Great libraries are built over time. They evolve and grow over decades and centuries. That’s why endowments to the Duke University Libraries have such a lasting impact. Endowments establish a permanent stream of income that directly benefits Duke students and faculty members today, as well as those who will use our library resources in the future.

Supporting the Duke Forward campaign by establishing a library endowment is an opportunity to create an individualized legacy. Like endowed professorships, endowed library funds come with the assurance that knowledge of a beloved subject will continue to pass from one generation to the next. And because they generate ongoing income, endowments build strength and stability. The strongest collections in the Duke University Libraries are those endowed by generous donors over the last century.

We are grateful to the many friends, alumni, faculty, and students listed here who have established endowed library funds. Their support makes possible the kinds of innovative initiatives we highlight in this magazine. If you are interested in establishing an endowed library fund, contact Tom Hadzor, Associate University Librarian for Development, at 919-660-5940 or t.hadzor@duke.edu.

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants Fund
Established in 2014 for travel grants to visiting researchers at the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

Rex and Ellen Adams Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1989 for unrestricted support.

African and Afro-American Studies Quasi Endowment
Established in 1991 to support the African and Afro-American Studies collection.

Evie Allison and Gay Wilson Allen Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1989 for the acquisition of books in American literature.

Evie and Gay Wilson Allen Quasi Endowment Fund for Library Preservation
Established in 2001 for the preservation of materials.

Thomas W. Andrews Memorial Endowment Fund
Established in 1990 to support the J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

Aptman Family Fund for Duke University Libraries
Established in 2013 to support the Aptman Prizes undergraduate award program.

Lowell and Eileen Aptman Fund
Established in 2011 for unrestricted support.

H. Ross Arnold III Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2007 for unrestricted support.

Isaac Erwin Avery Fund
Established in 1912 for the acquisition of books on journalism.

John Spencer Bassett Memorial Fund
Established in 1942 for unrestricted support.

Patricia Meyers Baugh Endowment Fund
Established in 1984 for unrestricted support.

Helene S. Baumann Memorial Endowment Fund
Established in 2008 for unrestricted support.

John M. and Sally V. Blalock Beard Endowment Fund for Perkins Library
Established in 1986 for acquisitions in history, economics, and Southern writers of the United States.

Douglas G. Beckstett and R. Elise Bideaux Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2000 for the acquisition and preservation of United States government documents.

Phillip R. and Valerie Bennett Family Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2000 for the preservation of materials.

Mary C. and Louis Berini Fund
Established in 2004 for unrestricted support.

Mary Duke Biddle Library Fund
Established in 1948 for unrestricted support.

Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1999 to provide research grants for access to women’s studies materials in Rubenstein Library.

Sallie Bingham Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2000 to support the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Sallie Bingham Library Challenge Fund
Established in 2000 to match funds in support of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

John O. and Jeanne Miles Blackburn Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for acquisitions.

Charles Kellogg Bobrinskoy Library Fund
Established in 2004 for unrestricted support.

Lehman and Sorly Brady Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1990 for unrestricted support to Lilly Library.

Ralph Braibanti Islamic Studies Endowment Fund
Established in 1995 to support Islamic collections.

Alfred and Elizabeth Brand Special Collections Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1995 for the acquisition and preservation of rare materials.

Sara H. and Bruce Brandaleone Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1998 for the acquisition and preservation of materials on United States civilization.

Irwin A. Brody Memorial Book Fund for the History of the Neurosciences
Established for acquisitions on the history of the neurosciences.

William A. Bryan and William A. Bryan, Jr. Endowment Fund
Established in 1988 for unrestricted support.

Stuart U. and William T. Buice III Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1998 for the preservation of materials.

Campbell Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for unrestricted support.

E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Exhibits Program
Established in 2007 to support the exhibits program at Duke University Libraries.

Leona B. Carpenter Senior Library Conservatorship Fund
Established in 2012 to support the Leona B. Carpenter Senior Library Conservatorship at Duke University.

Leona Bowman Carpenter Collection of English and American Literature Endowment Fund
Established in 1992 for the acquisition and preservation of English and American literature.

Elon Clark Endowment Publication Fund
Established in 1981 for the publication of illustrated volumes on the History of Medicine.

Kenneth Willis Clark and Adelaide Dickinson Clark Endowment Fund
Established in 1981 for the acquisition of Greek manuscripts at Rubenstein Library.

Class of 1909 Endowment Fund
Established in 1909 for unrestricted support.

Mary Kestler-Paul Clyde Endowment Fund
Established in 1989 for acquisitions in Women’s Studies.

R. Taylor Cole Endowment Fund
Established in 1970 for the acquisition of books on political science.

Joel and Shirley Colton Fund
Established in 2009 for unrestricted support.

Donald D. and Elizabeth Griggs Cooke Foundation Endowment Fund
Established in 1984 for the acquisition of rare books and manuscripts for Rubenstein Library.

Eli Franklin Craven Memorial Endowment Fund
Established in 1983 for the acquisition and preservation of materials on United States history and culture.

Catherine G. Curran Quasi Fund
Established in 2009 to support the Sidney D. Gamble Photographic Collection.

Harry L. Dalton Curator of Rare Books Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 to support the Harry L. Dalton Curator of Rare Books.

Elizabeth Howland and Robert Grady Dawson Endowment Fund
Established in 1983 for unrestricted support.

DeMatteo Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for unrestricted support.

Frank T. deVyver Endowment Fund
Established in 1970 for the acquisition of books on economics.

Marie E. and Robert O. Dierks Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for the acquisition of books on engineering and computer science.

Isobel Craven Drill Endowment for Perkins Library Book Acquisitions
Established in 1993 for the acquisition of books and manuscripts.

Isobel Craven Drill Endowment for the Archives
Established in 1986 for the acquisition and preservation of records in the University Archives.

The Duke Endowment Library Collaboration Fund
Established in 2004 to support meetings between the four Duke Endowment supported libraries.

The Duke Endowment Perkins Library Quasi Fund
Established in 2008 for unrestricted support.

Duke University Libraries Memorial Endowment Fund
Established in 2005 for unrestricted support.

Robert B. and Connie Dunlap Endowment Fund
Established in 1996 for unrestricted support.

Dunspaugh-Dalton Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1979 for unrestricted acquisitions.

John and Eleanor Thomas Elliott Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1973 to support the James A. Thomas Collection.

Engineering Class of 1988 Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1988 for the acquisition of books and reference materials on engineering.

Faculty Recognition Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for unrestricted support.

Teresa Fallon Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1999 for unrestricted support.

Mary R. Few International Studies Endowment Fund
Established in 1995 for acquisitions in international studies.

William Preston Few Endowment Fund for the William R. Perkins Library
Established in 1985 for acquisitions in English literature and English language studies.

Gretchen S. and Edward A. Fish Endowment Fund
Established in 1997 for unrestricted support.

George Washington Flowers Memorial Fund
Established in 1937 for acquisitions on the culture of the American South.

John Hope Franklin Collection Fund
Established in 2004 for the acquisition and preservation of materials in the John Hope Franklin Collection.

Friends of the Library Preservation Endowment Fund
Established in 1998 for the preservation of materials.

Artyn Haig Gardner Endowment Fund
Established in 1989 for unrestricted support.

William Francis Gill Memorial Fund
Established in 2007 to support the Latin collection.

Glaxo Wellcome Endowment Fund for African American Documentation
Established in 1996 to support the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

Elizabeth Tucker and William Burton Gosnell Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 for acquisitions.

Charles M. and Mary D. Grant Foundation Endowment
Established in 1975 for the acquisition of books.

Virginia Gearhart Gray Endowment
Established in 1976 for acquisitions on the history and culture of the United States.

Ira D. and Patricia S. Gruber Endowment Fund
Established in 2011 for unrestricted support.

Wally R. Hackett Library Fund
Established in 1981 for unrestricted support.

Gerd and Thor Hall / Ruth and Clarence Huling Library Fund
Established in 1990 to support continuing education for staff at the Duke University Libraries.

Louise Hall Library Endowment
Established in 1988 for the acquisition and preservation of materials on visual arts and architecture.

William B. Hamilton Library Fund
Established in 1965 for the acquisition of books and manuscripts.

Harry H. Harkins, Jr. Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2000 for acquisitions in gay and lesbian history, culture, and literature.

Evelyn Harrison Endowment Fund
Established in 1984 for unrestricted support of Lilly Library.

John W. Hartman Center Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1994 to support the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

Judith Lofquist Healy Endowment Fund for English Literature
Established in 1990 for acquisitions in American literature.

Merle Hoffman Directorship Fund
Established in 2011 to support the Merle Hoffman Directorship of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway Endowment Fund for the Librarian of Duke University
Established in 1997 to support the University Librarian of Duke University.

Eric L. Holsti Memorial Endowment Fund
Established in 1978 for acquisitions.

Ole Holsti Fund
Established in 2011 for unrestricted support.

Edward and Deborah Horowitz Endowment Fund
Established in 2005 for unrestricted support.

Jay B. Hubbell Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 for acquisitions in American literature.

William Thomas and Mollie Harris Huckabee Endowment Fund
Established in 1995 for the acquisition of books in American literature and history.

Huckle Library Fund
Established in 1980 for unrestricted support.

Eleanore and Harold Jantz Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2009 to support the Harold Jantz Collection.

Eleanore and Harold Jantz Graduate Student Internships Fund
Established in 2015 to support graduate student internships at Rubenstein Library.

Carl Wesley Judy Korean Library Fund
Established in 1994 for unrestricted support.

Jane W. and Harry D. Kellett Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for the acquisition of books and materials.

Mary Kestler-Paul Clyde Endowment Fund
Established in 1989 for acquisitions in Women’s Studies.

William King Endowment Fund for the University Archives
Established in 2002 to support the University Archives.

Korman Leadership Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 to support the Korman American Presidency Collection.

J. Walter Lambeth Fund
Established in 1966 for the acquisition of books on international understanding.

Landis-Suther Library Endowment
Established in 1987 for acquisitions in American literature for Lilly Library.

Karla Langedijk Library Endowment
Established in 1981 for acquisitions of rare books and materials.

John Tate Lanning Endowment Fund
Established in 1970 for the acquisition of books on history.

John Tate Lanning Endowment Collection
Established in 1973 for the acquisition of books on Spanish and Latin American fields and related history.

Librarian’s Discretionary Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 to provide discretionary income for expenditure by the University Librarian.

Eleanor B. MacLaurin Marine Laboratory Library Quasi Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for acquisitions at the Duke University Marine Biological Laboratory.

Eleanor B. MacLaurin Biological Sciences Library Quasi Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for acquisitions in zoology.

Ronald E. Marcello Fund for Historical Collections
Established in 2011 for acquisitions of primary and secondary materials on American history.

McConnell Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for unrestricted support.

John and Carol McEachren Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for the acquisition of books.

Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Senior Library Conservator
Established in 2010 to support the Senior Library Conservator at Duke University.

Gertrude Merritt Endowment
Established in 1980 for the acquisition of books.

Harvey M. and Lenore P. Meyerhoff Fund
Established in 1980 for acquisitions.

Chester P. Middlesworth Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 to provide annual awards to undergraduate and graduate papers utilizing the manuscript collections.

Wendy and Bruce Mosler Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for unrestricted support.

Julia H. Negley Endowment Fund
Established in 1985 to support the Glenn Negley Collection of Utopian Literature.

Neske Family Endowment Fund for German Materials
Established in 2014 to support the German materials collection.

Nineteenth-Century American Humor Endowed Library Fund
Established in 1989 for acquisitions in nineteenth-century American humor.

Jean Fox O’Barr Fund
Established in 2010 to support the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

Claudia Louise Salley Parker Fund
Established in 1980 for the acquisition of primary sources on medieval and early modern European history to 1648.

Harold T. Parker Book Fund
Established in 1978 for the acquisition of books on European history.

Lucile Parker Fund
Established in 1966 for acquisitions.

PepsiCo Foundation Library Endowment Fund
Established in 2001 to support the Technology Mentor Program at Duke University.

Perkins Library Quasi Endowment Fund
Established in 2006 to provide operational and budgetary support for Perkins Library.

T.L. Perkins Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1971 for the acquisition of books.

Leland R. Phelps Endowment for Rare Books
Established in 1990 for unrestricted support of the rare book collections.

Benjamin E. Powell Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1975 for acquisitions.

Reynolds Price Quasi Endowment Fund
Established in 2015 for the acquisition of manuscripts by American writers from the 20th century, with a preference for materials related to Reynolds Price.

Lura Abernathy Rader Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1979 for acquisitions and operational needs.

Rare Books & Materials Fund
Established in 2014 to support materials related to physics donated to the Rubenstein Library.

Arthur G. Raynes Endowment in Imaginative Writing
Established in 1986 to support the Arthur G. Raynes Collection of Contemporary Letters.

Floyd M. and Marguerite F. Riddick Endowment Fund
Established in 1983 for the acquisition and preservation of materials on legislative and parliamentary procedure, American politics, and public policy at Rubenstein Library.

Verne and Tanya Roberts Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1998 for unrestricted support.

Alice S. and Louis H. Roddis, Jr. Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 to support materials on the history of science and technology.

Steed Rollins Memorial Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 to support the Steed Rollins Collection of American and English literature at Rubenstein Library.

Rudolph William Rosati Endowment Fund
Established in 2012 to advance creative writing among students.

Mattie Underwood Russell Endowment Fund
Established in 1985 for the acquisition and preservation of manuscripts on the history and culture of the Americas.

Clyde Ryals Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1991 for the acquisition of rare materials in Victorian English literature.

Anna H. Smith Endowment Fund
Established in 1988 for unrestricted support.

Earl E.T. Smith, Jr. Diplomatic Studies Library Endowment
Established in 1992 for the acquisition of materials in diplomatic studies.

Robert S. Smith Memorial Fund
Established in 1971 for the acquisition of books on economics in Spain and Latin America.

Barbaralee Diamonstein and Carl Spielvogel Video History Archive Fund
Established in 1987 to support the Diamonstein/Spielvogel Video Archive.

Henry Call and Margaret Jordan Sprinkle Fund
Established in 1997 for unrestricted support.

Henry L. Taylor Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1987 for unrestricted support.

Mary Olive Thomas Endowment Fund
Established in 1984 for acquisitions.

J. Walter Thompson Company Fund Incorporated Endowment
Established in 1990 to support the J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

Philip Traci Memorial Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 for the acquisition of books on rhetoric.

Trent History of Medicine Endowment Fund
Established in 2014 to support the mission of the History of Medicine Collections.

Arlin Turner Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1986 for the acquisition of rare books in American literature.

George I. Uhde, MD Endowment Fund
Established in 1981 to support the Trent Associates of the History of Medicine Collections.

Walter McGowan and Minnie Daniel Upchurch Fund
Established in 2007 to support the sacred music collection.

W.M. Upchurch, Jr. Memorial Endowment for the Archives
Established in 1990 for the acquisition and preservation of student-generated records for the University Archives.

Aleksandar S. Vesic Memorial Library Fund
Established in 1983 for the acquisition of materials on engineering.

Vinnakota Family Library Endowment Fund
Established in 1999 for new collection initiatives.

John P. and Byrne Ware Waggoner Endowment Fund
Established in 1988 for acquisitions.

Lexie I. Walton Endowment Fund
Established in 1988 for unrestricted support.

Professor Bruce Wear Wardropper Fund
Established in 2004 for unrestricted support.

William and Lizabeth Weaver Library Endowment
Established in 1989 to support the William B. Weaver Memorial Lecture.

Paul B. Williams, Inc. New Technology Endowment Fund
Established in 2008 to support new technology.

James J. Wolfe Memorial Fund
Established in 1921 for the acquisition of periodicals on biology.

Women’s Studies Archives Endowment Fund
Established in 1993 to support the Women’s Studies Archivist and the Women’s Studies Archive.

Lizzie Taylor Wrenn Foundation Fund
Established in 2007 for acquisitions.

Students, faculty and librarians at Duke University will partner with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project over the next three years. Together with civil rights scholars, they will build a digital gateway that will reveal the evolving tactics that SNCC and local communities used to develop the philosophical and organizational models that produced universal voting rights.

Made possible by a $604,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Duke University Libraries, the SNCC Digital Gateway will provide a new interpretive framework for SNCC’s history that incorporates essays and analysis, historic documents, timelines, maps, activist profiles, oral histories, short documentary films, audiovisual materials and teaching resources.

The SNCC Digital Gateway will build on the success of One Person, One Vote (onevotesncc.org), a new web resource launched in March that was developed collaboratively by the SNCC Legacy Project, the Duke University Libraries, and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

Members of the SNCC Legacy Project—men and women who organized alongside local people in the Deep South for civil rights in the 1960s—will play a central role in the Mellon-funded project. They will come to Duke’s campus as Visiting Activist Scholars and work closely with undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members, archivists and digital experts to explain what SNCC did, how they did it and who was involved.

Courtland Cox, chairman of the SNCC Legacy Project, served as an organizer in Mississippi and Alabama in the 1960s. “Our experiences have created a level of ‘informational wealth’ that we need to pass on to young people,” he said. “This unprecedented collaboration with Duke University hopefully will pilot a way for other academic institutions to re-engage history and those who make it.”

Although historians have written about SNCC’s history, the story of how students and local communities worked together to bring about voting rights and other reforms has not yet reached the broader public.

Most histories of the civil rights movement focus on the great leaders, dramatic marches and judicial and legislative changes that dominated the headlines. By contrast, the SNCC Digital Gateway will examine the behind-the-scenes work, circumstances and coalitions that shifted the national agenda toward voting rights.

Specifically, the project will describe how SNCC’s organizers moved from being an organization of protesters to one of organizers in three pivotal locations: Mississippi; Lowndes County and Selma, Alabama; and Southwest Georgia.

Wesley Hogan, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, has written extensively about SNCC’s work and legacy. According to her, “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.”

Led by student veterans of the sit-in movement, SNCC was formed at Shaw University in Raleigh in 1960. Through its full-time student workers or “field secretaries,” SNCC generated unprecedented activism at the local level that proved instrumental to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. SNCC became the cutting edge of the direct-action civil rights movement, focusing on political freedom and equal economic opportunity.

“The victories that SNCC worked so hard to achieve are now being challenged in many states, including North Carolina, Texas, Florida, South Carolina and Wisconsin,” said John Gartrell, director of Duke’s John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture. “State legislatures are debating voter ID requirements, guidelines for early voting, same-day registration and restrictions on counting some provisional ballots. Our hope is that the SNCC Digital Gateway will consider which organizing principles and strategies might be useful to today’s generation of activists and foster a broader intergenerational dialogue about the meaning of democracy today.”

Find Out More: Visit the One Person, One Vote website at onevotesncc.org.

By Catherine Shreve

Catherine Shreve, Duke’s librarian for Public Policy and Political Science, spent last fall literally overseas, working as assistant librarian on a ship for the Semester at Sea program. This floating college visited fourteen Atlantic-border countries—from Russia to Morocco to Brazil and Cuba—while tying the experiences to on-board undergraduate coursework across the disciplines. Before she retires from the Libraries this summer, we asked her to share and reflect on the experience.

In 2014 I went on a self-imposed sabbatical, traveling the Atlantic as the assistant librarian on the ship MV Explorer. The Semester at Sea (SAS) program has been described as a floating college. While sailing the world, undergraduates take a full and varied load of credit courses. As one of my colleagues put it, imagine you are at a small college of about 600 students, and everyone—students, faculty, and staff—lives in the same dorm and eats in the same dining hall. That is the SAS experience. (Not to mention the fascinating field trips we take together.)

Semester at Sea draws students and professors from all over the United States and several other countries. The University of Virginia, SAS’s academic sponsor, provided the dean, registrar, head librarian, and several professors.

The faculty offered courses in a variety of disciplines. Each student was required to take one course that investigated the countries we were visiting through a specific lens such as architecture, biology, commerce, literature, or politics.

Most courses included some focus on the Middle Passage of slaves from Africa to Brazil, since we were scheduled to cross the Atlantic on that route. When our African stops were canceled due to the recent Ebola scare, the ship community rallied to ensure that the content was emphasized in a profoundly moving way. One memorable evening, students, faculty, and staff read from slave narratives in the dim light of the auditorium as the mid-Atlantic ocean rocked our ship.

The head librarian and I supported the coursework from the ship’s library. It was centrally located in an open space, so people often met there to research, study, or just chat. The Reference Desk was an inviting curved glass surface with swivel stools, which had formerly been a bar when the MV Explorer was a cruise ship!

While UVA provided access to databases of journal articles, the complexities of internet access at sea meant that searching and downloading were time-consuming. We learned to be flexible and creative. Working without our accustomed level of electronic connectivity, we rediscovered the joy of browsing print books to identify relevant chapters.

There were other surprising twists that came with ship’s library work, such as balancing ourselves and the books on stormy days. The last-minute request from UVA to weed 20 percent of the collection in preparation for a smaller ship this summer took some scrambling. The rush to check out travel guides before we arrived in each port became a social event and my favorite novel part of the job.

It was in the ports that the best learning took place, through firsthand contact with the people, cultures, and governments of other countries. Classes visited concentration camps, memorials, embassies, universities, the International Court of Justice, NATO, and the UN. Students experienced other cultures with new eyes, hearts, and minds, while assimilating the shipboard discussions and pre-port presentations. For those who had never traveled extensively, it was an opportunity for personal growth. They learned to be adaptable, coping with confusion, frustration, and homesickness while communicating with people in different languages and cultures.

I kept a blog to document my own eye-opening experiences. I saw beautiful buildings and works of art and heard horrific stories of how incomprehensibly inhuman people can be. I visited a Russian family at their dacha, where one woman quietly told me, “Look, I don’t agree with what Putin’s doing, but what can I do?” I saw a Moroccan women’s co-operative in action; participated in a Brazilian candomble (indigenous religious) ceremony; spoke to Cubans on the street and toured a public library in Havana; and everywhere found graffiti and other portrayals of historical and current politics.

This story is difficult to tell without using clichés like “amazing” and “once-in-a-lifetime.” The Semester at Sea community bonded strongly over our experiences in three-and-a-half months of working, living, and exploring together. We all have new lifelong friends and travel partners, and are on the lookout for the next magnificent opportunity to learn the world.

Check out Catherine’s Semester at Sea blog:
floatinglibrariansas.blogspot.com

By Eric Ferreri

As the grainy footage began rolling, Furman Penland, Jr., quickly recognized his mother in the crowd. That fellow walking next to her was familiar, too.

But it took Penland a beat or two to realize the young man passing quickly through the frame of this silent, 75-year-old black-and-white film was the father he’d never known.

Penland was just six months old in 1944 when his father died in the Normandy Invasion during World War II. The only child of a young widow, he grew to know his father through family stories, photos and a large stack of letters his parents wrote back and forth to each other during Furman Penland Sr.’s deployment.

That was it until a few months ago, when an email from an old friend directed Penland, now 71, to a Duke University Libraries website housing digitized movies of rural folk in places like Dante, the coal-mining town in southwestern Virginia where he grew up.

In one section of a twelve-minute reel from Dante, a line of teenagers walks along a fence line, school books in hand, smiles on their faces.

“I recognized my mother and some other family members,” Penland recalls. “And my mother was walking with this guy. I kept going back and forth thinking ‘this could be my dad.’ And I’m as sure as I could be that it is. It was shocking.”

The Dante film was one of 252 “Movies of Local People” produced by filmmaker H. Lee Waters between 1936 and 1942 in small towns across North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Waters made a living in those years showing the films in southern movie houses.

The collection has been digitized and is now available on the Duke University Libraries website. It is searchable by town.

Since the digitized collection was released in January, the Libraries have heard over and over from people eager to reminisce about their small-town roots. Many watch the reels looking for family, friends and local landmarks.

The tone of comments on these films is unusually specific and sentimental, says Molly Bragg, Digital Collections Program Manager.

A viewer of the Fuquay-Varina film, for example, points out her husband’s aunt Sophia and makes note of the local gas station, Clark-Phelps Service & Fuel. On the Henderson, North Carolina reel, another viewer remembers that one local school back then had three sets of twins as drum majors.

“We get comments all the time on our collections, but the reaction we see from the Waters collection is far more personal,” Bragg says. “It elicits a passion from people that we don’t really see from other collections.”

In the 1940 Dante film, the teenage Penland walks alongside Nancy Townes, the woman he’d later marry. He wears an open-collar shirt under a light, buttoned cardigan sweater. He totes a couple of schoolbooks at his waist. Nancy walks alongside, warmed by a floor-length coat, a scarf around her neck, school books tucked tightly against her. Like many of the youngsters in this movie, she sneaks a coy peek at the camera as she passes beneath it. He appears to as well.

They come and go in a four-second blip right at the film’s two-minute mark. Where were they going? What were they talking about? Had they any idea, at that moment, that they’d fall in love, have a son and suffer tragedy in a war overseas?

Nancy Townes Penland never remarried. She worked as a factory worker and school teacher in and around Dante and died in 1997.

Penland Jr. went to Eastern Kentucky University on a football scholarship and later became a psychologist. He worked for many years at Wake Forest University before moving to Asheville to head the local Area Health Education Centers branch there, a medical outreach program under the University of North Carolina umbrella. He and his wife are now retired and still live in Asheville.

“It’s real. It’s just three or four seconds, but these are very meaningful seconds I never expected to have.”

His has been a life in full, and yet this brief clip of black-and-white film recorded four years before he was born has helped fill in some gaps in his life. The story of where he comes from now seems more tangible.

“These were two live people who would try to make a life together at a time of poverty and war,” he says now. “It’s real. It’s just three or four seconds, but these are very meaningful seconds I never expected to have. I’m 71 years old now. It took me that long to see my dad.”

Eric Ferreri is a senior writer with Duke’s Office of News and Communications. A previous version of this story originally appeared online on DukeToday.

Find Out More: Check out the H. Lee Waters Film Collection on the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections Website.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has acquired one of the largest and most significant private collections on women’s history, documenting the work and intellectual contributions of women from the Renaissance to the modern era.

Carefully assembled over forty-five years by noted bibliophile, activist and collector Lisa Unger Baskin, the collection includes more than 8,600 rare books and thousands of manuscripts, journals, ephemera and artifacts, including author Virginia Woolf’s writing desk.

Among the works are many well-known monuments of women’s history and literature, as well as lesser-known works produced by female scholars, printers, publishers, scientists, artists and political activists. Taken together, they comprise a mosaic of the ways women have been productive, creative, and socially engaged over more than five hundred years. The collection will become a part of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture within the Rubenstein Library.

“We are honored to be the institutional home of this spectacular collection,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs. “Lisa Baskin’s lifelong passion for collecting and preserving women’s history resonates deeply with us at Duke. Her approach to collection building is a kind of activism itself, and in that respect it shares much in common with our own. Throughout our history, the Duke University Libraries have strived to build collections that document lives and achievements that would otherwise be hidden from history.”

The materials range in date from a 1240 manuscript documenting a respite home for women in Italy to a large collection of letters and manuscripts by the twentieth-century anarchist Emma Goldman. Most materials were created between the mid-fifteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Other highlights include correspondence by legendary American and English suffragists and abolitionists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Lucretia Mott; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s publicity blurb for the Narrative of Sojourner Truth, written in Stowe’s own hand; decorated bindings by the celebrated turn-of-the-century British binders Sarah Prideaux, Katharine Adams and Sybil Pye; and Woolf’s writing desk, which the author designed herself.

“Lisa Baskin’s remarkable collection aligns perfectly with the strengths and character of the Rubenstein Library,” said Naomi Nelson, Associate University Librarian and Director of the Rubenstein Library. “We pride ourselves on our signature collections in women’s history and culture, African American history, the history of medicine, human rights, documentary arts, advertising and economics—all areas Lisa has attended to in building her collection. We look forward to collaborating with her as we add to the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection and share it with the public. ”

Baskin and her late husband, the artist Leonard Baskin, were both avid book collectors. Leonard also founded the Gehenna Press, one of the preeminent American private presses of the twentieth century. Lisa Unger Baskin began collecting materials on women’s history in the 1960s after attending Cornell University. She is a member of the Grolier Club, the oldest American society for bibliophiles.

“I am delighted that my collection will be available to students, scholars and the community at Duke University, a great teaching and research institution,” Baskin said. “Because of Duke’s powerful commitment to the central role of libraries, and digitization in teaching, it is clear to me that my collection will be an integral part of the university in the coming years and long into the future. I trust that this new and exciting life for my books and manuscripts will help to transform and enlarge the notion of what history is about, deeply reflecting my own interests.”

Materials from the collection will be available to researchers once they have been cataloged. Some items will be on display in the renovated Rubenstein Library when it reopens to the public at the end of August 2015.

Find Out More about the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection on the Rubenstein Library Website.

By Meg Brown

When you step inside the renovated Rubenstein Library, one of the first things you will notice is that we have completely redesigned and expanded our library exhibit spaces.

Exhibits play an important role in the educational and outreach mission of the Libraries. They also showcase the breadth and diversity of what a great library system like Duke’s has to offer.

Of course, effective exhibits are easy to enjoy and appreciate, but they are anything but easy to produce. A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into every exhibit you see at the library.

One of the most exciting aspects of that work, for me, has been the design and production of our new exhibit cases. After years of poring over technical drawings with architects, conservators, designers, and builders, our new cases are finally being installed and will be ready to house the Libraries’ treasures when we open to the public at the end of August.

To produce the new exhibit cases in the Biddle Rare Book Room, we decided to work with Goppion, a small Italian company that has perfected the art of exhibit case design. (They designed the cases for the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London, among other high-profile projects.)

When your goal is to display irreplaceable historical documents and artifacts, but also keep them safe and secure, no detail is too small to consider. What kind of glass should you use? What kind of cloth? What kind of hinges? Which way should the exhibit case doors open? Over the last two years, we’ve held countless meetings to discuss environmental controls, shelf heights, conservation testing, light levels and angles, and, not least important, color. We also visited other libraries and museums across the United States to learn from their expertise.

In March of 2014, some of us traveled to Goppion’s headquarters in Milan, Italy, to look at prototypes. The trip was so inspiring we changed some design ideas. Eventually, everyone got down to the “real” work of turning our plans into reality.

Our architects with the firm Shepley Bulfinch figured out how to blend metal and glass into the wood-lined gentlemen’s library design scheme of the Biddle Rare Book Room. Carpenters from Stephenson Millwork constructed encasements to wrap around the gasketed structures. And Goppion’s case-makers began installing large sheets of glass, figuring out how to make doors open sideways, and designing enclosures that will keep our library materials safe in every way.

And me? I began to work with teams of curators to design exhibits for spaces that were still under construction. I made drawings and physical mock-ups and took measurements of every square inch in an attempt to design for a space we could only see in our mind’s eye.

Things are finally coming together now. The glass and metal structures of the cases are in place. The carpenters are wrapping the room with beautiful wood paneling and millwork. The curators are writing and revising their labels. Any day now we will walk through the door and see the fruit of our labor. I hope you will come visit in August, be inspired by the renovations, and bask in the beauty of great craftsmanship and hard work!

Meg Brown is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Exhibits Coordinator.