The Duke University Libraries advance the research, teaching, and public service mission of the entire university. Your gift to the Libraries Annual Fund makes our vision for the future possible. With your generosity, we can say yes to doing more for every student, faculty, and staff member at Duke.
Gifts to the Libraries Annual Fund support initiatives like:
Distinctive Collections
Our core purpose is to provide access to trustworthy research materials. Donors to the Libraries Annual Fund support our mission to grow and preserve our collections with an eye toward the future of research at Duke. As we build, we are working hard to develop a more diverse collection, emphasizing interdisciplinary fields like climate studies, global health, biomedical engineering, digital humanities, and ethics. We also support Duke as a global institution, growing our collection of foreign language materials across all disciplines.
Knowledgeable Staff
Library staff represent a wide range of expertise, fostering scholarship and collaboration across campus. Your support of the Libraries Annual Fund better equips them for what comes next. To stay ahead in our ever-changing world, it is essential for us to prioritize the advanced training our staff needs to become experts in emerging fields like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, as we anticipate an expanded focus on these topics at Duke.
Essential Collaborations
We partner with faculty and staff from across the university, offering guidance and direction for teaching and research, strategies for visualizing data, and options for innovative digital publishing. In one year, we taught over 300 classes to students in every school at Duke, offered research and data consultations to thousands of our users, and connected undergraduate students to rare, primary materials in hands-on instruction sessions.
Did You Know?
A gift to the Libraries Annual Fund directly impacts every student, faculty, and staff member at Duke. With our dedicated staff, exceptional collections, and a welcoming environment designed to ensure that our users have what they need to thrive, the Duke University Libraries advance the outrageous ambitions of our entire
campus community.
Collections are our original purpose, the foundation on which everything we do is built. Our diverse and distinctive library collections contribute to exceptional student experiences and fuel the transformative research that comes out of Duke. We must continue to assemble and provide access to collections that both strengthen curricular connections and provide unique opportunities for life-changing research.
Your support of the Duke University Libraries will allow us to:
Build and Preserve the Scholarly Record
Library collections follow the course of scholarship. Our collections must grow alongside Duke’s extensive research and teaching needs. While print is still thriving, the demand for access to materials in digital format is increasing. At the same time, the cost of subscriptions outpaces inflation each year. Journal subscriptions can have an annual cost higher than the price of a new car. These complex resources are made accessible by librarians and curators who are experts in their fields, providing specialized support to students and faculty, often working alongside them to solve their most difficult problems.
Represent the Diversity of Cultures at Home and Around the World
In a complex world, a world-class university library must offer a wide breadth and depth of voices. As we move into Duke’s second century, our collections must contribute to a representation of human history that is inclusive and comprehensive in scope. The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s collections have strength in African American history and culture, women’s history, LGBTQ+ history, grassroots organizing, the history and culture of the U.S. South, modern and contemporary Chinese history, Japanese history and culture, and much, much more. Community collaborations demonstrate our ability to work with local partners to empower organizations to preserve their history and tell their own stories. Alongside other Durham and North Carolina repositories, we are committed to preserving and sharing the diverse histories of our local communities, the Carolinas, and the southeastern United States.
Did You Know?
The Duke University Libraries hold more than 8 million volumes in our collections, representing almost 450 different languages. This includes more than 65,000 linear feet of manuscript and archival material (more than 300 Duke Chapels stacked on top of each other!).
On February 24, 2025, Duke University launched the most significant fundraising and engagement campaign in its history. MADE FOR THIS: The Duke Campaign will engage alumni and friends of the university to accelerate progress in areas where Duke can make the greatest difference for the world—advancing innovation through science and technology, creating a more sustainable planet, shaping students as next-generation leaders, and advancing healthcare to help communities thrive.
The comprehensive campaign will support key priorities across the university, with a goal of raising $125 million for the Duke University Libraries.
This undertaking comes at a momentous time, as the promise of higher education in America is under threat, and new forms of technology are setting off a revolution no less significant than the one Gutenberg started over five centuries ago. The explosive growth of online information and artificial intelligence has enabled knowledge to spread faster and more easily than ever. But it has also created an environment for disinformation and distortion, eroding trust in what we see and hear.
In this disorienting world, libraries have a vital role to play. It’s crucial that we remain a trusted source of sound research and guidance, prioritizing people, deepened collaborations, and a culture that is truly inclusive. The challenges facing us are worldwide. But as one of the world’s great libraries, we are determined to play our part.
We can’t do it alone. We rely on a community of donors who generously support our work. This campaign brings with it new opportunities to collaborate on timely, transformative projects that will not simply enable the best teaching and research at Duke, but amplify and showcase it, increasing its impact on the world and countless individual lives.
With your help in achieving our goal of $125 million, we can do just that. Here’s a look at how the Duke University Libraries are made for this moment.
Campaign Priorities
Click on each heading for more details on each priority.
For nearly half a century, Mark Kearney G’69 has donated money annually to the Duke University Libraries. The longest-running library donor, Kearney said that his support reflects his gratitude for the help he received from library staff years ago as well as his appreciation of the continued importance of the Libraries.
“I believed in the work that I did at the library, and I have continued to believe in the work that the Libraries do,” said Kearney. “Contributing money there yearly made sense to me.”
Kearney says that while the Duke Libraries didn’t “save him from starvation” during his time as a history graduate student, they did keep him from “living in an apartment where roach bait would have been a monthly item on my shopping list.” Kearney held a part-time job at the Libraries during his studies when his fellowship permitted it. But as time progressed, a perfect storm of challenges, including the Vietnam War draft and the Soviet invasion of Prague, became obstacles in his educational and career paths.
Along came Elvin Stroud, Kearney’s supervisor in his part-time job who eventually became Duke’s University Librarian. Knowing that Kearney needed a job to support himself while working on his doctorate, Stroud invited him to return to the stacks full-time.
Soon after Perkins Library was built, Kearney supervised undergraduate students who helped move hundreds of thousands of books into the new library building. In addition to supervising undergraduate employees, Kearney played a key role in creating a system to handle the flood of books students typically returned after the winter holidays.
Elvin Stroud, Kearney’s former supervisor (standing on desk), gives instructions to Duke fraternity members, who helped move approximately 1,250,000 books into Perkins Library after it was built in 1969 (Duke University Archives).
He married in spring 1972 and, after working on his dissertation for another year, Kearney decided to change careers and became an information technology specialist at the Social Security Administration. In his first few years there, Kearney maintained a loose connection with Duke. Then a notice in the Duke Libraries magazine about an upcoming Friends of the Library dinner caught his eye.
“By that time, my wife and I were comfortable, and I had a little extra money,” he said. “I noticed that it was $1,000 for a lifetime membership in the Friends and I thought, ‘Duke did right by me; I’ll repay the favor.’”
After making that first donation and attending the annual Friends dinner, Kearney decided to make both the donation and dinner attendance yearly habits. “I was glad contribute to something that wasn’t a necessity, and I was glad to help Duke Libraries,” he said.
In the late 1980s, Stroud again connected Kearney to the Libraries, nominating him to serve on the Friends of the Libraries governing board on which Kearney ultimately served three terms.
Kearney encourages others to support the Libraries and notes how well run they have been throughout their existence. “It’s important to support the Libraries because, in a broad sense, they embody the commitment of the Duke Endowment to education,” he said. “And giving is just a good thing to do that makes you feel good when you do it.”
Open Monograph Award Expands Access to Duke Faculty Research
A lavishly illustrated new book about the evolution of Japanese graphic design in advertising is the latest recipient of the Duke Open Monograph Award, funded by the Duke University Libraries to facilitate greater access to Duke faculty scholarship through open access publishing.
In The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan (Duke University Press, 2025), Gennifer Weisenfeld, the Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke, tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage.
In April, the Libraries hosted a talk with Professor Weisenfeld to celebrate the launch of the book, which is available as a physical
monograph but also as a free open access ebook.
Many academic monographs in the humanities and social sciences see limited distribution—a print run of only a few hundred copies, and electronic access (if any) locked behind a paywall. The Duke Open Monograph Award aims to flip that traditional publishing model by providing $15,000 per book—paid to a participating university press on the author’s behalf—to make a digital copy freely available online under a Creative Commons license.
“Academic books tend to be expensive, especially books in art history that have higher production value with extensive illustrations,” said Weisenfeld about the experience of publishing her book open access. “This can become a cost barrier for access. I know [this support] will propel the book forward to reach a much broader audience over the course of its lifetime. This means a lot to me and will definitely increase the impact of my scholarship among a national and global readership, particularly students.”
We’ve Got News for Duke
Here’s a headline number for you: 9,886.
That’s how many Duke students and employees have signed up for a free all-access subscription to the New York Times online, courtesy of the Duke Libraries, since we began offering the service at the start of this year.
The Libraries’ all-access subscription is only available to current Duke students, faculty, and staff (NetID required) and includes everything the site offers—including Games (Wordle, Spelling Bee and Crossword), Cooking, Wirecutter, The Athletic, and more than twenty subscriber newsletters.
The service has been particularly popular with students, who appreciate the personal financial savings as well as the in-depth reporting. Initial usage stats show that, for the spring 2025 semester alone, Duke users viewed some 599,137 articles, 64,632 Cooking recipes, 17,498 Wirecutter reviews, and played 427,337 games.
At the same time, we also introduced free access to the Atlantic online this year, including all the latest articles, the Atlantic Archive, podcasts, the crossword, and more. We regularly receive requests for the Atlantic for personal and classroom use and are pleased to make it available to the Duke community. The magazine has a long, distinguished history as a cultural reporter and opinion-maker since its start in 1857. Since we rolled out the new Atlantic access, some 2,448 Duke users have taken advantage of it.
“The library is here to provide people access to information, and this is a great way to be able to provide that,” said Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Librarian for Literature, who has helped to promote the new all-access subscriptions to Duke students and faculty. “We’re also thrilled to be able to give people more opportunities to read and have access to different viewpoints.”
Book on Cross-Border Gun Trafficking Wins Méndez Award
A new book about how American firearms drive violence in Mexico 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, anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte follows the illicit trade in firearms that circulate between the U.S. and Mexico. Drawing on the author’s experience as a former paramedic who treated victims of gun violence, Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border (University of California Press, 2024) is both a cultural history of guns and an analysis of the politics and economics that perpetuate a vicious circle of violence.
Jusionyte visited Duke in March to accept the award and talk about the book. “I wrote Exit Wounds because I wanted to draw attention to how our guns are implicated in human rights violations in Mexico and beyond,” Jusionyte said. “I hope that the book will make us realize that migrants and refugees who seek safety on this side of the border do so because they are fleeing threats enforced with weapons that come from the United States. Especially in these times, when anti-immigrant rhetoric and calls for border walls are getting louder again, we need to accept our responsibility for the mess we have caused abroad by caring more about guns than about people they wound.”
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.
Bringing History’s Female Philosophers to the Forefront
Here’s a question: Who is the most famous female philosopher you can think of?
Can you think of any? If you answered no, you’re not alone. For a long time, philosophy has had an image problem. The philosophical canon most of us are exposed to is dominated by dead white males.
That’s a real issue, especially if you’re a working philosopher today—someone who cares about the life of the mind and wants to show students how it’s relevant to their lives. Someone like Andrew Janiak, Professor of Philosophy at Duke.
A decade ago, Professor Janiak approached the Duke University Libraries with an idea. He wanted more women and under-represented voices being taught in philosophy classes. How else were students today supposed to see themselves in the material?
Janiak enlisted the help of library colleagues Liz Milewicz (Director of the ScholarWorks Center for Open Scholarship), Will Shaw (Digital Humanities Consultant), and Cheryl Thomas (Librarian for Philosophy and Religious Studies). Working together, they came up with a plan. They would build an open-source website to provide resources for philosophy teachers, spotlighting female philosophers whose historical contributions have either been buried over time or never properly recognized at all. It was called Project Vox, because it gave marginalized voices a place to be heard.
Margaret Cavendish
The strategy worked. For ten years now, Project Vox has provided a platform for students across Duke— in philosophy but also economics, political science, history, and the arts—to conduct and publish original research on the Project Vox website, an open-access resource that has fueled a renaissance among philosophy scholars around the world.
The site has recorded 300,000 page views from 180,000 unique users in 190 countries. More than 100 students, faculty, and researchers have been a part of its development, and it has been featured in such outlets as the Atlantic, Washington Post, and London Times. In the process, it has brought to light the work of female thinkers like Emilie Du Chatelet, Margaret Cavendish (pictured here) and Tullia d’Aragona. The site is hosted by the Duke University Libraries.
Project Vox celebrated its tenth anniversary in February with a free symposium in Bostock Library that drew scholars from around the country. The next challenge the Project Vox team hopes to tackle, according to Professor Janiak, is correcting inaccuracies about philosophers on Wikipedia, usually the first place people look for information on historical figures. For many female philosophers, Wikipedia’s info is often incorrect or incomplete.
“That portrayal of an historically neglected figure is crucial, and often misleading at best,” Janiak says. “That misleading information or bias can have a lasting impact. So we’re trying to help improve that.”
Congrats to Our Student Book Collectors!
For nearly seventy-five years, we’ve sponsored a book collecting contest to encourage Duke students to build their own personal libraries. Anyone may enter, and you don’t have to be a serious “collector” to win. Collections are judged on adherence to a unifying theme, not rarity or monetary value.
We are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Andrew T. Nadell Prize for Book Collecting. In addition to cash prizes, all winners receive a Grolier Club book of their choice, a three-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America, and a year’s membership in the Book Club of California.
Undergraduate Category
1ST PLACE: Phoebe Trask for “Bandes Dessinées from a French Childhood: A Colorful Window into French History, Politics, and Culture”
2ND PLACE: Sophia Cox for “The Natural World: The Line Between Science and Magic and Between the Known and the Unknown”
Graduate Category
1ST PLACE (TIE): Peter de Guzman for “What Is His Identity?: Building a Filipino American Library”
1ST PLACE (TIE): Merlin Ganzevoort for “From Parisian Gardens to Treasure Island: Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century Travel and Adventure Literature”
2ND PLACE: Daniel Orr for “Greek and Latin Student Commentaries 1908–2021”
The Nadell Prize is named for Dr. Andrew T. Nadell M’74, who began collecting rare books when he was a student at Duke. He credits his interest in book collecting to two of his Duke mentors, G. S. T. Cavanagh (Professor of Medical Bibliography) and Gert Brieger (Professor of the History of Medicine).
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Connections at Duke
A new mural in Perkins Library celebrates the international diversity of Duke’s workforce, which is almost as diverse as the student body itself, drawn from nations and cultures around the world.
The mural—made up of more than 300 wooden blocks and measuring 4 feet by 6 feet—was created by the Duke Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Affinity Group and artist Brandon Johnson. It depicts the affinity group’s logo: a lotus flower and the Polynesian wave tattoo symbol to represent Asian and Pacific Island cultures.
The mural has been on exhibit at Duke University Hospitals since 2024 and will be on display on the second floor of Perkins Library for the next two years.
Duke Marine Lab Library to Close
First opened in 1976 and named in honor of the Duke Marine Lab’s founding director, the Pearse Memorial Library at the Duke Marine Lab is slated to close after nearly fifty years in operation, effective July 1, 2025.
The closure is part of a strategy to “align library services with research and teaching needs around climate and sustainability at Duke–a strategy that has sadly been accelerated by the expected financial impacts on the university of reduced federal research funding,” wrote University Librarian Joseph A. Salem, Jr., in a message explaining the decision to Marine Lab faculty, students, and staff.
The Pearse Memorial Library at the Duke Marine Lab is scheduled to close July 1, 2025.
Although the physical library will close, there will be no interruption or reduction in the essential library services and resources the Marine Lab community relies on, including book delivery, research consultations, research instruction and workshops, and library outreach and engagement.
Jodi Psoter, Head of the Marine Lab Library and Librarian for Marine Sciences, will transition into a new role as Climate & Sustainability Strategist and Librarian for Marine Science and Conservation. Psoter will continue to live and work in Beaufort, North Carolina, and will regularly visit the Durham campus, focusing on supporting interdisciplinary teaching and research on climate and sustainability across the university.
Conversations were already underway between the Marine Lab and library leadership about the future of the space, as in-person usage has declined over time. While the closure was likely to happen eventually, this year’s unprecedented cutbacks in federal research support hastened the transition.
Nevertheless, the decision “enables us to advance the goals of the Duke Climate Commitment and Duke Libraries’ strategic plan, while at the same time realizing cost savings that are unfortunately necessary for the university,” said Salem.
Honoring Our All-Stars
Each year, we celebrate our extraordinary library staff with the DULies. Bigger than the Oscars, more nail-biting than the Final Four, the DULies recognize extraordinary job performance that far exceeds individual goals or expectations.
Pictured here are this year’s awardees, all of whom go above and beyond for the Duke University Libraries (left to right): Henry Hebert, Conservator for Special Collections, winner of the Mentoring Award; Antha Marshall, Serials Management Assistant Sr., winner of the Sara Seten Berghausen Equity & Inclusion Award; Erin Hammeke, Senior Conservator for Special Collections, winner of the Great Idea Award; and Erin Nettifee, IT Business Analyst, winner of the Florence Blakely Collaboration Award. Congratulations to them all!
A Little Library 101 with the Littlest Blue Devil
Every year, the Association of Research Libraries hosts the ARLIES Film Festival, highlighting videos that promote the use of libraries, their spaces, services, collections, and expertise.
We’re proud to announce that our video How to Find a Book in the Stacks won the “Best How-To/Instructional Film” category this year!
The two-minute video follows along with the “Littlest Blue Devil” as he finds a book in our online catalog and uses the call number to track it down and check it out. That may seem like pretty basic library 101 stuff, but it’s one of the most frequently asked questions our librarians get from today’s Duke undergrads, many of whom are experts at online searching but aren’t as practiced at “old school” research skills like reading a Library of Congress call number.
The video has been viewed thousands of times across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and is being used in library orientation sessions. It’s a good reminder that even at top-ranked universities like Duke, students often need help getting up to speed on college-level research. That’s why they have friendly Duke librarians to help them find what they’re looking for.
Biddle Music Building Mural, painted August 2024 by Greensboro muralist Natalie Robinson. (Photo by Bill Snead)
Next time you find yourself on Duke’s East Campus, be sure to take in the new mural in Mary Duke Biddle Music Building. The brightly colored artwork by Greensboro visual artist Natalie Robinson pays homage to jazz legend Mary Lou Williams, Duke’s first artist-in-residence, and features many of the musical greats who influenced her, including Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Encapsulating the essence of creativity and legacy, the mural was commissioned by the Music Department to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their building, home to our Music Library and wellspring of musical talent at Duke for generations.
Libraries Awarded Funds to Expand Duke Family Archive
As Duke closes out its centennial celebration year, the Duke University Libraries have received more than $1 million to preserve and make accessible a huge collection of historical papers related to the Duke family.
This support includes a $500,000 grant from The Duke Endowment, along with funds from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Foundation, the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund held by Duke University, and the children of Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans.
Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, 2010. (Photo by Chris Hildreth)
With the receipt of the Duke-Trent-Semans family papers, the university now holds materials from the first four Duke generations. The archive offers new insights and stories about the family, the communities around them and their intertwined legacies. Dating back to the 1800s, the archive encompasses the personal and business archives of Washington Duke, James B. Duke, Benjamin N. Duke, Mary Duke Biddle, Doris Duke, and other notable Duke family members.
The new funding will enable us to prepare the papers for use, procure needed preservation materials, digitize portions of the collection, and ensure that Duke family materials are publicly accessible for research and exploration. The project’s focus will be the papers of the late Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (pictured), a former Duke trustee who was the granddaughter of Benjamin and Sarah P. Duke.
Honoring Trent Semans’ enduring connection and commitment to Durham, the project will also establish a new community engagement coordinator position based in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The coordinator will work with campus partners to strengthen Duke’s relationships with local organizations and neighborhoods, foster collaborations with local cultural heritage organizations, expand access to Rubenstein Library collections and services for local communities, and increase the Duke community’s awareness of Durham history and culture.
“We are grateful for this generous and timely support from The Duke Endowment, the Biddle Foundation, the Semans Foundation, the Trent Fund, and the members of the Duke-Trent Semans family, which will allow us to establish the Duke Family Archive as a comprehensive historical resource,” said Joseph A. Salem, Jr., Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke. “We are especially excited about the opportunities to reach out to our community—taking our mission beyond the campus walls and inviting diverse audiences to engage with us in the proud tradition of a family whose impact on our region cannot be overstated.”
With Feuerstein and Feinstein, Libraries Present a Family Weekend Double-Feature
Every October during Duke Family Weekend, we look for a parent of a Duke student who has an interesting job and invite them to share their experiences with other Duke moms and dads. This year we were fortunate to be joined by actor, writer, and director Mark Feuerstein, a familiar face to many on the big and small screens. Best known for his starring role as Dr. Hank Lawson on USA’s hit series Royal Pains, Feuerstein has had recurring roles and guest appearances on such shows as The West Wing, Prison Break, and Sex and the City, and his film credits include Practical Magic, What Women Want, and the WWII epic Defiance, among many others.
Mark Feuerstein
Feuerstein and his wife, TV writer and producer Dana Klein, are the parents of Lila, a first-year student at Duke, who interviewed her dad at the event. No stranger to being on stage, Feuerstein shared insights and anecdotes from a long career of entertaining audiences.
Later that same weekend, we were proud to partner with Duke University Press on a talk with John Feinstein T’77, author of the new book, Five Banners: Inside the Duke Basketball Dynasty, in conversation with Coach Mike Krzyzewski.
In the book Feinstein, who covered Duke’s men basketball as a student reporter for the DukeChronicle and later for the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and NPR, tells the inside history of Coach K’s forty-two-year career at Duke and its five NCAA championships. Through his close friendships and conversations with Coach K, Grant Hill, Nolan Smith, Christian Laettner, Tommy Amaker, Bobby Hurley, and others, Feinstein takes readers on a mesmerizing ride into the locker room and onto the court.
Left to right: Coach Mike Krzyzewski, author John Feinstein, and Duke University Press director Dean Smith.
As a sports commentator, Feinstein is used to covering Duke basketball with a reporter’s objectivity. But Five Banners allowed him to fully embrace his roots and tell the story of one of the most impressive sports dynasties of all time. Through his unparalleled access to one of the winningest college basketball coaches ever, Feinstein offers a blueprint of what leadership looks like and how greatness is made. The book is available from Duke University Press.
Meanwhile on the Socials: A Little Library 101
With over eight million volumes spread across ten libraries and two campuses (plus Duke Kunshan and the Duke Marine Lab!), it can be daunting to find what you’re looking for in a large research library system like Duke’s—especially if no one has ever explained it before.
That’s a frequent refrain our librarians hear from incoming Duke undergrads, many of whom are experts at online searching but aren’t as practiced at “old school” research skills like using a Library of Congress call number to find a book in the stacks.
To help them out, we recently boiled it down into a two-minute video for social media. Students can follow along with the “Littlest Blue Devil” as he finds a book in our online catalog and uses the call number to track it down and check it out. The video has already been viewed over a thousand times across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and is being used in library orientation sessions. It’s a good reminder that even at top-ranked universities like Duke, students often need help getting up to speed on college-level research. That’s why they have friendly Duke librarians to help them find what they’re looking for.
How Can Libraries Help the Climate? Stop Trying to Be So Cool.
Like many parts of campus, we’ve been trying to reduce our energy consumption in support of the Duke Climate Commitment.
With nearly 610,000 square feet of combined space, our library buildings have one of the biggest physical footprints on campus outside of the Duke Medical Center. That means we also have some of the university’s highest heating and cooling costs.
Bringing those costs down represents an obvious goal—but only if it can be done in a way that keeps the millions of books on our shelves at mold-free temperature and humidity levels.
Duke’s Chiller Plant No. 3, which helps cool campus buildings.
One solution we tried this year, in partnership with Duke’s Facilities and Maintenance Department (FMD), may sound familiar to anyone who has a “smart” thermostat at home. We started turning the air off when it’s least needed.
From January to May 2024, Duke FMD piloted a series of controlled HVAC shutdowns in Perkins and Bostock Libraries overnight when the buildings were closed. Whenever the dew point outside fell below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, the air handlers in the two libraries would automatically shut off and turn back on at pre-programmed intervals. In this way, conditions inside the climate-controlled book stacks never deviated far from normal.
Using environmental sensors placed throughout the stacks, the Libraries’ Conservation Services Department carefully logged temperature and humidity levels in order to monitor the impact on library collections over the five-month trial period. Happily, the impact was little to none.
The impact on energy consumption, on the other hand, was significant.
According to FMD, the controlled HVAC shutdowns conserved 7.1 million pounds of steam and 100,000 tons of chilled water used by Duke to heat and cool campus buildings. That’s the equivalent of 502 metric tons of carbon dioxide not released into the atmosphere, the same as keeping 125 gas-powered cars off the road for an entire year. The financial benefit was likewise eye-opening, saving the Libraries $210,000 in annual utility costs.
Given the successful proof of concept, FMD will continue implementing controlled HVAC shutdowns as part of our normal library building operations whenever the weather permits. And we will continue to monitor the environmental conditions in our buildings to make sure that Duke’s priceless research collections are preserved for future generations.
Thanks to creative energy-saving ideas like this one, Duke was able to announce earlier this fall that the university has fulfilled its 2007 pledge to become carbon-neutral by 2024—one of only fourteen U.S. colleges and universities to meet that milestone.
Feeling Like a Student Again
This group of Duke alumni recently got an up-close look at some of the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s most fascinating treasures as part of “The History of the Book,” a class taught by Clare Woods, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, for the inaugural Duke Forever Learning Summer Academy. It’s a condensed, one-week version of the same course Woods has taught at Duke for years, investigating the history of the “book” as a physical object from its earliest forms to artists books and digital texts. Drawing on rare and historic primary source materials from the Rubenstein Library, program participants learned how book production changed over the centuries, from ancient Greece and Rome through medieval monastic scriptoria to the printing presses of the early modern world. Combining the intellectual stimulation of college with the camaraderie of summer camp, the Forever Learning Summer Academy provides an immersive week-long educational adventure in July and August for Duke alumni and friends. Find out more at alumni.duke.edu/forever-learning.
Libraries Partner with University IT and Research Offices to Meet Growing Needs of Duke Researchers
As the amount of computational data we generate as a society keeps increasing, so does the complexity of conducting, sharing, and publishing data-intensive research. Every year, Duke researchers must spend more and more time navigating a maze of funding agency data requirements, IT security regulations, and data storage solutions, instead of focusing on the core work enabled by the data itself: discovery, innovation, and scholarship.
This fall, we were excited to announce a new faculty-centered initiative designed to streamline the administrative processes of data-driven research at Duke, optimize IT infrastructure, and empower our faculty researchers to do what they do best—make new discoveries. Known as the Compute & Data Services Alliance for Research (CDSA), it’s a joint effort of the Duke University Libraries, Office of Information Technology, and the Office for Research and Innovation—each of which touch the research enterprise at Duke at different stages and support Duke researchers in different ways.
The CDSA is already underway with a phased rollout and expansion of a dozen of the most highly requested research services identified by Duke faculty, including hiring additional research support staff. Here in the Libraries, we have already added a Research Data Management Consultant, Data Visualization Analyst, Senior Applications Developer, and a Digital Humanities Consultant this year, adding much-needed capacity to meet the level of demand. Additional positions will be added in the coming years in support of CDSA-aligned services.
The ultimate goal of the collaborative venture is to simplify the complete research lifecycle—from the early planning stages to final publication and archiving—thereby increasing the visibility, reproducibility, and impact of research conducted at Duke.
Giving Duke Engineers Something to Chew On
This September we hosted a special library open house especially for students, faculty, and staff from the Pratt School of Engineering. The event offered attendees a chance to interact with some fascinating and unusual items from the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library—like this toothbrush testing machine from the Consumer Reports Archives. Over 100 students and faculty members attended to get a taste of the wide variety of collections we hold on the history of science and engineering, including many they might not expect.
Scene from Summer Camp
Meredith Parker-Terry, Librarian for Psychology and Neuroscience (above), paints a watercolor during Duke Libraries Summer Camp, a three-week series of professional development workshops organized over the summer to foster peer-to-peer learning and building connections across the many units of our organization. This year’s “campers” could try their hand at Risograph printing, bookbinding, historical board games, and the world of competitive Scrabble. At the same time, they learned about project management, having difficult conversations at work, improving their presentation skills, and more. The event concluded with a handicraft showcase, where staff got a chance to share their artistic and creative talents with each other. Started in 2019, Duke Libraries Summer Camp has become an annual tradition, offering our staff a chance to benefit from each other’s expertise in a relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere.
Bishop’s House circa 1960s, Duke University Archives.
Bishop’s House, Lilly Library’s home away from home while the renovation is ongoing, sits near the northeast corner of East Campus, a stone’s throw from Baldwin Auditorium. The rambling historic home has a wide front porch, creaky floors, windows that look out onto tall trees and quiet neighborhood streets, and a colorful history of previous campus tenants.
The house was built in 1911 to be the home of former Trinity College President John C. Kilgo. After stepping down as president in 1910, Kilgo became a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and lived in the home from 1911 to 1915. (Hence the name Bishop’s House.)
Trinity College President John C. Kilgo
Later, the building took on a variety of uses, first as a women’s dormitory and then as a home for single faculty men. In 1920, Bert Cunningham, professor of biology and zoology, moved in with his family on the first floor, with a group of law students living one floor above.
In 1922, the building was turned over to the Trinity Faculty Club for use as a clubhouse, which it remained until it was extensively remodeled and reopened as the Woman’s College Infirmary in 1935.
For nearly thirty years, Bishop’s House was a “convenient convalescent place for co-eds with winter colds, a possible stomach upset following a ‘box from home party,’ or other minor ailments,” wisecracked the Durham Morning Herald in a 1938 article about the infirmary.
In 1962, the doctors and nurses moved out and the Duke University Press moved in, remaining there until 1983. After that, it became the administrative offices of Duke Continuing Studies, a university department that offered popular enrichment courses open to Duke students, alumni, and the general public on everything from yoga and improv comedy to history and wine tasting.
A Duke Continuing Studies class on Piedmont history at Bishop’s House, 1988. Duke University Archives.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Continuing Studies staff left Bishop’s House to work remotely and ultimately decided not to return. That left the building available as a swing space when the Lilly Library renovation project started.
The interior of Bishop’s House still displays many of the picturesque features from when it was originally built in 1911, such as the wraparound porch, high ceilings, and fireplaces with ornamental tile. For the staff of Lilly Library, it’s a welcome way station— full of built-in charm, easy for students and faculty to find, and ready for another chapter in its long and eclectic history.
Bishop’s House on East Campus (located behind Bassett Residence Hall), will serve as a temporary base of library services while Lilly Library is being renovated. The location opened to library users on August 1.
This semester, the long-awaited renovation and expansion of Lilly Library officially got into full swing.
All the books have been carefully packed up and moved to temporary storage, clearing the way for construction workers to move in. Meanwhile, library staff offices and workspaces have been relocated to Lilly’s temporary renovation quarters at Bishop’s House, which will serve as a base of library services on East Campus for the next two years. Although the historic home’s century-old floors can’t support aisles of heavy books, students and faculty can still visit Bishop’s House to pick up and return library materials, access course reserves, meet with librarians, and get help with any questions.
While the renovation is still in the early, messy phases, we thought we would share some scenes from our progress so far—before the real makeover begins in earnest.
Carts of books from Lilly’s stacks, shrink-wrapped, carefully labeled, and ready to be loaded out over the summer.Empty shelves that once held Lilly’s extensive collection of DVDs and films, most of which have been relocated to Perkins Library during the renovation. During the renovation, workers will remove the building’s entire stack core, from top floor to basement.Lilly’s staff take a break for one last group “shelfie” before moving out.Library users can still find scanners, copiers, printers, and other equipment they need at Bishop’s House.The Carpenter Reading Room, empty of study tables, chairs, and almost everything else. The original wood shelves around the room will be replaced with new ones, along with updated finishes and furnishings throughout.All of the library’s windows have been removed for restoration, including these in the Thomas Reading Room.The compact shelving on the library’s basement floor being is being disassembled, to be replaced later with more modern compact shelves.Kelley Lawton, Head of East Campus Libraries (center), discusses the progress with the construction team. Although Lilly is currently more of a destruction zone than a construction zone, the project is proceeding roughly on schedule.Six of the tennis courts behind Lilly Library will be removed during construction to accommodate the building’s expansion. Once complete, Lilly will be nearly 75 percent larger than it is now, with significantly more user seating to accommodate Duke’s first-year student population.
As curator of Latinx Studies at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Ariana Curtis, Ph.D., is passionate about the museum’s commitment to increase and diffuse knowledge. Her ability to further this mission was forged as Curtis T’02 earned her bachelor’s degree at Duke in Comparative Area Studies (now International Comparative Studies). Her multidisciplinary major allowed her to explore history, politics, identity, arts and culture, and education—and to learn the importance of asking questions.
“I was encouraged to investigate areas of interest, without necessarily having an endgame in mind,” she says. “Through my professional career, I have never been afraid of inaugural programs or being the first to be a curator in a space. Being able to create and imagine in a structured way started with my undergraduate years at Duke.” In addition to being the first person in her current role, which she began in 2017, she was the first curator to bring a Latinx lens to her previous job at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.
In her scholarly and curatorial work, Curtis continues to use Duke’s library and archival resources. Her gratitude for the Libraries, combined with love of her alma mater, propelled Curtis to serve on the Library Advisory Board, which she joined last year. “I have researched in many parts of Duke’s collections and am always encouraged by the diversity, both historical and contemporary,” she says. “Joining the board allows me to talk about how important that diversity is for Duke students of all levels, but also researchers, national and international, that draw on Duke’s resources.”
The legacy of Duke historian John Hope Franklin looms large for Curtis’s experiences, both at Duke and the Smithsonian, where Franklin was founding chairman of the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Scholarly Advisory Committee. A quote by Franklin—“We’ve got to tell the unvarnished truth”—not only appears on the wall of the museum but also represents the challenge Curtis and her colleagues seek to uphold in their work.
“Wanting to promote the work and collection of the Libraries, especially the John Hope Franklin Research Center, also aided my decision to join the library board,” says Curtis. As a daughter of an African American mother and a Black Panamanian father, she values “that Duke Libraries has dedicated resources to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of African American and African Diaspora history and culture as a standalone research center.”
Still from a Smithsonian video interview with Curtis at the Anacostia Community Museum, 2014. Click on the image to watch the full video.
When Curtis curated the first Latinx exhibition, Gateways/Portales, at the Anacostia Museum’s main gallery, she connected immigration stories in DC to those from the Raleigh-Durham area with collections borrowed from Duke Libraries. The exhibit included a “boycott” stencil and protest signs from Student Action with Farmworkers and a book of drawings created by children of farmworkers, with reflections on how their lives, communities, and families differed between the United States and their native Mexico. “I was glad to have people in D.C. relate to the dreams, fears, and aspirations of Mexican children in North Carolina,” says Curtis.
Curtis curates Latinidad through a specifically African American lens, rooted in U.S. history, at a national African American museum. She wants her work to help visitors learn something new, be affirmed in what they know, and have an emotional experience at the museum.
She lauds the commonalities between museums and libraries. “At their essence, these are places of beauty and education,” Curtis says. “These spaces offer resources—obviously materials—but also intangible, intellectual and human resources. Promoting and preserving the multiple perspectives of histories within Duke’s collections is why I give to Duke Libraries.”
The Duke University Libraries advance the research, teaching, and public service mission of the entire university. Your gift to the Libraries Annual Fund makes our vision for the future possible. With your generosity, we can say yes to doing more for every student, faculty, and staff member at Duke.
Did You Know?
Did You Know?
On February 24, 2025, Duke University launched the most significant fundraising and engagement campaign in its history. MADE FOR THIS: The Duke Campaign will engage alumni and friends of the university to accelerate progress in areas where Duke can make the greatest difference for the world—advancing innovation through science and technology, creating a more sustainable planet, shaping students as next-generation leaders, and advancing healthcare to help communities thrive.
For nearly half a century, Mark Kearney G’69 has donated money annually to the Duke University Libraries. The longest-running library donor, Kearney said that his support reflects his gratitude for the help he received from library staff years ago as well as his appreciation of the continued importance of the Libraries.
In The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan (Duke University Press, 2025), Gennifer Weisenfeld, the Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke, tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage.
In the book, anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte follows the illicit trade in firearms that circulate between the U.S. and Mexico. Drawing on the author’s experience as a former paramedic who treated victims of gun violence, Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border (University of California Press, 2024) is both a cultural history of guns and an analysis of the politics and economics that perpetuate a vicious circle of violence.
As the amount of computational data we generate as a society keeps increasing, so does the complexity of conducting, sharing, and publishing data-intensive research. Every year, Duke researchers must spend more and more time navigating a maze of funding agency data requirements, IT security regulations, and data storage solutions, instead of focusing on the core work enabled by the data itself: discovery, innovation, and scholarship.
