Duke University Libraries | |
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![]() The Bostock Library | |
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Established | 1861 |
Branches | 6 |
Collection | |
Size | 6 million volumes |
Other information | |
Director | Joseph Salem |
Website | library.duke.edu |
Duke University Libraries is the library system of Duke University, serving the university's students and faculty. The Libraries collectively hold some 6 million volumes. [1]
The collection contains 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public documents, and tens of thousands of films and videos. The Duke University Libraries consists of the William R. Perkins Library, Bostock Library, and the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library on West Campus; the Lilly Library and Music Library on East Campus, and the Pearse Memorial Library at the Duke Marine Lab. It also includes the Library Service Center, library offices located in the Smith Warehouse, as well as a few other departments. The professional schools have separately administrated libraries: the Goodson Law Library, Duke Divinity School Library, Ford Library at Fuqua School of Business, and the Seeley Mudd Medical Center Library. [2] The Biological and Environmental Sciences Library was formerly part of the system but in 2009 it closed permanently. [3]
The William R. Perkins Library system has nine branches on campus. It includes a major collection of Confederate imprints.
Bostock Library, named for board of trustees member Roy J. Bostock, opened in the fall of 2005 as part of the University's strategic plan to supplement Duke's libraries. It contains 87 study carrels, 517 seats, and 96 computer stations, as well as 72,996 feet (22,249 m) of shelving for overflow books from Perkins Library as well as for new collections. [4]
The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library holds more than 350,000 rare books, 10,000 manuscript collections, and extensive collections of photography, film, and audio. The library was named after board of trustees member and alumn David M. Rubenstein in 2011. [5]
The Divinity School Library is located next to Perkins Library in the Duke Divinity School. It contains 400,000 volumes, as well as various periodicals and other materials to support the study of theology and religion. The library is the host institution for the Religion in North Carolina Digitization project, a collaborative digitization project with Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, due for completion in 2015.
Douglas Maitland Knight was an American educator, businessman, and author. He was a former professor of literature at Yale University prior to his presidency at Lawrence College from 1954 to 1963. Stemming from his work at Lawrence College was his subsequent term as president of Duke University, where he served until he resigned in 1969 following student protests and the takeover of the university's main administrative building by students calling for a black cultural center and African-American studies program, among other things. Controversy over these issues led to his transition into the business world at RCA and Questar Corporation. Knight never fully retired, and was known to consult for Questar's board of trustees years after his departure.
The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available online. It has 8.5 million microfilms and microfiches, more than 71,000 cubic feet (2,000 m3) of manuscripts, and close to 500,000 other materials, including motion pictures, DVDs, sound recordings, and computer files, extensive digital resources, and the University Archives. It is the sixteenth largest library in North America, ranked by number of volumes held. It is also the thirteenth largest research library in the U.S. by both titles and volumes held.
The University of Michigan Library is the academic library system of the University of Michigan. The university's 38 constituent and affiliated libraries together make it the second largest research library by number of volumes in the United States.
The Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is one of ten graduate or professional schools within Duke University. It is also one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the United Methodist Church. It has 39 regular rank faculty and 15 joint, secondary or adjunct faculty, and, as of 2017, an enrollment of 543 full-time equivalent students. The current dean of the Divinity School is the Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, who assumed the deanship on August 31, 2021. Former deans include the prominent New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays, who stepped down in 2015.
The David W. Mullins Library is the main research library of the University of Arkansas. The University Libraries also include the Robert A. and Vivian Young Law Library, the Fine Arts Library, the Chemistry and Biochemistry Library, and the Physics Library.
Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University and one of the largest academic library systems in North America. With 15.0 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials, it is the fifth-largest academic library in the United States and the largest academic library in the State of New York. Additionally, the closely affiliated Jewish Theological Seminary Library holds over 400,000 volumes, which combined makes the Columbia University Libraries the third-largest academic library, and the second-largest private library in the United States.
Perkins School of Theology is one of Southern Methodist University's three original schools and is located in Dallas, Texas. The theology school was renamed in 1945 to honor benefactors Joe J. and Lois Craddock Perkins of Wichita Falls, Texas. Degree programs include the Master of Divinity (M.Div.), Master of Sacred Music, Master of Theological Studies (MTS), Master of Arts in Ministry, Master of Theology (Th.M.), Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.), and Doctor of Pastoral Music as well as the Ph.D., in cooperation with The Graduate Program in Religious Studies at SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. It is one of only five university-related theological institutions of the United Methodist Church, and one of the denomination's 13 seminaries, offering opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, and accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). There is a hybrid-extension program in Houston-Galveston.
The Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Originating in 1701 with the gift of several dozen books to a new “Collegiate School," the library's collection now contains approximately 14.9 million volumes housed in fifteen university buildings and is the third-largest academic library system in North America and the second-largest housed on a singular campus.
David Mark Rubenstein is an American lawyer, businessman, and philanthropist. A former government official, he is a co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm based in Washington, D.C. Rubenstein is also the principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball (MLB), acquiring them in 2024 for $1.7 billion.
The Alexander M. Bracken Library is the main library on the campus of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Opened in September 1975 and designed by Walter Scholer and Associates and the Perkins and Will Partnership of Chicago, the 320,000-square-foot facility is located in the geographic center of the Ball State University campus and is distinguishable for its unique, Brutalist architecture.
The Kenneth Willis Clark Collection of Greek Manuscripts in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University contains over one hundred manuscripts — in both roll and codex form — dating from the 9th to the 17th century. The collection as a whole is named in his honor and includes manuscripts collected and donated by Kenneth Clark as well as manuscripts acquired from other sources.
The American Newspaper Repository is a charity whose purpose is to collect and preserve original copies of American newspapers. It was founded in 1999 by the author Nicholson Baker when he learnt that the British Library was disposing of its collection of historic American newspapers. He cashed in his retirement fund to successfully bid for the collection at auction. With support from the Knight Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, the repository was established in an old mill building in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. While serving as a director, Baker researched and wrote Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper about the way in which other library institutions were destroying rather than preserving such originals.
The Rare Book and Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia, sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.
Princeton University Library is the main library system of Princeton University. With holdings of more than 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 48,000 linear feet of manuscripts, it is among the largest libraries in the world by number of volumes. The main headquarters of the university system is the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library building, named after tire magnate Harvey Firestone. Additionally, Princeton is part of the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP) along with Columbia Libraries, Harvard Library and New York Public Library.
Confederate imprints are books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals or sheet music printed in the Confederate States of America in a location which, at the time, was under Confederate and not Union control. Confederate imprints are important as sources of the history of the Civil War and many institutional libraries have formed large collections of these works. A number of checklists and bibliographies of them have been published, one of which catalogs 9,457 imprints.
Immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Silent Vigil was a social protest at Duke University that not only demanded collective bargaining rights for AFSCME Local 77, the labor union for nonacademic employees, but also advocated against racial discrimination on campus and in the surrounding community of Durham, North Carolina. Occurring from April 4, 1968, to April 12, 1968, members of the University Christian Movement began planning a campus-wide vigil in memoriam of Dr. King. Another group of undergraduate students called for a protest march to address prevalent issues concerning the primarily African-American nonacademic employees at Duke in Local 77. Together, both student groups, along with the support of Local 77, most of the teaching faculty, and civilians not affiliated with the university, sparked a non-violent demonstration that involved over 2,000 participants, making it the largest in Duke's history. The Silent Vigil stands out from other contemporary college movements due to the collaboration between primarily white students and faculty, and mainly African-American workers. Furthermore, unlike rowdier protests at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, Duke's Silent Vigil received considerable praise for its peaceful approach, especially considering its surrounding Southern backdrop. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Silent Vigil not only aimed to externally change Duke's white, privileged, and apathetic image in the eyes of the Durham community, but also internally set a powerful precedent on Duke's campus for student activism in the future.
Josiah Charles Trent was an American surgeon and a historian of medicine. He is notable for his collection of rare books and manuscripts documenting the history of western medicine. After his death, his widow, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, donated his collection of books to Duke University. Today, this collection forms the foundation of the History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The Trident Society, also known as TS, is an American collegiate secret society at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The Trident Society is often considered the most secretive and prestigious of the societies at Duke University, and inherited the mission of The Order of the Red Friars and The Order of the White Duchy. The Society seeks to promote dedication and loyalty to Duke University while promoting the goals of the university, and to reward students for merit and achievement.
Lawrence Chesterfield Bryant was a professor, principal, pastor, and author. He wrote two books on South Carolina's 19th and early 20th century African American legislators. He was awarded the South Carolina Silver Crescent Award in 2005 for his research and work as an educator. Duke University has an extensive collection of his papers.
Joseph Penn Breedlove (1874–1955) was an American librarian and author. In 48 years of service, he oversaw the growth of the Duke University Library from a single room in 1898 to millions of books and documents in modern facilities at his retirement in 1946. He was a founding member of the North Carolina Library Association and twice its president. His history of the Duke University libraries was published in 1955.