A frog beanbag holds open the pages of a register from the Congress of the Confederate States of America.
Thanks to Lynn Eaton, Hartman Center Reference Archivist, for suggesting this photo!
Category Archives: News and Features
Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript in the News
The RBMSCL’s Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript is currently on display at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum where it has been reunited with another fragment from the same 1,300-year-old scroll.
The story of the reunion of these two manuscripts, which contain portions of the Song of the Sea, was picked up on the AP wire. Here’s a link to the article as it appeared in the Jerusalem Dispatch.
This photo of the Ashkar-Gilson manuscript was taken with special lighting so that the writing on the aged manuscript could be seen.
New Audubon Pages on Display
Every month, RBMSCL staff members turn the pages of the four volume double elephant folio set of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. This keeps the rare volumes from developing “preferential openings”—tendencies to open to one particular page that often result when books are on display for long periods of time.
Duke Law student Amanda Pooler, making her first visit to the Rare Book Room, helped select the new openings. She chose the Brown Pelican (Pelicanus Fuscus), the state bird of her native Louisiana, as well as the Raven (Corvus Corax); the Carolina Parrot (Psittacus Carolinensis); and the Kittiwake Gull (Larus Tridactylus).
Stop by the RBMSCL reading room (103 Perkins) during open hours to view these gorgeous prints.
Thanks to Beth Doyle, Collections Conservator, for helping with this post. Check out Beth’s own post on the Audubons over at Preservation Underground.
RBMSCL Photos: Guerrilla Sculpture
This weekend, some guerrilla aluminum foil sculpture mysteriously appeared on one of the display cases in the Perkins Library exhibit gallery.
Photo by Linda McCurdy, Director of Research Services.
RBMSCL Photos: White Gloves
Someone has to wash all of the white gloves that RBMSCL staff and researchers use to handle photographs and other delicate objects. Here’s a freshly-washed batch, hung up to dry.
Photo by Megan O’Connell, Library Assistant
Remembering Susan Hill
With great sadness, the RBMSCL would like to recognize the passing of Susan Hill, who died Saturday, 30 January, 2010, from breast cancer. Hill gained national prominence as a champion for women’s rights. She was president of the National Women’s Health Organization, a group of abortion clinics in the eastern U.S.
In 2003, Hill donated her papers and the records of the NWHO to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (collection guide here).
“We are honored to preserve the papers of Susan Hill. Our thoughts are with her many friends and family members at this difficult time,” said Laura Micham, Director of the Bingham Center.
Her obituary was published in Raleigh’s News and Observer.
The RBMSCL Fan Club
For all you fans of the RBMSCL (and who isn’t, really?), we now have our very own Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, stop by and become our fan! We’ll be posting interesting tidbits and photos, so we promise it’ll be worth your while.
P.S. Details about the secret handshake will be revealed soon.
Paul Samuelson Papers Coming to Duke
The papers of preeminent American economist Paul A. Samuelson (1914-2009), the first American recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, will be added to the Economists Papers Project in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke. Before his death on December 13th, Samuelson had decided 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), Robert E. Lucas, Douglass North, Vernon Smith, and Leonid Hurwicz (all links lead to collection inventories). The Economists Papers Project, developed jointly by Duke’s History of Political Economy group and the RBMSCL, 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 “neoclassical synthesis” wedded modern microeconomics to Keynesian macroeconomics, both of which were stabilized through his landmark Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947). 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 in MIT’s economics department made it the world leader in scientific economics.
Post contributed by E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics, Duke University.
NB: The Paul Samuelson Papers will be transferred to Duke in stages over the next several months. If you are interested in conducting research in the Samuelson Papers once they are made available, please contact Will Hansen at william.hansen(at)duke.edu.
Join the Preservation Underground
When they’re not busy discovering moldy bananas in books, building storage boxes for pink dragons, or digitizing somewhere around 5,000 broadsides, the Preservation Department here at the Duke University Libraries is going to be keeping us up-to-date on their work through their new blog, Preservation Underground. We hope they have as much fun with theirs as we have with The Devil’s Tale—and we really hope the bananas keep to the produce section from now on.
And yes, they’ll still be writing the occasional guest post for us about RBMSCL materials in the conservation lab. Take a look at their fine work on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
Try Our New Chat Widget!
Are you confounded by collection guides? Can you not find your way through a finding aid? Do descriptive inventories make you dizzy? Do we have the solution for you!
Today, the RBMSCL’s Research Services department is flipping the switch on a new widget that will allow you to chat with one of the RBMSCL’s reference librarians as you pore over box lists and biographical notes. The icon above will now be located at the top of the left-hand menu column for each of our finding aids. During RBMSCL hours, click it and you’ll instantly be connected with a reference librarian ready to help you with your questions.
Browsing through finding aids at 2 AM? The “online” icon will be replaced with the icon on the right, which will take you to our “Ask a Question” e-mail form, so you’ll never be more than a click away from getting the reference help you need.