Outdoor Advertising on the Web

Thanks to a $60,000 Digitizing Historic Records grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission, the Libraries’ Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History and the Digital Production Center are collaborating to scan approximately 24,000 outdoor advertising images that document American history and consumer culture from the 1920s to the 1990s.

ROAD 2.0, as the project has been titled, complements ROAD, the Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions, a Hartman Center database that provides access to over 70,000 descriptions of images of outdoor advertising. The materials described in ROAD are drawn from four collections in the holdings of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.

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The papers of preeminent American economist Paul A. Samuelson (1914-2009), the first American recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, are being added to the Economists’ Papers Project in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Prior to Samuelson’s death on 13 December 2009, he had made the decision to donate his papers to Duke where they will join the collections of his MIT Nobel Prize-winning colleagues Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani, as well as those of Nobelists Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence Klein (Samuelson’s first Ph.D. student), Douglass North, Vernon Smith, and Leonid Hurwicz. The Economists’ Papers Project, developed jointly by Duke’s History of Economics group and the Special Collections Library, is the most significant archival collection of economists’ papers in the world.

Samuelson was the singular force leading to the post-World War II reconceptualization of economics as a scientific discipline. His textbook, Principles of Economics, grounded the vocabulary and teaching practices of the economics profession in the second half of the twentieth century, and his career at MIT made that economics department the world leader in scientific economics.

The Archive for Human Rights at the Special Collections Library has signed an agreement with Patricia (Patt) Murphy Derian to be the repository for her papers, which document her long career in human rights. Derian was a civil rights activist in Mississippi prior to being chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the newly created Bureau for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. In 1977 she became the nation’s first Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Affairs; she held the position until 1981.

The collection, which covers roughly the period from 1976 to 2007, includes correspondence, news clippings, reports, memos, and personal notes organized in three categories that cover Derian’s tenure in the Carter administration, human rights (primarily related to organizations), and countries. The countries category, comprising eight of the fifteen boxes of Derian’s papers, includes subseries pertaining to Argentina, Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam Paraguay, and El Salvador. According to Human Rights Archivist Patrick Stawski, “The Derian papers are a perfect addition to the Archive for Human Rights’ Latin American holdings, complementing such collections as the Marshall T. Meyer Papers and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) records.”

April 6

The Great Art of Knowing

Award-winning avant-garde filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow David Gatten will present his 2004 film, The Great Art of Knowing, an exploration of the library of William Byrd II, a prominent 18th-century Virginia landowner and author. Gatten is the 2010 Duke Distinguished Visiting Filmmaker in the Program of the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University. His films have been included twice in the Whitney Biennial, and his work is part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Tuesday, 6 April, 12:30-2pm, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room

April 12

Sam Stephenson and the Jazz Loft Project

The Jazz Archive at the Special Collections Library presents Sam Stephenson, director of the Center for Documentary Studies’ Jazz Loft Project, for a lunchtime discussion of the history of this fascinating audio and photographic archive. Stephenson will highlight some of the recent project activities, including a new book, radio series, and traveling photography exhibition. Guests are invited to bring their own lunches; dessert and beverages will be provided.

From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in this loft building in Manhattan’s wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music.

Monday, 12 April, 12 noon, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room

April 14

Writing about China

A reception to honor sixteen Duke faculty in Chinese Studies who have written, edited, or contributed to books on diverse subjects, including stone sculptures, aging, postcolonialism, film, and contemporary Chinese colloquialisms.

Wednesday, 14 April, 4-6pm, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room

April 17

Rescuing JFK

Theodore M. (Ted) Robinson T’40 and Duke military historian Alex Roland will discuss Robinson’s 2008 book, Water in My Veins: The Pauper Who Helped Save a President. The book recounts Robinson’s role in saving the life of John F. Kennedy on the night of August 1-2, 1953, when a Japanese destroyer rammed PT 109.

Saturday, 17 April, 2pm, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room. Sponsored by the Libraries and the Duke Alumni Association.

April 20

Opening Reception for Illustrating the Hebrew Bible

Professors Eric Meyers and Kalman Bland will discuss artists’ visual interpretations of the Hebrew Bible as exemplified in the exhibit by a facsimile of a 15th-century illuminated manuscript, a traditional Torah scroll, and a selection of modern artist books and lithographs. Sponsored by the Libraries and the Center for Jewish Studies.

Tuesday, 20 April, 4:30pm, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room

April 23

Rare Music in the Rare Book Room

This Rare Music event honors the winners of the first Rare Music Composition Competition. Undergraduate and graduate students were invited to compose a piece of music for an instrument represented in the Duke University Musical Instrument Collections. Winners will receive a cash award and the honor of having their pieces performed during the 23 April program. Sponsored by Duke University Libraries and the Duke University Musical Instrument Collections.

Friday, 23 April, 4pm, Perkins Library, Biddle Rare Book Room

May 5

Friends of the Duke University Libraries Annual Dinner

This year’s event will include a celebration of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Friends of the Duke University Libraries as well as an after-dinner program, complete with musical performance, which will showcase the Jazz Archive at Duke.

Duke University has a long tradition of campus-based jazz performance, and several of the Jazz Archive’s collections document aspects of that history. These include the Les Brown Scores, the Sonny Burke Papers, the Linda Dahl Collection on Mary Lou Williams, and the Paul Jeffrey Papers.

Invitations to the Friends dinner will be mailed to members. If you have not received an invitation and would like to attend the dinner, contact Lizzy Mottern at lizzy.mottern@duke.edu. Special thanks to SunTrust Bank for their continued involvement as presenting sponsor and to on-campus partner, the Gothic Bookshop, for supporting the Annual Dinner.

Wednesday, 5 May, Doris Duke Center at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens

November 10: Save the Date!

Dave Eggers will deliver the 2010 Weaver Lecture at Duke’s Page Auditorium.

Dave Eggers is the author of six books, including Zeitoun and What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine (The Believer), and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. In 2002, with Nínive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. In 2004, Eggers and Lola Vollen co-founded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world.

—From http://www.mcsweeneys.net/authorpages/eggers/eggers.html

Wednesday, 10 November 2010, 6pm, Page Auditorium

Perkins Gallery

April–August

Illustrating the Hebrew Bible

This exhibit presents an array of artistic interpretations of the Old Testament that range from a 15th-century printed Hebrew Bible leaf to 20th-century lithographs by Abel Pann and artist books by Mordechai Beck and Ben Shahn and others. Opening reception 20 April. Details in “Events.”

August–October

Trinity Treasures: Highlights from the Trinity College Historical Society

Faculty and students founded the Trinity College Historical Society in 1892 for the purpose of collecting, arranging, and preserving written materials and artifacts illustrative of the history of South and North Carolina and to promote the study of southern history through lectures and publications. The Society’s museum, established in 1894, was the precursor of Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.

Special Collections Gallery

April–August

The Power of Refined Beauty: Photographing Society Women for Pond’s, 1920s–1950s

For over thirty years, fashionable British and American society women, including Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, Lady Milford-Haven, Mrs. George Whitney and Anne Morgan, graced advertisements the J. Walter Thompson Company created for Pond’s beauty products. This exhibit presents a selection of these images by prominent photographers Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and others.

August–December

Deena Stryker: Photographs of Cuba, 1963-1964

Taken during the early years of the Cuban revolution, the 1,850 images in the Deena Stryker Photograph Collection depict urban and rural life on the island as well as many officials of the new government, including Fidel and Raúl Castro, Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, and Celia Sánchez Manduley. The thirty gelatin silver prints in this exhibit reflect the youth and vitality of Cuba’s leadership in the early 1960s and the optimism of the Cuban people.

Special Collections Biddle Rare Book Room Cases

April–June

You’ve Got Personality: Celebrity Endorsements in Advertising

Documents and other items related to the Pond’s “society women” advertising campaigns. The exhibit also features advertisements and additional examples of celebrity endorsements found in the collections of the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

June–September

Ten Treatments

The Duke Libraries’ Preservation Department marks its tenth anniversary this year. As part of the ongoing celebration, the Verne and Tanya Roberts Conservation Lab is displaying ten treatments its staff has completed for the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library over the decade. This exhibit will run concurrently with an exhibit mounted by the Digital Production Center to highlight ten collections its staff has digitized. The DPC exhibit is on view in the Preservation Department exhibit case on the lower level of Perkins Library, just outside room 023.

The Verne and Tanya Roberts Conservation Lab

Generally, the Special Collections and Perkins galleries are open Monday–Saturday, 9am–9pm, and 10am–9pm on Sunday. Visit http://library.duke.edu/exhibits/ for more information or call 919.684.3009 to confirm hours.

Dear Reader,

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Library Advisory Board, a group of donors who support the Duke University Libraries financially as well as by sharing the expertise they have gained in an array of professions. In preparing for the Board’s anniversary meeting this spring, one of my colleagues reviewed all of the issues of Duke University Libraries that have been published during the past twenty years.

I enjoyed reminiscing with him, seeing the Libraries’ milestones and accomplishments recorded in the pages of the magazine: the introduction of technology and its transformative impact; the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing library spaces; announcements of acquisitions, projects, and grants; and descriptions of the diverse programs and exhibits we have offered to the Duke and Durham communities.

Reporting to you about the many ways in which the Libraries connect people and ideas has given me great pleasure for the seventeen years I have served as the magazine’s editor. So, it is with regret that I relinquish my editorship—even for the pleasures of retirement! However, the magazine will continue, and I will join you as one of its readers and as a friend of the Duke University Libraries.

Best wishes,

B. Ilene Nelson