2005-06 - Office of the Registrar - Duke University

The Libraries
The libraries of the university consist of the William R. Perkins Library and its seven
branches on campus: Biology and Environmental Sciences; Chemistry; Lilly; Music; Rare
Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections; the Pearse Memorial Library at the Duke
Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, and the Vesic Library for Engineering, Mathematics and
Physics; as well as the independently administered libraries of Divinity, Law, Medicine,
and Business (Fuqua). As of June 2003, these libraries contained over 5.3 million
volumes. The collection includes 17.7 million manuscripts, and over 1.2 million public
documents. The library Web site is: http://www.lib.duke.edu.
The William R. Perkins Library. The William R. Perkins Library, the main library of the
university, houses books, journals, and online resources supporting the humanities and
social sciences, as well as a large collection of United States federal and state documents,
and public documents of many European and Latin American countries. The library is a
depository for U.S., North Carolina, and European documents. An international focus is
evident throughout the library collections, reflecting the global strengths of area programs
at the university. Included are extensive research collections from and about South Asia,
Latin America, Africa, Europe, Russia, and Poland, as well as one of the country’s largest
collection of Canadiana. The East Asian Collection offers resources in Japanese, Chinese,
and Korean on a variety of topics, predominantly history, politics, literature, and language.
The newspaper collection includes many eighteenth-century titles; strong holdings of
nineteenth century New England papers; and antebellum and Civil War papers of North
Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia; as well as many European and Latin
American papers.
The holdings of the Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library range
from ancient papyri to records of modern advertising. They number more than 200,000
printed volumes and more than 15 million items in manuscript and archival collections.
They support research in a wide variety of disciplines and programs, including African
American studies, anthropology, classics, economics, history, literature, political science,
religion, sociology, and women’s studies. Areas of particular strength in the collections
include the history and culture of the American South, English and American literature,
history of economic theory, British and American Methodism, and the history of modern
advertising.
The Libraries 291