Date: Wednesday, 17 March 2010 Time: 3:00 PM Location: Rare Book Room Contact Information: Janie Morris, 919-660-5819 or janie.morris(at)duke.edu
From the Davis Family Papers.
Dr. Andrew Kahrl will discuss the rise and demise of black beaches and coastal property ownership from the early 20th century to the present. Kahrl’s talk, titled “Losing the Land: African American Ownership of Coastal Property,” is based in part on his findings in the Behind the Veil oral history collection at the RBMSCL.
Kahrl is assistant professor of history at Marquette University and a former fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies.
Dates and Times: Wednesday, 27 January 2010, 1:00-5:00 PM and Thursday, 28 January 2010, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM Location: Rare Book Room Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu
Unidentified man wearing a blue tie. Quarter-plate tintype, ca. 1850s. From the Jarratt-Puryear Family Papers.
The Archive of Documentary Arts‘ annual display showcases the numerous formats that document the evolution of the photographic process from early daguerreotypes to modern digital prints. The display will include photographs by Mathew Brady, Timothy O’Sullivan, Edward Curtis, Doris Ulmann, Eudora Welty, Lewis Hine, Manual Alvarez Bravo, Minor White, and Walker Evans.
Please note that the display is open by appointment only during the hours noted above. Contact Karen Glynn (919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu) to schedule your appointment.
Unable to visit the display? Over 100 images from the archive’s collection have been reproduced in Beyond Beauty: The Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. This full-color, 128-page publication is our gift to you with a $50 minimum donation to the archive (donation form here).
A few new finding aids to make your season merry and bright. All of the following collections are open for research. Please contact the Special Collections Library at special-collections(at)duke.edu with any questions.
A poster from the Durham Savoyards’ 1972 production of The Mikado.
This collection contains the archives of the Durham Savoyards, a Durham production company of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Dating from 1898 to 1989, the materials consist of minutes, correspondence, programs, financial records, posters, director’s notes, stage design, photographs, videocassettes, color slides, and clippings. The collection also includes “The Savoyards, Durham Savoyards Limited, 1989” and “Mindful of the Whys and Wherefores; a Savoyard Producer’s Journal” by James L. Parmentier. Photographs predating the 1963 founding of the Savoyards depict comic operas said to have been performed at Durham’s Southern Conservatory of Music.
The records of the American Association of University Women’s Durham chapter span the years from its founding in 1913 through the 1970s. The central organizational records are almost complete for this period, including minutes of Executive Board meetings, Presidents’ files, financial records, membership information, and national and state convention files.
Baher Azmy Papers, 1986-2007 and undated
Azmy, an Egyptian-American lawyer and Professor of Law at Seton Hall University Law School Center for Social Justice, was the attorney for Murat Kurnaz, a citizen of Turkey and permanent resident of Germany, who was held in extra-judicial detention by the U.S. military at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The material documents Professor Azmy’s legal motions and public efforts for writ of habeas corpus and the release and repatriation of Mr. Kurnaz.
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.
The RBMSCL’s South Asian Pamphlets Collection (collection guide here) contains some 7500 pamphlets published in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka between 1920 and 2005.
These English-language publications were received by Duke University’s Perkins Library over four decades through the Library of Congress South Asia Cooperative Acquisition Program (SACAP).
The pamphlets cover such topics as agriculture, arts, economic development, education, industry and commerce, international relations, politics and government, religion and philosophy, rural development, tourism, and women. In particular, the pamphlets form an impressive body of primary sources on ethnic and political conflict, as well as the effects of wars, poverty, and mass education, and issues regarding Islam and other religious traditions.
Researchers wishing to use these pamphlets should note that the entire collection is stored in our off-site storage facility. Please contact the RBMSCL (special-collections(at)duke.edu) at least 24 hours before your visit so that we can request the pamphlets you’d like to see.
The RBMSCL welcomed the start of Parents’ Weekend with a Friday afternoon reception honoring the winners of the 2009 Chester P. Middlesworth Awards. Given annually, the awards recognize the authors of the best undergraduate and graduate student papers based on research in the collections of the RBMSCL. Funding for the awards is provided by Chester P. Middlesworth (A.B., 1949) of Statesville, NC.
2009 Middlesworth Award winners Samuel Lee Iglesias and Martin Park Hunter
Undergraduate student winner Catherine L. Daniel delved into the papers of well-known Durhamites, including those of James and Benjamin Duke (collection guides here and here), for her study, “Black Hospitals as an Avenue for Social Change: A Narrative of the Life of a Segregated Institution in the New South: Lincoln Hospital, Durham, North Carolina.”
Undergraduate student winner Samuel Lee Iglesias studied the papers of Vanderbilt economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (collection guide here) for his paper, “The Miscommunications and Misunderstandings of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.”
Graduate student winner Martin Park Hunter drew from a number of primary sources, including the United Methodist Church Records (collection guide here), for his paper, “The Names Have Not Changed: The Story of Caswell County Methodism.”
Just a reminder to all you Duke students busily scribbling away on term papers: you could be the next Middlesworth Award winner! Details about submitting your paper can be found here.
More details—and the grant application—may be found here. Applications must be postmarked no later than January 29, 2010. Recipients will be announced in March 2010.
Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University
