Showcasing Women’s Stories at Duke, Past and Present
More than 500 Duke alumnae and friends returned to campus this past February for networking, connection, and learning as part of Duke Women’s Weekend. Now in its ninth year, the three-day event opened with a special show-and-tell in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library of rare and unique works documenting women’s history. The richness of women’s experiences are reflected in the diversity of the Rubenstein Library’s holdings, from athletics memorabilia dating from Duke’s Woman’s College to scientific works by women, one-of-a-kind artists’ books, and even a secret library of German literary classics hidden inside a sewing box. Over the course of Women’s Weekend, attendees also heard from 100 speakers covering topics such as building meaningful connections through mentorship, cultivating creativity, prioritizing health and wellness, and launching new careers.
Highlighting Black Lives in the Archives
Every April, the John Hope Franklin Research Center in the Rubenstein Library hosts an open house inviting the public to get a hands-on feel for Black history. From rare first-edition books, to published works exploring Black history in Durham, to publications by Black students at Duke, visitors are encouraged to browse, touch, and explore the richness of Black culture preserved in the archives.
Pictured here at the most recent Black Lives in Archives event in April 2026, Duke alumna Catherine LeBlanc T’71 (right) poses with an 1850 first edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth alongside Franklin Research Center director John Gartrell. In 1969, LeBlanc was part of a group of students who seized the Allen Building, the university’s main administration building, to bring attention to the needs of Black students. The Allen Building Takeover is an important chapter in Duke’s institutional history, a chapter that’s now preserved in the Duke University Archives thanks to LeBlanc and her peers.
Book About the Stolen Children of Argentina Wins Méndez Award
A new book about a group of women who banded together to reunite families during a dark chapter of Argentina’s history is this year’s winner of the Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. The Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Archive is a co-sponsor of the award.
In the book, A Flower Traveled in my Blood (2025), journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland documents how the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo set out to find their grandchildren, abducted by the military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. Gilliland visited Duke this April to accept the award and talk about the book.
“They were not politically influential. They didn’t have money,” Gilliland said about the Abuelas. “While individually and alone they were powerless, banding together and working together as a collective, they were really powerful… There’s a powerful lesson just about how the truth will come out if there are people dedicated to surfacing it.”
First awarded in 2008, the Méndez Human Rights Book Award honors the best current nonfiction 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, human rights, and public policy circles.
Libraries Sign on to National Statement of Shared AI Practice
The Duke University Libraries is a founding signatory to a national “Statement of Shared Practice on AI and Archives,” a coalition of research libraries establishing shared principles on how to manage collection requests from artificial intelligence developers.
Drafted by the University of Virginia Library and co-signed by eleven other university library systems, including Duke, the statement aims to prevent archival, manuscript, rare and special collections materials from being misused, as AI developers increasingly seek access to them.
“The question before us is not whether to engage with AI, but on what terms, for what purposes and with what protections for the communities and collections we serve,” the statement says.
Endorsement of the statement is open to all libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions that steward unique cultural materials, which are entrusted to such institutions by donors and communities for long-term preservation.
A primary concern behind the statement is that current AI training methods “absorb” these materials into their systems irreversibly, severing the provenance connecting knowledge to its origins, and making it impossible to trace which specific archival materials informed an AI model’s response.
Ultimately, the goal of the shared practice statement is to encourage leaders of cultural heritage institutions to discuss AI and training requests in a way that contributes to scholarly innovation, but without giving away unique archival materials irresponsibly. Read the full statement online: at.virginia.edu/AIStatement.
Preserving the Legacy of Consumer Reports at Duke
In March, representatives from Consumer Reports joined Duke faculty and librarians for a panel discussion and gallery talks celebrating our semester-long exhibit in the Chappell Family Gallery, Test, Inform, Protect: The Consumer Reports Archives at Duke University. The exhibit, which is also available online, explores the history and impact of Consumer Reports over its 90-year history.
The panel included several leaders from Consumer Reports, who commented on the evolution of the organization and the impact it has had on the consumer movement. Jen Shecter, Vice President of Content for Consumer Reports, praised the library exhibit for capturing the organization’s spirit, noting that its founders were “scientists, engineers and journalists by trade, and idealists, rebels, and advocates by heart.”
Consumer Reports donated its extensive archive to the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History—part of the Rubenstein Library—in 2019. This influential record of research, investigative reporting, and advocacy is now available and open to scholars, students, and the public, documenting how the organization’s long and colorful history of independent testing has shaped a safer, more transparent marketplace for all.
Her Fight, His Name Wins 2026 Rubenstein Library Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award
The 2026 Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award, presented by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, has been awarded to Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner, directed by Brad Bailey in association with Gwen Carr and the Mothers of the Movement.
The documentary centers on Carr’s enduring fight for justice following the 2014 death of her son, Eric Garner, at the hands of police. Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry in protests against police violence and systemic racism across the United States.
The film follows Carr’s testimony, organizing, and advocacy work, offering viewers rare access to the sustained emotional and political labor required to pursue accountability. By foregrounding Carr’s perspective, the documentary restores depth and humanity to a story often reduced to viral footage.
“While the film presents a powerful portrait of Gwen Carr’s advocacy, only a small portion of the interviews appear on screen,” said Patrick Stawski, Human Rights Archivist at the Rubenstein Library. “Through this award, the full interviews will be preserved at the Rubenstein Library and made available to students and researchers, ensuring that the deeper record of lived experience and testimony remains accessible for generations.”
The Rubenstein Library Digital Storytelling Award is co-sponsored by the Human Rights Archive and the Archive of Documentary Arts at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The award seeks to support outstanding documentary artists/activists exploring human rights and social justice, while expanding the digital documentary holdings in the archive and ensuring long-term preservation and access to their work. Winners receive $2,500 and are invited to present their work at Duke.
New Unified Library Search Platform Goes Live
In early May 2026, after nearly eight months of hard work behind the scenes, the Duke University Libraries launched a new unified Library Search platform that replaces our previous online catalog for books and media and our former search engine for finding articles and online resources.
The new Library Search interface provides a simple, unified system that makes it easier for users to find items from Duke’s local, physical collections as well as the millions of online resources we subscribe to.
Library Search is Duke’s implementation of Primo, a product from Ex Libris, in use by many of our peer institutions. Because Primo integrates fully with Alma (the system we use to maintain our library catalog data), we’ll be able to add and update records more efficiently than with our previous systems, improving our ability to meet user needs.
The roll-out of the new Library Search interface not only marks a significant milestone for our library staff, many of whom contributed to the launch, but it supports a major goal in our 2024-2029 strategic plan of employing new tools and strategies to increase the discoverability, accessibility, and visibility of Duke’s library collections and licensed online resources.
Duke Grad Student Awarded Grant to Digitize Historic Slavery Records
The Duke University Libraries are partnering with a Ph.D. student in Duke’s Department of History, Jobie Hill, who recently received a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize and organize records on people enslaved by the Massie family of Virginia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Massies were a prominent planter, military, and political family in early Virginia, and one of Virginia’s first families during the colonial period. They owned hundreds of enslaved people who worked at the family’s Pharsalia Plantation, which occupied some 10,000 acres at its peak.
The grant-funded project will result in the digitization of the Massie family’s papers, parts of which are preserved at five different institutions, including Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. At Duke, Hill will work with Hannah Jacobs, Digital Humanities Consultant, and a team of graduate research assistants, to compile a new database of people born into slavery and documented in the papers. The database will be shared with the public as a downloadable dataset. In addition to the publicly accessible database, the team will create a Guide to the Massie Family Archive, an online finding aid for the holistic Massie family collections held across all five institutions.
Sharing the Library Love
Students line up in Perkins Library to pick up a limited-edition Duke University Libraries tote bag, screen printed on the spot by members of Super G Print Lab.
The activity was one of the ways we celebrated National Library Week this year (April 19–25, 2026) at Duke. First organized by the American Library Association in 1958, National Library Week is a time to celebrate the many ways libraries bring people together, spark imagination, and support lifelong learning. Thanks for supporting YOUR library.
Honoring Our Best and Brightest
Each year, we celebrate our extraordinary library staff with the DULies. Bigger than the National Book Awards, more prestigious than the Pulitzer Prizes, the DULies recognize extraordinary job performance that far exceeds individual goals or expectations.
Pictured here with Joseph Salem, Duke University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs (second from right), are this year’s awardees, all of whom go above and beyond for the Duke University Libraries (left to right):
Isabella Yaguda, Stacks Maintenance Assistant, winner of the Sara Seten Berghausen Equity and Inclusion Award; Alex Konecky, Access and Library Services Assistant, winner of the Great Idea Award; and Matthew Hayes, Librarian for Japanese Studies and Asian American Studies, winner of the Florence Blakely Collaboration Award. (Not pictured: Derrek Croney, Senior Software Architect, winner of the Mentoring Award.) Congratulations to them all!
Take Us Out to the Ball Game
To wrap up the end of another academic year, Duke University Libraries staff take the field (well, the stands anyway) with an outing to a Durham Bulls baseball game. Although the home team lost, the day off work was a win.
