postcard designs and let the outside world know you’re still alive!

You know you want one of these.

Shoot your folks a quick hello from the “Browser’s Paradise” of Perkins Library, or let a friend or two know you’re “Living on the Edge” in Bostock. We provide the stamps (both domestic and international), so you can send your message anywhere in the world.

Choose from an assortment of old-fashioned fountain and feather pens to compose your lofty thoughts, then pop it in our mailbox—we’ll mail it for you that very day!

Everybody loves real mail!

Also, don’t forget to check out our postcard-inspired Snapchat filters the next time you’re avoiding real work in Perkins, Bostock, Lilly, or Rubenstein.

So what do you say? Celebrate National Library Week with a postcard from your favorite semi-permanent address here at Duke. Somebody out there will be glad to hear from you!

Announcement, Duke researchers, Exhibits, Rubenstein Library

Class of 1968 Books on Display for Reunions Weekend

A selection of books by authors in the Class of 1968 will be on display in the Mary Duke Biddle Room during Reunions Weekend, April 13-14.

Duke alumni will be gathering on campus soon to celebrate their annual class reunions. One class in particular is marking a special milestone—members of the Class of 1968 will come together for their fiftieth reunion this spring.

To help them commemorate the half-century mark, the Duke University Libraries and the Duke Alumni Association are proud to present a display of books by authors from the Class of 1968.

The display includes some 67 titles written by 25 different alumni authors. The range of genres and subject matter is impressive, encompassing everything from novels to academic studies of French history and journalistic memoirs of covering the White House. It’s an inspiring reminder of the creativity, talent, and intelligence that each class of Duke graduates carries with it out into the world, and the many ways Duke alumni leave their mark.

The books will be on display April 13-14 in the Mary Duke Biddle Room galleries.

Visitors are encouraged to drop by any time during the Biddle Room’s hours of operation (Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.) and help us celebrate the achievements of the Class of 1968.

Special thanks to Bill Lawrence T’68 and Gary Nelson T’64 P’95, a member of the Duke Alumni Association Board of Directors, for coordinating the display.

Announcement, Events, Noteworthy Resources

“The Red Cape”: Film Screening and Discussion with Director Nelson Oliver, Apr. 18

Images courtesy of Nelson Oliver

Director Nelson Oliver has spent the past decade working on a narrative retelling of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, the only violent government overthrow in U.S. history. In a free film screening coming to Duke on Wednesday, April 18, in Perkins Library 217, Oliver’s The Red Cape will explore the conspiracy, riot, and ensuing racially-motivated massacre that went largely ignored by historians until a 2000 historical commission by the North Carolina General Assembly.

The Red Cape follows the fates of a young black boy and his father in what was then North Carolina’s most progressive city. Incensed by the biracial makeup of the newly-elected city legislature, a group of white businessmen stage a coup—publicizing a “White Declaration of Independence,” replacing democratically-elected officeholders with white supremacists, and massacring untold numbers of black citizens in the resulting chaos.

The film is 40 minutes in length, and it will be screened twice: once at 4:00 p.m., and again at 5:30 p.m.

The Duke University Libraries and John Hope Franklin Young Scholars invite you to join us in Perkins 217 on April 18.

Learn more

For further information on the topic of the Wilmington Race Riot, the Libraries also offer the following resources:

John Sayles, A Moment in the Sun: A Novel 

Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism

Speller Street Films, Wilmington on Fire

Leon Prather, We Have Taken a City: The Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898

North Carolina 1898 Race Riot Commission, The Wilmington Race Riot Report

LeRae Umfleet, A Day of Blood: The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot

Timothy B. Tyson, The Ghosts of 1898: Wilmington’s Race Riot and the Rise of White Supremacy

David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its Legacy

Andrea Meryl Kirshenbaum, Race Gender, and Riot: The Wilmington, North Carolina White Supremacy Campaign of 1898

Rhonda Bellamy and Si Cantwell, Moving Forward Together: A Community Remembers 1898

Charles Torrence Nesbitt papers, 1899-1947 and undated

For further information about this screening, contact:

David Stein
John Hope Franklin Young Scholars Program Director
Duke University Libraries PepsiCo Education Technology Partnership Coordinator

Announcement, Just for Fun, Life in the library

Fetching New Portrait Unveiled in Gothic Reading Room

2 Comments
Attendees listen to remarks from the university’s official portrait painter at the unveiling ceremony, Sunday, April 1, 2018.

The Gothic Reading Room on the second floor of Duke’s Rubenstein Library serves as a gallery of noteworthy figures in the university’s history. Portraits of Washington Duke, James Buchanan Duke, and Benjamin Newton Duke are surrounded by those of trustees of the Duke Endowment, Duke’s previous presidents, and other distinguished personages from the past.

Today, thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor, the Duke University Libraries are pleased to unveil the newest addition to this pantheon of worthies: Nugget, Duke’s famous golden retriever.

Workers installed the portrait late Saturday night.

“Over the past few years, Nugget and her paw, Keith, have become fixtures of campus,” said Duke President Vincent E. Price at the portrait unveiling ceremony, flanked on either side of the dais by presidential pets Scout and Cricket. “Throughout the dog days of midterms and ruff final exams, they are always there with a wag and a wave, reminding students to never stop retrieving. Those familiar with their story know it as a tail of serving others and spreading joy.”

Price noted that as the university places an increased emphasis on student and employee wellness, “It is only fitting to recognize Nugget’s uncanny ability to breed positivity and lower stress.”

In a nod to her own pawpularity on campus, the honor of pulling down the black cloth was a special treat reserved for Peaches the calico cat, who promptly curled up on it and napped through the rest of the ceremony.

Attendees at the event commented on the portrait’s rebarkable likeness and how well it captured Nugget’s well-bred dognity. It came as no surprise to learn from the university’s official portrait painter that she had maintained great pawsture throughout the painting session, obediently responding to his commands of “Sit,” “Lay down,” and “Stay.”

“For years, Nugget and Keith have been hounded by the puparazzi every time they set foot on campus,” said Price. “Now, we’ve captured that lovable smile and silky golden coat in a manner that can last fur-ever. Though the idea of placing her among such esteemed company here in the Dukiest place on campus may seem far-fetched to some, I think we can all agree it’s about time Nugget gets the appaws she deserves.”

“After all,” the president concluded, “she’s such a good girl.”

Is this all fur-real? Unfortunately not. Happy April Fools’ Day!

 

 

Collections Highlight, Database Tip, Feature Articles, Humanities

Disability In The Modern World Database

Disability in the Modern World

Duke is celebrating Disability Pride Week.  If you would like to do research on disability studies, we have a database called Disability in the Modern World.  This database features both primary and secondary sources, including videos, diaries, brochures, advertisements, and more.  It also has the archive of the publication The Disability Rag and its successor The Ragged Edge.  You can browse by title, discipline, general subject, archival collection, place, people, organization, and publisher.  Key areas include:

  • Independence, education, and accessibility
  • Advocacy and rights
  • Legislation and politics
  • The media
  • Arts, sports, and culture
  • Theory
  • Race, class, sexuality, and gender
  • War, industry, and technology

For more readings about disability, check out this recent blog post: Disability Pride Week at Duke: A Reading List.

 

Collections Highlight, Events, Just for Fun, Noteworthy Resources, Tips for students

Disability Pride Week at Duke: A Reading List

Guest post by Cady Bailey, a student in Dr. Marion Quirici’s Writing 101 course Neurodiversity, Narrative, and Activism.

It’s Disability Pride Week at Duke! Two years ago, the name of this week changed from Disability Awareness Week to its current name. This represents an important shift from simply taking a week to say, “Hey, people with disabilities are here,” to sending a message of acceptance and celebration. We certainly know that a significant portion of the people that surround us have a disability, whether visible or not, but there is strikingly little representation of disability in literature, and even less in the way of positive representation. It is vital that conversations about diversity in literature and other forms of media include disability. Seeing positive representations of disability is a major way to encourage disability pride and acceptance just as Duke is doing this week.

Below is a list of recommended books with positive representations of disability. There are a wide range of genres to choose from: personal narratives, fiction, scholarship and history, poetry, and anthologies. While it is impossible for one work to encompass the experience of disability as a whole, these books are notable examples of positive representations of disability.

Many of the books below are available here in the Duke University Libraries. Any titles not available at Duke or currently checked out can be requested through Interlibrary Requests.

* Denotes author with a disability

Personal Narratives

Personal narratives, including memoir and autobiography, are one of the most powerful forms of disability representation. While it is not impossible for non-disabled authors to write well-done characters with disabilities, personal narratives come from a place of experience. They are real, raw stories that tell truths about life with disability and the societal constructs surrounding them. There are a wealth of personal narratives out there written by people with disabilities, so this is certainly not a comprehensive list, but here are some suggestions to get started.

  • Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare*:
    Drawing on the variety of experiences at the intersection of disability, race, and gender, Eli Clare explores his relationship with the societal need to cure bodies and minds that are labeled as other. A combination of personal narrative, history, and theory, there is much to be learned about the intersectional nature of disability and the impacts of societal views from this book.
  • If you are interested in other personal narratives like this, check out Moving Violations by John Hockenberry* and Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha*

Fiction

While fiction isn’t always the best place to look for deep societal messages about disability, it is vital that people with disabilities are represented in fiction. On one end, disabled readers can find inspiration and comfort in reading stories with characters they identify with. On another end, representing disability in fiction can help to dismantle stigma surrounding disability by showing non-disabled readers that disability doesn’t define a person.

The problem with fiction that it often follows negative stereotypes and tropes about people with disabilities. These include but are not limited to: using disabled characters purely as inspiration for the growth of a non-disabled character, villainizing disabled and mentally ill characters, and implying the only two possible ends for the story arc of a disabled character are death or cure. While there is no perfect fictional representation, avoiding the aforementioned tropes can help readers to identify the better ones. Here are a few of the standout fictional novels featuring characters with disabilities:

  • Dregs Duology by Leigh Bardugo*: Consisting of the novels Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, this young-adult fantasy series has been described as Game of Thrones meets Oceans 11. The diverse casts of this series is lead by a morally-grey crime boss with a cane, characters with PTSD, and one who is implied to have dyslexia. This is not a story is not about disability or mental illness, but author Leigh Bardugo weaves it into aspects of the stories so that it is never erased or ignored.
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident follows Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old with autism spectrum disorder, as he embarks on a mission to solve the mystery of the death of his neighbor’s dog. Despite adhering to some stereotypes of autism, this book presents an interesting first-person portrayal of autism. This book has also been adapted into a widely acclaimed stage production.
  • Carry the Ocean by Heidi Cullinan, Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell, El Deafo by Cece Bell*, and Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling by Lucy Frank. Additional recommendations and reviews in the young adult genre can be found at Disability in Kidlit.

Disability Studies Scholarship/History

The field of disability studies has made important strides in understanding the societal constructs surrounding disability over the past several years. If you are interested in learning more about the scholarly field of disability studies, check out some of these books on the history of disability and theory surrounding disability.

  • The Disabilities Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis: A collection of the most important articles from the field of disability studies. For anyone looking to get started in the field, this collection serves as an excellent introduction.
  • Claiming Disability by Simi Linton: Linton examines the field of disability studies and critiques the stance that academic fields tend to take on disability: that it is a tragedy that must be avoided or fixed. Linton points out how the perspectives of people with disabilities often go ignored, and the only voices heard on the topic of disability are non disabled people. Through her analysis of the field, Linton sends a strong message of taking pride in disability.
  • For other titles like these, check out What Have We Done by Fred Pelka and Defining Deviance by Michael Rembis.

Poetry and Anthologies

The books in this category are all personal narratives, but they take the forms of poetry, short essays, and short fiction. Each of the works listed below also represent intersectional accounts of disability. It is extremely important to remember that a disability doesn’t define a person or their identity. Other aspects of identity, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion, can also affect a person’s experience in society.

  • All the Weight of Our Dreams by multiple authors (Autism Women’s Network)*: This collection features stories by people of color with autism. In a world where most disabled characters in the media are white males, the works in this anthology send important messages about what it is like to live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities.
  • QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology by Raymond Luczak and others*: Much like All the Weight of Our Dreams, QDA features stories focused around identifying as both queer and disabled. These stories are all the more important given that a study from 2015 found that none of the top 100 movies featured disabled LGBT characters.
  • When the Chant Comes by Kay Ulanday Barrett*: In this collection, Barrett uses poetry to explore political and social constructs surrounding disability, race, and gender.

By choosing to read literature that positively represents disability, one can learn about the perspectives of people with different experiences and about social and political constructs that exist in the world that one might not otherwise know about. Additionally, choosing to support books featuring disabled characters and/or books written by disabled authors works to show the disabled community that their voices are heard and their voices matter. The next time you are looking for a read, consider choosing one from this list and support disability pride.

 

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Exhibits, Feature Articles, Film, Humanities, Just for Fun, Lilly Library, Uncategorized

Lilly Collection Spotlight: They Came to Play | Women in Sport

To celebrate Women’s History Month 2018, Lilly Library is shining a spotlight on Women in Sport. Books and movies that feature women athletes are “teeming” in our collections. Come to East Campus and check out this month’s Lilly Collection Spotlight.  Click here for the complete line-up.

While you’re at Lilly, visit the exhibit in the foyer, On the Field, the Courts and Beyond: Women in Sports – TITLE IX, that complements our Lilly Collection Spotlight.

BOOKS

Book Cover, Game Changers: the Unsung Heroines of Sports History
2018 | Molly Schiott

Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, a celebration of the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century that features rarely seen photos and new interviews with past and present game changers including Abby Wambach and Cari Champion.

Book Cover, Kicking Off: How Women in Sport are Changing the Game
2016 | Sarah Shephard

There’s a battle being fought. It’s raging on the sports fields, in the newsrooms and behind the scenes at every major broadcaster. Women in sport are fighting for equality with more vigour than ever, but are they breaking down the barriers that stand in their way? Sarah Shephard looks behind the headlines to see whether progress is really being made and tells the stories that can no longer be ignored. It’s time for women to switch their focus from the battlefield to the sports field, once and for all.

book cover: Charging the Net, a History of Blacks in Tennis from Althea Gibson... to the Williams Sisters
2007 | Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose

Beginning with the Williams sisters, the authors examine the foundation of their development as tennis phenoms during the 1990s and the prophetic yet unabashed approach of their coach, father, and sports psychologist, Richard Williams, in crafting a world within which they would be groomed to be successful. a compelling examination of the impact of African Americans on the world of professional tennis and the various challenges and outcomes of that involvement.

book cover, Sportswomen in Cinema, Film and the Frailty Myth
2015 | Nicholas ChareFILMS

An overview of films about women in sport and a timely critical analysis of their role in shaping perceptions of female athletic ability. It examines themes of aggression, beauty, class, ethnicity, physical feminism, sexuality, synaesthesia and technology in relation to mainstream and arthouse cinematic depictions of sportswomen from Pumping Iron 2 to Bend it Like Beckham. 

 

book cover The Match: Althea Gibson Angela Buxton
2004 | Bruce Schoenfeld

50 years ago when Gibson and Buxton were two of the top women’s tennis players in the world. Coming from widely divergent backgrounds (Gibson from a poor black family in Harlem, Buxton from a well-to-do Jewish family in London), the two hooked up in the mid-1950s and became tennis partners and lifelong friends.

Book cover, Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports
2015 | ed. Alex Channon

Offers a wide-reaching overview of current academic research on women’s participation in combat sports within a wide range of different national and trans-national contexts, detailing many of the struggles and opportunities experienced by women at various levels of engagement within sports such as boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts.

FILMS

DVD case Offside
DVD 14381

During the 2006 Iran-Bahrain match, the Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and, officially, no women. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate in men’s sports. Many of the ambitious young female fans who manage to sneak into the arena are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaries, but duty can’t overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

DVD cover Playing Unfair: the media image of the female athlete
DVD 21482 and Streaming Video

Examines the post Title IX media environment in terms of the representation of female athletes. It demonstrates that while men’s identities in sports are equated with deeply held values of courage, strength and endurance, the accomplishments of female athletes are framed very differently and in much more stereotypical ways.

DVD cover Personal Best
DVD 11362

A promising hurdler, played by Mariel Hemingway, finds needed emotional and athletic seasoning with a caring mentor. After the two fall in love, their relationship is threatened as both vie for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.

 

DVD cover Grandes Ligas
DVD 25223 and streaming video

Members of the Cuban National Women’s Baseball Team discuss their passion for the sport and hardships they faced in Cuba’s society filled with machismo, prejudice and daily hardships.

DVD cover Watermarks
DVD 6270

The story of the surviving members of the  Viennese Hakoah sports club women’s swim team, a world-dominating competitor in the 1930s. The club was eventually shut down during Hitler’s reign, though all the women managed to escape capture. Combines historical footage and contemporary interviews to reconnect the women’s lives and memories.

DVD cover Edge of America
DVD 5579

The new man in town has just accepted a position as an English professor on a reservation in Utah. Finding it hard to fit in with the Native American community, he decides to take on the challenge of coaching the girls’ basketball team.

DVD cover Whip It
DVD 18946

Bliss Cavender is a small-town teenager looking for her own path. Tired of following in her family’s footsteps, she discovers a way to put her life on the fast track–literally. She lands a spot on a roller derby team and becomes “Babe Ruthless.” Co-starring Drew Barrymore in her feature film directorial debut.

 

Feature Articles, Librarians, Life in the library

Earning While They’re Learning: Getting an Edge on Work

“Earning While They’re Learning” is an occasional series of stories celebrating our library student workers. The Duke University Libraries employ more than 250 undergraduates and graduate students every year, making us one of the largest student employers on campus.

Duke students live busy lives. That’s the name of the game at a university like this. Whether they’re studying, socializing, reading or working, it can sometimes seem like students around here never get a second off their feet.

When it comes to juggling time commitments, though, senior Gabriella Rivera is something of a pro. She’s been working various jobs around campus for the past four years—putting in around 20 hours each week on top of her coursework and other commitments. And at both The Edge and the Perkins Library Service Desk, we’ve been lucky enough to have her since this past spring.

“I like it here,” Bella said when asked about her work. “It’s a relaxed atmosphere… it’s helped me figure out exactly what you can do with the library.”

Before starting work here, Bella explained, she’d never had any experience working in a library. There was definitely something of a learning curve when she was first starting out—though nothing she couldn’t handle.

“I had no idea how it worked when I came in; I was basically starting from scratch,” she said. “When you first start there’s training, but you kind of just learn a lot on the job, too.”

Troubleshooting technology; answering questions; helping people find books, shelve books, look books up online—there’s a lot that goes into Bella’s work. She’s learned a lot about how the Libraries are run and organized, and she says she’s definitely appreciated the expertise it’s given her.

Asked what she likes most about her job, Bella says it’s all about the people. A big part of her job involves helping students iron out problems, and she loves being able to answer people’s questions.

“I like just talking to the people over at the service desk in Perkins and helping them figure out how to use everything here,” she said. “Especially talking to non-Duke students sometimes—it’s nice to break up from just students that you see on campus.”

And even when she’s off of work, Bella enjoys using her skills to help people around her.

“I’ll help my friends if they don’t know what they’re doing in the library,” she said. “I like being able to answer people’s questions both on the desk and off the desk.”

About this Series: Students like Bella are an indispensable part of our library workforce. Their employment provides Duke students with valuable financial aid to support their education, and they learn useful skills that enhance their academic studies and careers after college. This year, to encourage senior giving to the Libraries, George Grody (Associate Professor of Markets and Management Studies) has set up the Grody Senior Challenge. Every gift made by the Class of 2018 to the Libraries Annual Fund will be matched by Professor Grody. All funds will directly support library student workers who provide research and instructional help.

Collections, Collections Highlight, Life in the library, Services, Tips for students

The Complete “Mystery Date with a Book” List

Thank you to everyone who enjoyed going out on a Mystery Date With a Book last week! If you didn’t get a chance to check out our display, or if you’re just curious to know what books we selected, here’s a complete list of our mystery picks, along with the library staff member who recommended them. Add them to your Goodreads list. Happy reading!

Selected by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head, Humanities Section and Librarian for Literature and Theater Studies:

Selected by Kim Duckett, Head of Research and Instructional Services:

  • Anthony Mara, The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories: “A collection of beautiful interlocking short stories dipping back and forth through 20th century Russia.”
  • Matthew Kneale, English Passengers: “Twenty narrators tell a fascinating story of Manx smugglers, seekers of the Garden of Eden, and the plight of Tasmanian Aborigines.”
  • Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles: “In this little town the real and the imagined blend together in a way you’ve never quite experienced.”

Selected by Brittany Wofford, Coordinator for The Edge and Librarian for the Nicholas School for the Environment:

  • P. G. Wodehouse, How Right You Are, Jeeves: “For everyone who thought that Carson was the real hero of Downton Abbey.”
  • Naomi Alderman, The Power: “An electrifying read about gender and power.“

Selected by Elena Feinstein, Head, Natural Sciences and Engineering Section and Librarian for Biological Sciences:

  • Monique Truong, The Book of Salt: “Flavors, seas, sweat, tears – weaves historical figures into a witty, original tale spanning 1930s Paris and French-colonized Vietnam.”
  • Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife: “According to the author, the themes of the novel are ‘mutants, love, death, amputation, sex, and time.’ Many readers would include loss, romance, and free will.”

Selected by Jodi Psoter, Librarian for Chemistry and Statistical Science:

Selected by Hannah Rozear, Librarian for Instructional Services:

  • Mike Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts: “Zombie kiddo loves her teacher, and also spores!”
  • Stefan Fatsis, Word Freak: “Wonderful word weirdos. Glimpse inside the world of competitive Scrabble.”

Selected by Sarah Park, Librarian for Engineering and Computer Science:

Selected by Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications:

Selected by Katie Henningsen, Head of Research Services, Rubenstein Library:

Selected by Megan Crain, Annual Giving Coordinator:

Want another way to make a literary match?

Join us on Feb. 27 for the next meeting of the Low-Maintenance Book Club. Our theme this month is “Love Between the Covers.” We’ll share our favorite reads from the past year and get recommendations from others. All are welcome!

Announcement, Just for Fun, Librarians, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources, Services, Tips for students

A Sneak Peek at Downtown Durham’s New Main Library

Last week, the staff of the Duke University Libraries were treated to a fascinating presentation by Durham County Library Director Tammy Baggett-Best, who offered an update on the renovation of Durham’s Main Library on N. Roxboro Street.

With our own major library renovation here at Duke just a few years behind us, it was exciting to see what our colleagues down the street have planned. As downtown Durham continues to grow more vibrant, the renovated Main Library promises to be yet another point of pride for those who live and work in the area.

The Main Library renovation started in early 2017 and is scheduled to be complete in late 2019. With over $44.3 million in funding and a planned addition of 19,804 square feet to the existing 65,000 square feet of library space, Baggett-Best explained that Main Library is undergoing some serious transformations.

“Pretty much the only thing that will be left is the foundation and the frames,” she said—joking that the library outreach program “Downtown Library Without Walls” was being taken rather literally by the renovation crew.

Simplified cross-section of Main Library before (left) and after renovations (right), showing the greater vertical openness, connectivity, and natural light in the new building.

And it’s true: with the goals of creating greater openness and visibility throughout the building site, Main Library may be almost unrecognizable to many Durham residents by the time renovations are complete. New roof terraces, glass walls, and horizontally integrated staircases are all designed to create a heightened sense of freedom and connectivity, while new meeting spaces, public spaces, and a comprehensive literacy and technology center are intended to improve community outreach.

A rendering of how the library will look once complete when viewed from the side facing Liberty Street.

Some areas of particular interest include a career development workspace, a MakerLab / S.T.E.A.M. space, a cultural/arts exhibition gallery space, and an expanded and more accessible space for the popular North Carolina Collection. The newly renovated library will also provide more social space for children, teenagers, and adults, along with multiple event venues.

Outside the building, meanwhile, the library grounds will feature numerous open areas for library and community use, including an art garden, an amphitheater, a public plaza, covered seating, an urban agriculture section, and an interactive play and gathering space. Baggett-Best hopes these and other programs will contribute to a sense of community and connectivity across social groups.

Indeed, the renovations are just one part of the Durham County Library’s mission to help Durham grow and thrive. Improved access and technological services feature heavily in their plans. Baggett-Best said they are currently working on a program that will allow all Durham County public school students’ ID cards to do double-duty as their library cards. They’re also working on a way to clear all outstanding overdue fees by public school students at the end of each school year.

Rendering of a community event at Main Library, post-renovation.

It was heartening to learn that Durhamites are big library users, even before the renovation got started. Approximately 71% of all Durham County residents have a library card, compared with 44% statewide. In a recent city/county survey, the only local government agency or service that gets higher satisfaction marks from residents is EMS. In 2017, Durham libraries circulated nearly three million physical items—a number that has been decreasing slightly in recent years in tandem with increased use of online resources.

This seems like a good time for a public service announcement to our Duke students:  All Duke students are eligible to get a free library card at any Durham County Library location. Even if you’re not a North Carolina resident, you can still use the public library, and you don’t even have to leave your dorm room. If you love the hundreds of popular e-books and audiobooks you can get online through the Duke Libraries’ OverDrive app, consider the thousands and thousands more you have access to through the Durham County Library!

Overall, it’s clear that the renovations at Main Library represent one more sign of the ongoing revitalization of downtown Durham. The “library without walls” will have some pretty spectacular walls once again before long, and we can’t wait to help them celebrate its re-opening in 2019!

Learn more

Visit the Durham County Library’s website to find out more about the renovation and see photos from the construction site.

 

Announcement, Collections Highlight, Just for Fun, Services, Tips for students

This Valentine’s Day, Go on a Mystery Date with a Book

Does your reading life feel like it’s lost that special spark? Do you find yourself staring at your bookshelves at night, brooding over old flames?

Don’t worry—our love experts here at the Libraries are here to help. This Valentine’s Day, they’ve hand-picked some choice selections guaranteed to improve your circulation, if you know what we mean.

From now through the end of February, sidle up to our Mystery Date with a Book display next to the Perkins Library Service Desk and get a peek at some of our secret suitors.

Now, watch yourself—these books are a bit of a tease. They come wrapped in pink and red paper with “come-hither” teasers to lure you in. Will you get fiction or nonfiction? Poetry or short stories? Travelogue or fantasy? No peeking until until you’re ready to “get between the covers,” nudge, nudge.

Give your date a chance, but if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. After the two of you have gotten acquainted, don’t forget to let our matchmakers know how it went. Each book comes with a card you can use to rate your date. Use it is a bookmark, then drop it in our Mystery Date with a Book box when you return your book to Perkins and pick up a little Valentine button from us.

This February, don’t leave our literary lovelies all lonely by themselves. Take one home with you—you might find a perfect match!

 

Rate your mystery date, and take one of our fashionable buttons! You know you want one of these.
Want another way to make a literary match?

Join us on Feb. 27 for the next meeting of the Low-Maintenance Book Club. Our theme this month is “Love Between the Covers.” We’ll share our favorite reads from the past year and get recommendations from others. All are welcome!

Collections, Collections Highlight, Humanities, Librarians, Noteworthy Resources

Collection Spotlight: Contemporary African Literature

Contributed by Heather Martin,  Librarian for African and African American Studies

What is African literature? Is it literature created by Africans or about Africans? These are some of the questions students in the Duke Africa Conversations Club hope to spark in their selection of books for Duke University Libraries’ current Collection Spotlight on Contemporary African Literature.

The Africa Conversations Club encourages discourse at Duke about issues relating to the African continent and the African diaspora. Their selections (chosen in consultation with Heather Martin, African and African American Studies Librarian) highlight contemporary African fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Join Africa Conversations for a discussion of “African Literature and Its Place in Academia” with Dr. Tsitsi Jaji, Associate Professor of English at Duke, on Wednesday, January 31, 4:00-5:00 p.m. in Rubenstein Library 153 (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room).

The Contemporary African Literature display will end in February, but books chosen for the display are available in the Duke Libraries any time.

Poetry

Beating the Graves – Tsitsi Jaji (Zimbabwe)

The January Children – Safia Elhillo (Sudan)

Madman at Kilifi – Clifton Gachagua (Kenya)

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth – Warsan Shire (Somalia)

When the Wanderers Come Home – Patricia Jabbeh Wesley (Liberia)

Fiction

Aya: Life in Yop City – Marguerite Abouet (Cote d’Ivoire)

Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara

And After Many Days – Jowhor Ile (Nigeria)

Binti: Home – Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria)

The Automobile Club of Egypt – Aswany Al Alaa (Egypt)

Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue (Cameroon)

Beneath the Lion’s Gaze: A Novel – Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia)

Black Moses – Alain Mabanckou (Congo)

Blackass – A. Igoni Barrett (Nigeria)

The Book of Memory – Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)

Born on a Tuesday – Elnathan John (Nigeria)

Chaos of the Senses – Ahlem Mosteghanemi (Algeria)

Confessions of the Lioness – Mia Coutu (Mozambique)

Every Day Is for the Thief – Teju Cole (Nigeria)

The Fishermen – Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria)

A General Theory of Oblivion – José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)

Graceland – Chris Abani (Nigeria)

The Hairdresser of Harare – Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe)

The Happy Marriage: A Novel – Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco)

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi (Ghana)

The Kindness of Enemies – Leila Aboulela (Sudan)

The Moor’s Account: A Novel – Laila Lalami (Morocco)

Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)

Period Pain – Kopano Matlwa (South Africa)

The Queue: A Novel – Abdel Aziz (Egypt)

We Need New Names – NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe)

The Woman Next Door – Yewande Omotoso (South African)

Nonfiction

The Lights of Pointe-Noire – Alain Mabanckou (Congo-Brazzaville)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah (Sierra Leone)

Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir: Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American – Okey Ndibe (Nigeria)

Nomad: From Islam to America – A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations – Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somalia)

Queer African Reader

Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider – Zakes Mda (South Africa)

Duke researchers, Feature Articles, Feature Articles, Humanities, Librarians, Life in the library, Rubenstein Library

Earning While They’re Learning: Lessons Learned at the Rubenstein

Sophomore Gretchen Wright in the Rubenstein Library stacks.

“Earning While They’re Learning” is an occasional series of stories celebrating our library student workers. The Duke University Libraries employ more than 250 undergraduates and graduate students every year, making us one of the largest student employers on campus.

An undeclared sophomore with an interest in English and Classical Studies, student worker Gretchen Wright has found a whole new outlet for her passion for research and the humanities through the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Two hours a day, five days a week, this is where you’ll find Gretchen hard at work among the books she loves—shelving, sorting, and checking out the centuries-old manuscripts that have transformed her journey through Duke over the past two years.

“There are always things that are interesting to me,” Gretchen gushed when asked about her experience in the Rubenstein. “I like books, I like libraries, I like organizing things… I love it. It’s a great place to work!”

With an obvious excitement for history and literature, Gretchen never seems at a loss to find something to marvel at when she gets started talking about her work. Small wonder, too—Gretchen has interacted with some of the rarest, most engaging works in the world in her time at the Rubenstein. First edition Walt Whitman poems, complete with handwritten notes and edits; 16th-century prints of the Malleus Maleficarum, the first-ever witch-hunting manual; written exchanges between Alexander Hamilton and any number of people mentioned in the modern showstopper musical—Gretchen is working with documents that have changed the course of history, and her work at the Rubenstein remains a major source of inspiration for the research her classes often require of her.

“Duke has such a great collection of libraries, and the resources available are incredible,” Gretchen said. “Even though I work at the Rubenstein, we’re constantly interacting and touching and feeling books that I didn’t even know we had.”

Knowing about the documents available to her through the Rubenstein had a major influence on Gretchen. In her poetry class’s final project last fall, for instance, she incorporated a collection of late 19th-century photographs of Durham into a piece on the parallels between history and poetry. The semester after that, she enrolled in a course on the history of the book—held in the Rubenstein itself!

And although she’s not entirely certain where she wants to go in the future, Gretchen’s work in the Libraries has had a clear impact on the path she sees herself pursuing.

“I’ve definitely thought about going into library sciences as a career,” she said. “That’s definitely a possibility I could see myself going into.”

Overall, Gretchen seemed amazed at how much her perspective on research has changed since she began work in the Rubenstein. Before coming here, she had no idea how real and how powerful research in the humanities could be. Her work in the Libraries continues to thrill, challenge, and intrigue her, and the lessons she has learned here have changed her perspective on research forever.

“There’s so much, so many different directions you can take research of any particular topic,” Gretchen said. “Even if you spend hours and hours every day in the library, there will always be something else that you can look at—and I think that’s really great.”

About this Series: Students are an indispensable part of our library workforce. Their employment provides Duke students with valuable financial aid to support their education, and they learn useful skills that enhance their academic studies and careers after college. This year, to encourage senior giving to the Libraries, George Grody (Associate Professor of Markets and Management Studies) has set up the Grody Senior Challenge. Every gift made by the Class of 2018 to the Libraries Annual Fund will be matched by Professor Grody. All funds will directly support library student workers who provide research and instructional help.

Announcement, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library, Services, Tips for students

Take Our Survey for a Chance at a $150 Amazon Gift Card!

Take our survey and you could win a $150 Amazon Gift Card (students), or a $75 gift card to your favorite restaurant (faculty)!

Here in the Libraries, we’re always looking for ways to make your life easier. That’s why every two years we invite library users to take part in a brief user survey to help us better understand their experiences and thoughts on library spaces, collections, and services.

The survey takes no more than 5 minutes to complete and will remain open between now and February 13.

Student Survey: As a special thank you for participating, all student respondents will be entered into a raffle for a $150 Amazon gift card.

Faculty Survey: All faculty members who respond will be entered to win a $75 gift card to their favorite restaurant.

When libraries, students, and faculty work together, everybody wins. Take a look at some of the improvements we’ve made in the last two years as a direct result of our last user survey.

Changes We Made in Response to 2016 User Survey

  • Bought 2 FitDesks and more standing desks
  • Added color and icon-based signage to make navigating Perkins and Bostock easier
  • Increased frequency with which we clean computers and study tables
  • Developed a workflow for checking broken power outlets
  • Ensured keyboard and computer equipment is cleaned regularly and replaced as need
  • Made improvements to public computers
  • Improved our Room Reservation page and made it easier for students to reserve group study rooms and access specialized spaces in the library
  • Added an Interview Room and made enhancements to both spaces
  • Evaluated and made improvements to ePrint
  • Worked with DSG to develop OASIS:Perkins
  • Developed clear signage to help students select study spaces based on their needs and preferences
  • Worked with security guards to enforce Quiet Zone guidelines

Feedback is what helps the Libraries grow, and the more input we get, the better we’ll be able to renovate, rethink, and improve.

So please, take a couple minutes of your time to complete the 2018 survey—and thank you for your help in making the Duke University Libraries a better place.

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Instruction, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources, Services, Tips and Tricks

Textbooks on Reserve in Perkins and Lilly

Left your textbook in your dorm room? Borrow our copy!

As the spring 2018 semester gets underway, we want to remind students that you can check out copies of textbooks for the largest courses on campus from the library.

The books include required texts for some of Duke’s most popular courses in Economics, Chemistry, Math, Computer Science, Biology, Psychology, and other subjects. They can be checked out for three hours at a time and are available at the Perkins Library Service Desk. Some textbooks are also available at Lilly Library on East Campus.

Here’s a complete listing of courses that have textbooks on reserve in the library. (This list is also available on our website. More courses may be added as orders come in.) Courses listed in red also have copies available at Lilly Library.

COURSE NUMBER

COURSE TITLE
AAAS 335 HISTORY OF HIP-HOP
BIOCHEM 301 INTRO BIOCHEMISTRY I
BIOLOGY 223 CELL AND MOLEC NEUROBIO
BIOLOGY 201L MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
BIOLOGY 202L GENETICS AND EVOLUTION
CHEM 201DL ORGANIC CHEMISTRY I
CHEM 202L ORGANIC CHEMISTRY II
CHEM 210DL MOD APPS CHEM PRINCIPLES
CLST 262 ANCIENT ATHLETES
COMPSCI 330 DESIGN/ANALY ALGORITHMS
COMPSCI 250D COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
ECE 110L FUND OF ELEC AND COMP ENGR
ECON 208D INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMETRICS
EGR 244L DYNAMICS
EVANTH 260 HUMAN COGNITIVE EVOLUTION
GLHLTH 101 FUNDAMENTALS OF GLOBAL HEALTH
MATH 230 PROBABILITY
MATH 202D MULTIVAR CALCULUS FOR ECON
MATH 216 LINEAR ALGEBRA & DIFF EQUATION
MATH 353 ORD AND PRTL DIFF EQUATIONS
MATH 112L LABORATORY CALCULUS II
MATH 212 MULTIVARIABLE CALCULUS
NEUROSCI 101 BIO BASES OF BEHAVIOR
PHYSICS 142L GENERAL PHYSICS II
PSY 104 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
PSY 105 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
PSY 101 INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY
SPANISH 203 INTERMEDIATE SPANISH
STA 101 DATA ANALY/STAT INFER

Please note: Textbooks on reserve are not intended to take the place of students purchasing textbooks for their courses. Due to budget limitations, the Libraries are unable to purchase textbooks for every course at Duke.

For questions related to textbook reserves at Perkins Library, please contact: perkins-reserves@duke.edu.

For questions related to textbook reserves at Lilly Library, please contact: lilly-requests@duke.edu

Announcement, Collections, Cool tools, Just for Fun, Services, Technology, Tips for students

New Service: Check Out Books with Your Phone

Duke Self-Checkout is a fast, easy way to check out books from the Duke University Libraries.

Starting this week, you can now use your smartphone to check out library books in Perkins and Bostock Libraries, without having to bring them to the desk on the main floor.

Yes, there’s an app for that. It’s called Duke Self-Checkout.

How Does It Work?

Visit the App Store (Apple devices) or Google Play (Android) and search for ‘Duke Self-Checkout’ to download the free app.

Make sure to let Duke Self-Checkout access your camera, send you notifications, and use your location.

Open the app and log in with your Duke NetID and password. Click the ‘+’ sign in the top right corner to activate your camera.

When you find a book you want to check out, use the app on your phone to scan the library barcode. The app will blink green when it recognizes the barcode and check the item out to you right there. That’s it!

Remember to demagnetize your book before you leave the building!

If you want leave the building with your book, make sure you stop at one of the Duke Self-Checkout stations to demagnetize your book so it doesn’t set off an alarm.

Don’t have a phone or don’t want to download the app? Use the iPad at the Duke Self-Checkout stations, located in Perkins near the Perkins / Bostock Lobby, and in Bostock at the Edge Service Desk.

Duke Self-Checkout is also available at the Marine Lab Library.

Visit our website to find out more.

 

Announcement, Events, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Tips for students

Puppies in Perkins, Dec. 13

Yes, you read that right. Puppies. In Perkins.

When: Wednesday, December 13, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Where: Perkins Library Room 217

Forget about finals, forget about stress, you deserve a break. More importantly, you deserve a break involving snuggles, barks and happy wagging tails, because seriously, what’s better than puppies?

Don’t get like this poor pooch. Take a puppy study bark… er, we mean break.

 

Please don’t miss it! The puppies will miss you!

Sad puppy. Why wouldn’t they take a break to come see me?

 

We like happy puppies, and also happy students. Everyone will be happy! The puppies will be adorable! Come see them! We’ll make buttons! We’re full of exclamation marks just thinking about it!

Finals are ruff, y’all.

Announcement, Events, Librarians, Life in the library

Ace Finals with the Long Night Against Procrastination

What: Writing and research help, stress relief, and finals prep
Where: The Edge
When: Wednesday, December 6, 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—finals season, of course! We know you can hardly stand the wait for those magical days ahead, but the Long Night Against Procrastination can help make extra sure we’re all working at maximum productivity.

Spend an evening getting on top of everything you have to do—or just come and de-stress with our soothing activities, door prizes, and free coffee and snacks! However you want to approach it, we’re doing everything we can to make sure finals week is as simple and pain-free as possible.

Staff from the Libraries and the TWP Writing Studio will be on hand for help with research and writing. Math and Chemistry tutors will also be available. Tutorial times:

  • Math 111: 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
  • Math 212: 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.
  • Chemistry 101: 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.
  • Chemistry 201: 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.

Help us make the event green by bringing your own coffee mugs and water bottles, and let us help you ace finals week!

Sponsored by Duke University Libraries, the TWP Writing Studio, the Academic Resource Center, the Duke Student Wellness Center, and Duke Recreation and Physical Education.

Refreshments provided by Saladelia, Duke University Campus Club, and Friends of the Duke University Libraries.

Announcement, Digital Scholarship, Duke researchers, Events

Publishing as Conversation, Dec. 1

Image by Stefan Stefancik

Re:Publishing: Publishing as Conversation
Friday, December 1, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
The Edge Workshop Room (Bostock 127)

Scholarly publishing is often treated as one-way communication: send some knowledge out into the world, then hope others learn from it and maybe cite it somewhere down the road. But how can we make publishing an opportunity to engage with others? How can it be a conversation while avoiding trolls, hecklers, and defeatists?

This event will feature a moderated discussion among members of the Duke community about these ideas and more, exploring what it means to approach scholarly publishing as a conversation and how to find, seed, and engage in broader discussion of your scholarly work.

Panelists include:

Registration is required for lunch. Please RSVP. 

This event is part of the Re:Publishing series co-sponsored by Duke University Libraries, Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), Digital Humanities Initiative, Digital Scholarship Services (Duke University Libraries), Forum for Scholars and Publics, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Office of Copyright & Scholarly Communication (Duke University Libraries), Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge,  Duke Initiative for Science & Society and Wired! Lab for Digital Art History and Visual Culture.

Get more information on this and other events in the Re:Publishing series.

Announcement, Duke researchers, Events, Feature Articles, Humanities, Rubenstein Library

Hats Off to Our 2017 Writing and Research Award Winners!

This past Friday, October 20, Duke University Libraries was excited to host the reception of our 2017 writing and research award winners. With topics covering everything from the slums of Bangalore to medieval publishers to personal poetry and creative nonfiction, these student superstars ran the gamut of passions, questions, and creative impulses.

No matter how much their interests varied, though, all of the contestants were judged to have made major contributions to their fields. The response was warm, the students’ and advisors’ speeches were phenomenal, and we’re truly thankful to everyone who was in the audience for the pride and support you showed these winners.

Announcement, Services, Technology, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Renovated and Upgraded Interview Rooms in Perkins

The newly-renovated Perkins B09, ready for your big interview. Go get em, tiger.

Got a big phone or Skype interview coming up you just have to nail? Worried about noise, bad cell service, or nosy roommates jeopardizing that all-important first impression? The Libraries have felt your pain, and we’re here to help.

We now have not one but two beautifully renovated interview rooms in Perkins Library, designed especially for phone and remote video interviews and available to all Duke students, faculty, and staff.

To reserve one of the Interview Rooms, visit the online registration page, check the schedule for an available day and time, enter your name and Duke email address, and respond to the confirmation email within 1 hour (otherwise your reservation could be canceled). That’s it! The room is all yours.

The two rooms have similar but slightly different features. Perkins B09 (located on Lower Level 2) features a brand new all-in-one telephone/videoconferencing system, whereas Perkins 130 (located on the library’s main floor) features a landline system only. Each room has its own dedicated phone number, in case the person conducting the interview prefers to call you.

Also, in response to popular demand, we have increased the 60-minute time limit on the rooms to 90 minutes.

Questions? Comments? Fan mail for helping you land that dream internship? Let us know at asklib@duke.edu.

 

 

Announcement, Collections, Duke researchers, Lilly Library, Music Library, Original research, Rubenstein Library

Congratulations to Our 2017 Library Writing and Research Award Winners!

Every year the Duke University Libraries run a series of essay contests recognizing the original research of Duke students and encouraging the use of library resources. We are pleased to announce the winners of our 2016-2017 library writing and research awards.

Lowell Aptman Prize

Recognizing excellence in undergraduate research using sources from the Libraries’ general collections.

  • Honor Thesis Prize: Anna Mukamal for “Creative Impulse in the Modern Age: The Embodiment of Anxiety in the Early Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1910-1917)”
  • Third/Fourth-Year Prize: Jack Harrington for “In The Empire’s Back Yard: The Radicalization of Public Opinion In Ireland and It’s Impact on the Anglo-Irish War (1913-1920)”
  • First/Second-Year Prize: McKenzie Cook for “World War I and The London Theatre”

Chester P. Middlesworth Award

Recognizing excellence of analysis, research, and writing in the use of primary sources and rare materials held by the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

  • Maegan Stanley for “In Honest Affection and Friendlinesse”
  • Hannah Rogers for “Subversion as Service: The Life and Controversy of Jeanne Audrey Powers”

Ole R. Holsti Prize

Recognizing excellence in undergraduate research using primary sources for political science or public policy.

  • Honors Thesis Prize: Tara Bansal for “Analyzing the Development of Social Capital in the Slums of Bangalore”
  • Semester Paper Prize: Kushal Kadakia for “Rethinking R&D: Partnerships as Drivers for Global Health Innovation”

Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award

Recognizing outstanding undergraduate creative writing.

  • Sabrina Hao for “My Name is Elizabeth”
  • Rajiv Golla for “From Graves to Gardens”
  • Valerie Muensterman for “Earth Once Removed”

Join Us at the Awards Reception!

We will be celebrating our winners and their achievements at a special awards reception coinciding with Duke Family Weekend.  All are invited to join us for refreshments and the opportunity to honor the recipients.

Date: Friday, October 20
Time: 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Location: Rubenstein Library 249 (Carpenter Conference Room)

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Exhibits, Film, Humanities, Lilly Library, Noteworthy Resources, Uncategorized

Lilly Spotlight-Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Need some new reading material or just interested in seeing what’s in Lilly Library’s collection that you might not know about? Check out Lilly’s Collection Spotlight!

Lilly Spotlight on Duke Common Experience

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the Duke Common Experience Reading Program selection of Richard Blanco’s The Prince of Los Cocuyos, our spotlight shines on books and films relevant to his and the Cuban-American experience.  Blanco, the inaugural poet for Barack Obama in 2012, writes in his memoir of his childhood growing up in Miami as a son of Cuban immigrants. The memoir finds Blanco grappling with both his place in America and his sexuality, striving to discover his identity.

Our collections include books on Cuban Art, the Cuban-American immigrant experience in the United States, LGBTQ communities in Hispanic culture, and several books of Blanco’s poetry. Here are a few highlights from our Lilly Collection Spotlight:

Books:

Adios Utopia — Art in Cuba Since 1950
This exhibition catalog covers Cuban art from 1950 to the present viewed through the particular lenses of the Cuban Revolution, utopian ideals, and subsequent Cuban history. The collection covered in this book will be on display at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis starting in November.

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling:Latinx
 An Odyssey by Interview by Frederick Luis Aldama

In this book, scholar Frederick Luis Aldama interviews 29 Latinx comic book creators, ranging from the legendary Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame to lesser known up and coming writers/illustrators.

Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar by Richard Blanco

This bilingual chapbook contains a poem Blanco wrote and read for the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana in 2015. Blanco writes in the opening lines, “The sea doesn’t matter, what matters is this: we all belong to the sea between us, all of us.”

Films:


CubAmerican (2012)  DVD 28418
Exploring the causes leading to the exile of millions of Cubans from communist Cuba by depicting the journey of illustrious Cuban-Americans to their new life in the United States

 

Finally the sea (2007) DVD 12185
“The wreckage of an empty Cuban raft is the catalyst for Tony, a successful Cuban-American businessman, who files from Wall Street to Cuba to discover his roots. His journey develops into a striking love story where politics and romance collide

Mambo Kings (1992) DVD 27116
Musician brothers, Cesar and Nestor, leave Cuba for America (NYC) in the 1950s, with the hopes of making it to the top of the Latin music scene. Cesar is the older brother who serves as the business manager and is a consummate ladies’ man. Nestor is the brooding songwriter, who cannot forget the woman in Cuba who broke his heart. This is an unrated version of the film, with one restored scene.

Visit our Collection Spotlight shelf, in the lobby to the left of the Lilly desk. 
 There are many more titles available to you, and if you want more suggestions – just ask us. Stay tuned – We will highlight our diverse and varied holdings at Lilly with a different theme each month.

Submitted by Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian & Supervisor
Lilly Library

 

 

 

Announcement, Events, Just for Fun, Tips for students

Durham Reads Together: The U.S. Constitution

One Month, One Book, One Community

Starting on Constitution Day, September 17, the Durham County Library is hosting a month-long series of free programs focused on a community reading of the U.S. Constitution. Events include:

You can pick up a free copy of the U.S. Constitution at any Durham County Library location, while supplies last. And check out their Durham Speaks videos, short interviews with Durham residents sharing their thoughts on the Constitution and what it means to them.

A reminder to Duke students: As residents of Durham County, you’re eligible to get a free library card at any Durham County Library location. You’re not required to have one to participate in Durham Reads Together, but it’s another resource at your fingertips.

Post contributed by Kim Duckett, Head of Research and Instructional Services

 

Announcement, East Campus Libraries, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Services, Tips for students

Join Our Student Advisory Boards!

Help us improve the library experience at Duke and make your voice heard by joining one of our student advisory boards.
Help us improve the library experience at Duke and make your voice heard by joining one of our student advisory boards.

The Duke University Libraries are now accepting applications for membership on the 2017-2018 student library advisory boards.

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:

Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board
and Undergraduate Advisory Board

Emily Daly
Head, Assessment and User Experience Department
Librarian for Education
emily.daly@duke.edu
919-660-5879

 

 

First-Year Advisory Board

Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian and Supervisor, Lilly Library
ira.king@duke.edu
919-660-9465

 

Announcement, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Duke researchers, Noteworthy Resources, Rubenstein Library, Technology

In-Depth Look at SNCC’s Past Offers Lessons for Activists Today

Man and woman looking over a brochure for a political candidate before election day in Lowndes County, Alabama, November, 1966, Photograph by Jim Peppler, Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.

What can the immediate past teach us about voting rights, self-determination, and democracy today? A new website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University explores how the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—the only youth-led national civil rights group—organized a grassroots movement in the 1960s that empowered Black communities and transformed the nation.  Told from the perspectives of the activists themselves, the SNCC Digital Gateway: Learn from the Past, Organize for the Future, Make Democracy Work (snccdigital.org) highlights SNCC’s thinking and work building democracy from the ground up, making those experiences and strategies accessible to activists, educators, and engaged citizens today.

Generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the site uses documentary footage, audio recordings, photographs, and documents to chronicle how SNCC organizers, alongside thousands of local Black residents in the Deep South, worked to enable Black people to take control of their lives. The gateway unveils and examines the inner workings of SNCC over the course of its 12-year existence—its structure, how it coordinated sit-ins and other direct action protests, and how it organized voter registration efforts and economic cooperatives to effect social change. SNCC had more field staff than any civil rights organization and was considered the cutting edge of the civil rights movement.

The SNCC Digital Gateway also presents the voices of today’s young activists in the Movement for Black Lives, sharing their views on the impact of SNCC and the southern civil rights movement of the 1960s on their activities today. “Reading through the SNCC Digital Gateway website is like taking a masters class in community organizing,” explains Jennifer Bryant, a community organizer based in Washington, D.C. “The primary source documents provide a deeper understanding of how SNCC was structured, the day-to-day work of field organizers and how campaigns were shaped. The site serves as a reminder that the civil rights movement was fought by everyday people. It provides hope that in these perilous times, we too can fight and win.” Courtland Cox, chairman of the SNCC Legacy Project, who served as an organizer in Mississippi and Alabama in the 1960s, explains, “Our experiences have created a level of ‘informational wealth’ that we need to pass on to young people. This unprecedented collaboration with Duke University hopefully will pilot a way for other academic institutions to re-engage history and those who make it.”

The website is a product of a groundbreaking partnership among veteran civil rights activists of the SNCC Legacy Project, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, Duke University Libraries, and civil rights scholars. Wesley Hogan, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, who has written extensively about SNCC’s work and legacy explains, “The way we are working together—activists, archivists, and scholars—is a powerful new model. This project gives us a unique opportunity to understand the work of the local people who broke apart Jim Crow that would otherwise be lost to future generations.”

For more information, contact:

Wesley Hogan, Director, Center for Documentary Studies
(919) 660-3610
wesley.hogan@duke.edu

Courtland Cox, Chairman, SNCC Legacy Project
(220) 550-8455
courtlandc@starpower.net

John Gartrell, John Hope Franklin Research Center, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
(919) 660-5922
john.gartrell@duke.edu

Announcement, Collections, Duke researchers, Instruction, Librarians, Services

New Staff and Changing Roles in Natural Sciences and Engineering Section

This spring Michael Peper and Melanie Sturgeon, two Duke science and engineering librarians, left Duke University Libraries to pursue other opportunities. We’re sad to lose these valued colleagues, but are thrilled to introduce two new staff members and some different roles for remaining staff. Please see below for our updated titles and responsibilities.

Elena Feinstein
Head, Natural Sciences and Engineering Section
Librarian for Biological Sciences

Elena has moved into a leadership role for the science and engineering librarians group, and she looks forward to continuing her work with the departments of Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology as well as other biologically focused programs.

 

Ciara Healy
Librarian for Psychology & Neuroscience, Mathematics, and Physics

Ciara is thrilled about continuing her work with the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, and learning more about the needs of the Departments of Mathematics and Physics.

 

 

Janil Miller
Librarian for Marine Science and Coordinator, Pearse Memorial Library at Duke Marine Laboratory

Janil will continue coordinating library services and collections at the Duke Marine Lab, serving the Nicholas School of the Environment’s Division of Marine Science & Conservation as well as other Marine Lab patrons.

 

Sarah Park
Librarian for Engineering and Computer Science

Sarah joins Duke on July 18 as liaison to the Pratt School of Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. She has 15 years of experience as a science and engineering librarian, most recently at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. In addition to her library science degrees, Sarah holds an M.S. in applied computer science.

 

Jodi Psoter
Librarian for Chemistry and Statistical Science

Jodi joins Duke on August 14 as liaison to the Departments of Chemistry and Statistical Science. She has 15 years of experience as a science and engineering librarian, most recently at Williams College.

 

 

Brittany Wofford
Coordinator for the Edge and Librarian for the Nicholas School of the Environment

Brittany will continue to coordinate services and spaces for The Edge research commons and will take on a new role as liaison to the Nicholas School of the Environment. Brittany has experience as the librarian for Cultural Anthropology, which will return to the care of librarian Linda Daniel.

If you’re ever in doubt about which of us to contact, we can all be reached at askscience@duke.edu. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

Feature Articles, Humanities, Just for Fun, Noteworthy Resources

New U.S. Poet Laureate: Tracy K. Smith

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Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2017- 
Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Tracy K. Smith, the 22nd Poet Laureate, was appointed on June 14th.  If you are interested in reading her work, fortunately we have several collections of her poetry that you can read.

You might also want to explore some articles about her.  This great NPR profile discusses her appointment, her process as a poet, and a recording of her reading ‘When Your Small Form Tumbled Into Me.’  Here’s another profile from the NYT.  This PBS article lists four poets that Tracy K. Smith recommends you read: Solmaz Sharif, Erika L. Sanchez (coming soon to our collection) James Richardson, and Claudia Rankine.

Finally here’s a video where she reads from Life on Mars:

Announcement, Collections, Duke researchers, Exhibits, Just for Fun, Rubenstein Library

New Exhibit: Incredible Insects!

A weevil (family Curculionidae), one of many insects on
display as part of the of the new Incredible Insects exhibit.

Incredible Insects: A Celebration of Insect Biology
On display June 13 – October 15, 2017
in the Chappell Family Gallery and Stone Family Gallery, Perkins and Rubenstein Libraries, Duke West Campus (Click for map)

Please check our website for current library hours.

About the Exhibit

Insects are the most numerous and diverse animals on earth. They can be found in almost every environment. Because of their tremendous diversity, they play many important roles in nature, as well as in human society—enchanting us with their beauty, unsettling us with their strangeness. Whether revered or reviled, these fascinating and ubiquitous organisms can truly be said to have conquered the planet.

A new library exhibit offers a glimpse into the multifaceted world of insects, including research on insects conducted here at Duke.

There are three times as many species of insects than all other animals (mammals, birds, fish reptiles, amphibians) combined. The number of individual insects is estimated to be in excess of a quintillion (that’s a 10 with 18 zeros behind it).

The exhibit is divided into several sections, including insect evolution and diversity, coloration and camouflage, types and stages of insect metamorphosis, the roles of insects in human history and culture, and a fascinating look at two of nature’s greatest mysteries: the migration of the monarch butterfly and the clockwork-like appearance of periodical cicadas.

Periodical cicadas are one of the most remarkable phenomena of nature. They suddenly appear in the millions every 13 or 17 years. Then they disappear as suddenly as they came,

Exhibit visitors can also hear sound recordings of insect calls at a nearby kiosk and see up-close images of insects taken with electron microscopes.

Around the corner from the Chappell Family Gallery, viewers can step inside the Rubenstein Library’s Stone Family Gallery and peruse several selections of rare books that complement the exhibit.  The exhibit curators selected these works because they represent some of the earliest scientific investigations to discover general aspects of biology and natural history through the study of insects.

Image of a fly drawn by Robert Hooke in his Micrographia (1667), one of several rare historical volumes on entomology on display in the Stone Family Gallery.

Incredible Insects was curated by a team of entymology students, faculty and staff from the Duke biology department.

For more information, visit the Incredible Insects exhibit website.

 

Collections Highlight, Feature Articles, Just for Fun, Life in the library

Collection Spotlight: Library Staff Picks!

Do you ever wonder what people who work in a library like to read?  Well, it turns out our reading tastes here at Duke University Libraries are extremely varied!  For the months of June and July our Collection Spotlight is going to feature picks from our library staff.  You should come by the display near the Perkins Service Desk on the first floor of the library to see what they picked.  Here is just a sampling:

Valerie Gillispie from University Archives recommended Kitchens of the Great Midwest.  She said: “This is a story of Eva Thorvald, a girl raised in the upper Midwest, who loves food. As a child, she grows hot peppers in her bedroom closet, and grows up to become an extraordinary chef. This novel made me hungry, and nostalgic for Minnesota.”

Janil Miller from our Marine Lab Library picked Whale by Joe Roman, describing it as a “delightfully informative read on Earth’s largest mammal. Through historical illustrations & text, the reader travels from the beast of Biblical fame to today’s wondrous creatures and the many challenges experienced at the human/sea interface.”

Kris Troost from International and Area Studies suggested The Translation of Love, saying that it was a “fascinating depiction of immediate postwar Japan and the struggles faced by repatriated Japanese Canadians who were given few choices after being interned and Japanese Americans serving in the Occupation. Written by a Japanese-Canadian librarian.”

Benov Tzvetan from Access and Delivery Services recommended the classic One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.  Here is why he thinks you should read this book: “Ever felt that life is too hard & unfair? Been upset that store X has run out of your favorite brand of Y? Complained that there aren’t enough Z locally? This page-turner might offer you a different perspective on life…but you have to read it first.”

Kim Duckett from Research and Instructional Services submitted the graphic memoir Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast.  Here’s Kim’s description: “Chast’s parents are REALLY old. In this engaging book she explores what it’s like to help your parents as they age, but also tells the story of a long marriage and the intricacies of family dynamics. It’s touching, sad, and darkly humorous.”

Bridgette Chandhoke from the Communications office in the library offered a perhaps less well-known work from the famous John Steinbeck.  She recommends Travels with Charley: In Search of America, saying: “In this genuine and intimate reflection, John Steinbeck details his cross-country road trip with his dog, Charley, to rediscover the beauty and truths of 1960s America. Through autumn soaked trees and dusty deserts, you’ll be right there with them!”

Our staff picked so many great books that it was hard to choose just a couple to highlight, so I do hope you’ll come see the rest soon.  Thanks to everyone recommended a title!

 

Collections Highlight, Feature Articles, Just for Fun, Life in the library

Collection Spotlight: Poetry

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2017 National Poetry Month Poster

We’re celebrating National Poetry Month by highlighting some of the poetry books in our collection.  You can see them on our Collection Spotlight rack near the New and Noteworthy collection. Our previous  Collection Spotlight was for  Trans Day of Visibility!

Also be on the look out for our “Poet-tree” where you can add lines from some of your favorite poems.  For inspiration check out some of these Poems in Your Pocket.

Here is a selection of some of the titles that we are highlighting:

Beating the Graves by Tsitsi Jaji, a Duke professor!

Shallcross by C.D. Wright (review here)

The Prodigal by Derek Walcott (side note: there will be a Derek Walcott Memorial Poetry Reading on April 18th from 4:00-6:00)

Descent: Poems by Kathryn Stripling Byer, a former North Carolina Poet Laureate.

187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments, 1971-2007 by National Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, who did a wonderful reading at Duke on November 17th, 2016.

rack with poetry books

 

Announcement, Events, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Rubenstein Library

It’s National Library Week: Are You One for the Books?

Are you in the library so often you’ve practically become a part of it yourself?

Join us as we celebrate National Library Week (April 9 – 15) and show off your love of the Libraries by being one for the books… literally!

Last year we celebrated National Library Week by asking people to #ThankALibrarian and tell us how a librarian had helped them recently (see video).

This year, we invite you to become a part of our amazing collections by making a “bookface” and participating in a video celebrating all of the resources the Duke Libraries have to offer!

We will be photographing bookfaces outside Perkins Library on Monday, April 10, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. and Lilly Library on Friday, April 14, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.  We’ll also have fun celebratory buttons you can take with you!

Join us to help make this year’s National Library Week one for the books!

P.S. Look out for a Snapchat Geotag in Rubenstein, Perkins, Bostock, and Lilly and posts to our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts throughout the entire week!

Thanks for loving your library. You’re one for the books!

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Film, Humanities, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources, Uncategorized

For the 20th time: It’s that time of year again!

 20th Annual Full Frame
Documentary Film Festival

Lilly Library offers a selection of Full Frame titles

Each spring since 1998, Durham has hosted international filmmakers and film lovers who flock to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Festival goers revel in the latest in documentary, or non-fiction, films which are presented in venues throughout historic downtown Durham.

Because it is the 20th anniversary, this year’s festival’s thematic program is a cinematic retrospective of the twenty years of Full Frame. Curated by Artistic Director Sadie Tillery,  notable films, filmmakers, and special moments that have distinguished Full Frame since it was founded in 1998 are to be highlighted this year.

Do you know that Duke University is a major supporter of Full Frame?
Of special note, because of his support and commitment to the arts, Duke University President Richard Brodhead will be honored with the Full Frame 2017 Advocate Award.  In addition, the Duke University Libraries support and highlight films from past festivals.   If you don’t attend the festival, consider the Libraries’ collections.  A major resource is the Rubenstein Library’s Full Frame Archive Film Collection, that includes festival winners from 1998 through 2012.  In addition, the film and video collection at Lilly Library on East Campus contains a selection of Full Frame titles available to the Duke community.

 

 

Announcement, Cataloging, East Campus Libraries, Events, Film, Just for Fun, Life in the library, Lilly Library, Music Library, Uncategorized

Inconceivable! 30,000 and Counting…

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Counting what, you may ask?
30,000 DVDs in the Lilly Library!

Lilly Library celebrates the acquisition of our 30,000th DVD

Lilly DVD 30000

Lilly Library has a deep and rich collection of films, and as the films are continually ordered and catalogued, we became aware that we were nearing a milestone of 30,000 DVDs on our shelves. The very first DVD cataloged for Lilly Library was the French film, The Last Metro, and it marked the beginning of a highly regarded collection brimming with classic films, international and global films, serious documentaries and ever popular animated films.

Why The Princess Bride?

The inspiration on what to select as our 30,000th film came from our First-Year Library Advisory Board Group which suggested a “fun” film from 30 years ago.  Films from 1987 such as Predator, Rain Man, Full Metal Jacket and Fatal Attraction didn’t quite “fit the bill”, but The Princess Bride emerged as a favorite, and most importantly – F U N!

To mark the acquisition of the 30,000th DVD in our collection, Lilly Library is sponsoring the following events:

Cake! Enjoy a special Twue Wuv Cake
Meet the people behind the scenes, the catalogers & staff involved in bringing this film, and other films to our library users.

Wednesday, March 29th at 10 a.m.
Where: Lilly Library Lobby
For Duke Students:
If your slice has the “Miracle Max Pill”, you win a prize!

Movie! The Princess Bride

When: Friday, March 31st at 8 p.m.
Where: Trinity Café, East Campus Union
Refreshments provided – while they last

Sponsored by the East Campus Libraries – Lilly and Music –
and Devils After Dark

Announcement, Collections Highlight, Events, Life in the library

Collection Spotlight: Trans Day of Visibility

Inspired by the success of our Blind Date with a Book program, we are launching Collection Spotlight, a thematic pop-up display of materials in the New and Noteworthy section of Perkins Library near the service desk. Our first Collection Spotlight highlights the Trans Day of Visibility, celebrated on March 31 to draw attention to the lives and accomplishments of trans & gender-nonconforming people, as well as continuing challenges faced by the community. The Duke University Libraries actively collect fiction and nonfiction books, films, and other materials by transgender authors and about transgender issues. In addition to supporting the program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke and other interdisciplinary scholarship, these materials  may reflect and validate the personal experiences and identities of our diverse student body and broader Duke community. Learn more about our LGBTQ collections.

Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity also has a small lending library of books and DVDs, and offers social and support groups as well as trainings such as Trans 101. In recognition of this Trans Day of Visibility,  the Center is hosting a performance of Mashuq Deen’s “Draw the Circle”  (Friday, March 31 at 6:00 p.m. in White Lecture Hall), the story of a conservative Muslim mother at her wit’s end, a Muslim father who likes to tell jokes, and a queer American woman trying to make a good impression on her Indian in-laws, all performed by Deen himself. A Trans 101 training will be held on the afternoon of March 30 in advance of this event.  


Highlights from our Collections:

Seasonal Velocities: Poems, Stories, and Essays by Ryka Aoki (2012)

Nevada by Imogen Binnie (2013)

My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity by Kate Bornstein (2013)

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul (1996) and Stone Butch Blues: A Novel (1993) by Leslie Feinberg

Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques (2015)

Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves edited by Zander Keig and Mitch Kellaway (2014)

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin (2014)

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock (2014)

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (2007)

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Librarian for Sexuality Studies