Happy Friday! Preparing for our upcoming renovation continues at the Rubenstein. This book’s title made us giggle, especially considering the high temperatures we’ve been facing lately in Durham. If you’d like to learn more about Spontaneous Combustion: A Literary Curiosity, you can check out the catalog record. It is a 1937 medical publication discussing cases of spontaneous combustion in literature.
For more photos of our favorite renovation discoveries, visit the Rubenstein’s Flickr page.
One of our many renovation-related tasks involves re-foldering and re-boxing our fragile newspapers. The Rubenstein Library has thousands of American newspapers, dating from the Revolutionary War through the early twentieth century. Here is one of the highlights, from The Daily Express of Petersburg, Virginia, 1858 Dec.:
Post contributed by Carrie Mills, Holdings Management Assistant in the Rubenstein Library’s Technical Services Dept.
If you have a TV, you’ve probably been tuned in to the 2012 Olympic Games in London. In the first week of action, Duke coaches Mike Krzyzewski (basketball) and Drew Johansen (diving) led Team USA to impressive victories on the court and two medals in the pool.
But did you know that Duke’s tradition of Olympic coaching excellence dates back at least 100 years? George Leonidas Lyon, a Durham native and grandson of Washington Duke, coached the U.S. Trapshooting team to both team and individual gold medals in the Games of the V Olympiad held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912. Lyon was a three-time trapshooting world champion and turned professional in 1910 under the sponsorship of the Remington Arms Company. Because of his professional status, Lyon could not compete in the 1912 Olympic Games, but he coached the U.S. Trapshooting team to victory by a considerable margin over Great Britain and Germany.
In addition to his celebrated shooting career, Lyon was an influential figure in the Durham business community, which earned him the nickname “Chief Bull Durham.” He reportedly owned the first automobile in Durham. Despite his business acumen, Lyon continued shooting professionally until he contracted tuberculosis in 1916 at age 35 and died after a short convalescence in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Upon his death, Sporting Life, a prominent Philadelphia newspaper, recognized Lyon as “one of the greatest trap shooters that ever stepped to the firing line.” A special trapshooting cartridge, the George Lyon Load, was named after him and in 1976 Lyon was inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame in Vandalia, Ohio.
The Rubenstein Library’s George Leonidas Lyon Papers document Lyon’s career as a professional marksman, along with his relationship to the Duke family and Durham.
Post contributed by Noah Huffman, Archivist for Metadata and Encoding in the Technical Services Dept.
Over the past few months, Perkins staff has been shifting books out of the 3rd floor of the library to make room for the Rubenstein Library to have a home away from home during the renovation. We will be opening our reading room on the 3rd floor of Perkins on January 7, 2013. This month, construction begins in earnest. When we go check on the space, we even have to bring hard hats and safety glasses — this is kind of a thrill for some of us! (Okay, maybe just me.)
Our temporary home will house our reading room as well as work spaces for our Research Services, Collection Development, and University Archives staff. We will also to be able to keep a portion of our collections onsite during the renovation.
As our regular readers know, moving out of our current space is no easy task. In addition to prepping the collections for the move, we also have to execute a safe and secure move in a short period of time with minimal impact on our researchers. We know we cannot do this without the help of professional movers, so we have been talking with and reviewing bids from various moving companies.
Back in 1969 when the library addition we now know as Perkins Library opened, the books were moved by fraternity brothers around campus. Some days I wish our move would be that simple. Although, after looking at the picture below of the 1969 move (from the Duke University Archives), I’m happy we will have the professionals involved.
For more photographs of the Rubenstein renovation, visit the Library’s Flickr page.
Post contributed by Molly Bragg, Collections Move Coordinator in the Technical Services Dept.
Here’s a puzzle for you: How does one best store and deliver architectural drawings ranging anywhere from 6 feet tall to 12 feet long? In these new custom boxes of course!
The wide variety of architectural drawings in the Doris Duke Collection do not always fit into standard sized map cabinets, so they either have to be wrapped around tubes or rolled up within tubes. However, using tubes does not always offer the protection needed to store these fragile drawings — nor are they always the best way to deliver them to patrons for research.
The solution? Architectural boxes that give both rigidity and stability to protect the drawings, meanwhile making it easier to deliver to the reading room.
For more information about some of the Doris Duke architectural drawings, visit the Inventory of the Duke Farms Residence finding aid.
Post contributed by Mary Samouelian, Doris Duke Collection Archivist.
We are pleased to welcome the Rubenstein’s newest staff member, Craig Breaden, who started this month as the Jazz Loft Project Archivist in the Technical Services Department. Originally from Texas, Craig has both a master’s in history from Utah State and an MLIS from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He comes to Duke from the Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia, where he worked as a Media Assets Archivist and then as Head of the Media and Oral History unit. As the Jazz Loft Project Archivist, he’ll be putting those experiences to good use when working with the oral histories, recordings, and other materials in the Project’s archive. Learn more about the Jazz Loft Project here.
When he’s not at work, Craig says his favorite thing to do is to spend time with his family (he and his wife have 2 boys, ages 6 and 4). His hobbies include listening to, writing, and playing music, “with varying levels of proficiency,” he adds. He especially enjoys the guitar and the banjo. He also brews his own beer.
As soon as his family is settled, all Rubenstein happy hours will be held at Craig’s house, where he will serenade us with banjo music and serve us home-brewed beer. Welcome, Craig!
2012 marks the 75th anniversary of everyone’s favorite processed meat: Spam. In the frontispiece of Time in late 1936, Hormel Foods announced the introduction of two new canned meats: a spiced ham and a spiced luncheon meat. The name Spam was inaugurated the following year, putting this canned meat on the road to becoming the most memorable of Hormel’s product lineup of soups, chili con carne, and flavor-sealed chicken and ham. Spam, which now comes in 12 varieties, has sold over 7 billion cans worldwide. To celebrate this anniversary, Hormel is introducing its first spokescharacter, Sir Can-A-Lot.
Early advertisements for Spam called it a “tempting new miracle meat of many uses for many occasions,” specifically suggesting that Spam & Eggs would be “grand on Sunday mornings,” that Spam & Salad would make for “a cool, inviting luncheon,” and that Baked Spam could provide “a distinguished main course in only 20 minutes.” Copy highlighted Spam as the choice of a thrifty household, claiming that Spaghetti with Spam could serve four for only a dime each. All the advertisements took care to emphasize that Spam did not need refrigeration, which made it perfect for picnics or to feed unexpected guests. “SPAM’s always ready for action – morning, noon and night,” the ads proclaimed.
Post contributed by Jackie Reid Wachholz, Director of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History.
It’s a sad news day with the report that North Carolina-native Andy Griffith has died at age 86. Best known for his role as sheriff of the fictional Mayberry, Griffith is also a prominent figure in our AdViews Collection of vintage television commercials. Along with commercials for the Andy Griffith Show, Griffith advertised for a number of products, including Scope mouthwash, Post cereals, and Gaines dog food.
To watch Andy Griffith and his friends from Mayberry, visit the AdViews Collection portal on the Duke Library’s Digital Collections page. If you’re interested in researching Andy Griffith’s life and career, you should also visit the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, where his personal papers are housed.
Post contributed by Meghan Lyon, Technical Services Archivist in the Rubenstein Library.
Among the many treasures of the Rubenstein Library is an impressive collection of nearly 3,000 historic American newspapers. As part of our major renovation project, these items along with all our collections are being physically prepared for their impending move. In the case of the newspapers, this is a particularly daunting task. Large in scale, centuries old, sometimes folded, and typically preceded, superseded, and sometimes paralleled with alternative titles, it is often difficult to know what goes together and in what order. While such changes in title and places of publication can befuddle those of us working on rehousing the collection in appropriate order, they sometimes offer remarkable clues about America’s history.
Take, for instance, the Massachusetts Spy. Begun by Isaiah Thomas in 1770, it was the first American newspaper geared toward the middle class. While an average newspaper of the time might have 400 subscribers, Thomas grew the circulation of his paper to more than 3,500. An adamant patriot with close connections to John Hancock, Paul Revere, and other Sons of Liberty, Thomas used his paper to broadcast anti-British views and inflame the colonists to action. The British considered Thomas so dangerous that his name was on the list of twelve people to be summarily executed if captured.
The last edition we have of the Mass Spy published in Boston is issue number 217 published on March 30, 1775, less than a month before the Battle of Lexington. Subtitled Thomas’s Boston Journal, Thomas included a version of Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” cartoon in the paper’s masthead.
The paper next appears in Worchester, under a new title—The Massachusetts Spy, Or, American Oracle of Liberty—and with a new masthead—this one proclaiming in large letters “Americans!—Liberty or Death!—Join or Die!”
While changes in newspaper titles and places of publication are common, the significance of this one cannot be overstated. With tensions rapidly escalating in Boston, and with Thomas on the British’s most wanted list, the printer waited until the last possible moment to smuggle his press and himself out of heart of the controversy and to the relative safety of Worchester, some forty miles west of Boston. And, when he printed his first issue of the newly reconstituted paper on May 3, 1775 he deliberately changed the subtitle and masthead to reflect the nature and urgency of his message.
On the paper’s front page, Thomas gave his own account of the dramatic events that unfolded in prior weeks: “I accordingly removed my Printing Materials from Boston to this Place, and escaped myself from Boston on the memorable 19th of April, 1775, which will be remembered in future as the Anniversary of the Battle of Lexington!” He devotes much of the issue to firsthand accounts of the battle, the first published: “Americans! Forever bear in mind the Battle of Lexington!—where British Troops, unmolested and unprovoked, wantonly, and in a most inhuman manner fired upon and killed a number of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ransacked, plundered and burnt their houses! nor could the tears of defenceless women, some of whom were in the pains of childbirth, the cries of helpless babes, nor the prayers of old age, confined to beds of sickness, appease their thirst for blood!—or divert them from their DESIGN of MURDER and ROBBERY!”
Given the rarity of this issue with its firsthand accounts of the very first battle of the American Revolution, I was surprised to discover that there are two copies in the Rubenstein Library’s newspaper collection. A further curiosity is that each is signed by Thomas in the lower left-hand corner.
Closer inspection reveals that the signature is photo-mechanically reproduced, a technology not available in 1775. Both our copies are in fact facsimiles reproduced from Thomas’s own copy which resides at the American Antiquarian Society in Worchester, the nation’s third oldest historical society which Thomas founded after he retired as a printer and editor. The facsimiles were most likely produced in 1876 in celebration of the country’s centennial.
The fact that our copies are facsimiles produced more than 125 years ago is fascinating in its own right, and tells us something about the history of how this country has celebrated anniversaries. I do not know yet how these two copies will be boxed and foldered with other original issues from the Mass Spy; but, I do know that our newspapers will be ready to move out of Perkins in time for the renovation — just like Thomas was ready to move out of Boston in time for the Revolution.
Post contributed by Kat Stefko, Head of the Technical Services Dept. in the Rubenstein Library.
