In the Perkins Library

August/October

    Thinking Outside the Book: New Forms by Women Artists

    But She's a Star by Sande Wascher-James

    From the collection of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, a selection of art objects in book form created by women to address issues of gender, identity, and women's history

October/November

    A Celebration of the Woman's College, 1930-1972
    An exhibit portraying the experiences of the students at Duke's Woman's College. Sponsored by Duke Alumni Affairs and the Duke Alumni Association in conjunction with the Woman's College Celebration November 8-10, 2002

…And in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library

August/December

    Thirteen-Month Crop: One Year in the Life of a Piedmont Virginia Tobacco Farm
    Images from the Moore family farm near Chatham, Virginia, made by documentary photographer Jesse Andrews, to record the changing landscape of tobacco farming and suggest the implications of those changes for the region.

SAA Presents Award to Duke

The Society of American Archivists has selected Duke University as the 2002 recipient of its Distinguished Service Award. The award acknowledges Duke's "strong reputation as a generous contributor to the archival profession" and its longtime leadership in "regional, national and international efforts in descriptive standards, and cutting edge cooperative projects." The SAA recognized Duke as an early implementer of EAD (encoded archival description), helping to refine the standard, and there was praise as well for Duke's Digital Scriptorium, part of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, for its leadership over the past decade in the development of best practices for online digital collections.

SAA Council member Richard Pearce-Moses said, "Duke University is a model for other universities in how it develops its archives, hires and supports archivists, and commits itself to the principles that are at the heart of the archival profession. For these reasons, Duke University richly deserves the honor represented by the Distinguished Service Award." Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs David Ferriero and Robert Byrd, director of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, accepted the award on 22 August in Birmingham, AL, during the Society's annual meeting.

Duke, UNC Collaborate on Electronic Records Management Grant

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) is funding a joint project in which the School of Information and Library Science at UNC and the Duke University Library will study how university employees at the two institutions manage their digital desktops. The project began in July with provisional funding until June 2005. Co-principal investigators are Helen Tibbo, of the UNC-SILS faculty, and Duke University Archivist Timothy Pyatt.

Staff at the two institutions will investigate current desktop electronic records handling practices, especially those related to electronic mail and associated digitally transmitted documents. They will follow-up with recommendations for data management best practices. The summary project results will be shared broadly in the academic community as a model for electronic records data management for private and public universities.

During the first year of the grant, the Duke and UNC investigators will conduct interviews in which they hope to learn how university staff use and process electronic records on their desktops, what types of files and records they create and receive, how they organize their desktops, what their document retention practices are, and what particular challenges digitally transmitted materials present.

The information garnered from the interviews will yield a baseline of practice and a foundation from which to develop guidelines and teaching modules. The teaching modules will be designed to train faculty, administrators and staff in the management of their electronic desktops with an emphasis on preserving what is essential for the permanent record of the university.

The UNC/Duke electronic records management study has generated interest nationally among archivists, with plans already being made for a session devoted to the project at a future meeting of the Society of American Archivists.

May I Help You?-Perceptions of Service Quality at Perkins Library

How do faculty and students perceive the quality of the service they receive at Perkins Library? To begin to answer that question, Director of Public Services Thomas Wall administered an electronic survey to a sample of faculty, graduate and undergraduate users of Perkins Library during the 2002 spring semester. Surveys were sent via e-mail to 600 undergraduates, 600 graduate students, and 300 faculty; the response rate was approximately 40%.

Wall's survey instrument was LIBQUAL+, which has been endorsed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and is currently being used by 200 libraries in ARL-sponsored projects. LibQUAL+ is an adaptation of ServQual, which was designed in the early 1980s as a way of gathering data on user perceptions of service quality in various service industries, such as tourism, health, and retail.

The ServQual instrument identifies three customer service quality perceptions: minimal, current, and optimal. The ranking of the current level of service relative to the minimal and optimal levels provides a gap, which is the basis for service quality analysis. Like ServQual, LibQUAL+ focuses on user perceptions of the current level of service as well as the minimal acceptable level of service and what would constitute service excellence (correlated with relative importance).

Service quality in four categories was measured in the spring survey of Perkins Library users: Service Affect-the human dimension of service quality; Library as a Place-physical facilities and the library as center of intellectual activity; Personal Control- interaction with the modern library, digital personalization, and navigation; Access to Information- the ubiquity of access, comprehensive collections, and formats of information.

Preliminary survey results show that the more research intensive library use is, the higher the expectations and the lower the perceptions of service quality; of the four survey metrics, personal control is the one which respondents rate as most important; affect of service is the metric that registers the greatest degree of participant satisfaction.

The survey results are currently being analyzed by a staff committee, which will invite additional comments from users and several groups affiliated with the library before presenting library administrators with a list of recommendations for improving service at Perkins Library.

Warehouse Project Enriches Advertising Archives

Imagine a library project involving cooperation among Duke, the University of East London (U.K.), and the international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT). Just such a project took place in July in a south London warehouse. Ellen Gartrell, director of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library's Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, joined forces with UEL's Professor Helen Powell to supervise eight students who sorted through hundreds of cartons containing many decades of JWT's stored office files and advertisements.

The weeklong project was the beginning of an effort to identify materials to be added to Duke's JWT Archives, already the Hartman Center's largest collection. With encouragement from J. Walter Thompson Company managers, Gartrell devised procedures that enabled the students to become temporary "archivists." The students, all of whom are enrolled in UEL's media and advertising program, opened cartons and evaluated the contents using Gartrell's guidelines, then recommended preliminarily whether or not to add the documents to the JWT Archives at Duke.

The assistance of the student crew made it possible to survey a much larger number of documents than one individual working alone could have reviewed in the same amount of time. To the students' benefit, the project counted as the work experience that is required for their university degree. "I couldn't believe how much the old papers helped me see how day-to-day advertising works," commented student Lorien Rodger. "Yes, but next time you should warn the students that they'll get dirty and have to lift a lot of boxes!" added Lennox Addo, who took to wearing a lab coat over his clothing.

Ellen Gartrell (far left) stands with University of East London advertising students in front of cartons of materials they surveyed in a London warehouse. Student Harjinder Basran (left) and Dr. Helen Powell hold 1930s Lux promotions; Nobere Lubrun (center) holds a Guinness advertisement from the 1980s.

Among the archives-worthy material found were 1930s summaries of Pond's advertising, including hand-drawn graphs carefully pasted into a scrapbook; complete typed-up plans for ad campaigns of the 1980s; and memoranda on the running of J. Walter Thompson's offices in London and other European cities. The project was an excellent pilot exercise and will allow Gartrell to plan several future visits to London to survey several thousand additional stored JWT boxes with student help.


eDuke for Duke News

Duke's Office of News and Communications has introduced a suite of electronic publications that will keep students, faculty, alumni, parents and friends of the university current with the latest news from and about Duke. "eDuke Daily," as the title suggests, is a daily update from the Office of News and Communications. "eDuke Media Clips," another daily feature, is a collection of the latest media reports about Duke, compiled from print and broadcast sources. "eDuke Monthly" is a summary of the month's news about Duke along with information in a range of subject categories from which individual subscribers can select. To subscribe to one or more of the services, go to.  http://eduke.duke.edu

From Art to the End of Life: The 2002/2003 Engaging Faculty Series

Four distinguished members of the Duke faculty will take part in the 2002/2003 Engaging Faculty series, which has been sponsored by the Friends of the Duke University Libraries since 1996. The series is intended to give faculty an opportunity to speak informally about their research to an audience of their colleagues, university students and staff, and Triangle residents. The lectures, which begin at 5:00 p.m., are held at Perkins Library in the Rare Book Room.

To open the series, Caroline Bruzelius, Anne Murnick Cogan Professor of Art and Art History, will speak on November 7. The title of Professor Bruzelius's lecture is "The Church That Isn't There: San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples." In recent research Professor Bruzelius discovered that the church, a striking example of the Gothic style imported into Italy, once had a very different appearance. In her talk Professor Bruzelius will reconstruct what was lost. Caroline Bruzelius's books include The Thirteenth Century Church at St. Denis and The Architecture of the Cistercians in the Early Thirteenth Century.

One week later on November 14, James A. Tulsky, M.D. will deliver a lecture entitled "In Search of a Good Death: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going." Dr. Tulsky will explore what patients, families, and health care providers believe is important at the end of life. He will also discuss the quality of communication between patients and physicians about these issues and project the future of care for the dying person. Dr. Tulsky is director of the VA Medical Center's Program on the Medical Encounter and Palliative Care and associate director of Duke's Institute on Care at the End of Life. Earlier this year he was a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the U.S. government's highest award to early career investigators.

Continuing the series in the spring semester, Susan Tifft '73 will make a presentation on January 30. Ms. Tifft, Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Communications at Duke's Sanford Institute, will speak about "Truth or Dare: Ruminations on Excavating the Past." In her lecture Ms. Tifft will address the difficulty of reconstructing the past using documents, letters, interviews, memory, oral histories and other materials at hand. Ms. Tifft asks, "How does one get at the truth? Can one ever get at the truth?" Susan Tifft is co-author with Alex S. Jones of The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times and The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty.

The final speaker of the 2002-2003 series is Houston A. Baker, Jr., the Susan Fox and George D. Beischer Arts and Sciences Professor of English. Houston Baker's February 20 talk is entitled "Traveling With Faulkner," which he describes as "a meditation on Faulkner from the perspective of a black, middle-age, southern-born professor of literature who has never been quite able fully to shake, comprehend, or escape the novelist and oracle of Yoknapatawpha County." Professor Baker's most recent books, both published in 2001, are Turning South Again: Re-Thinking Modernism, Re-Reading Booker T.and Critical Memory: Public Spheres, African American Writing and Black Fathers and Sons in America.


Events

October 8

    Documentary photographer Jesse Andrews will show his work and talk about agricultural and social change (See entry under "Exhibits" for Thirteen-Month Crop.). Also speaking will be Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, and Charlie Thompson, the Center's curriculum and education director. Perkins Library Rare Book Room, 6:00 p.m.

October 31

    Duke's beloved Reynolds Price, James B. Duke Professor of English, continues his tradition of reading ghost stories for Halloween. Come early for a place to sit or stand at this always popular event. Lilly Library, Thomas Room, 7:00 p.m.

November 1

    The inaugural William B. Weaver Memorial Lecture delivered by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory and Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT. Mr. Negroponte is the author of the 1995 best-seller Being Digital and a columnist for Wired magazine. White Lecture Hall (East Campus), 7:30 p.m.

November 5

    Sallie Bingham reads from Transgressions, her new collection of short stories. Author Paula Fox says of the stories, "Ms. Bingham writes with an austere and unerring knowledge of what it is to be human and-transgressive." Joining Ms. Bingham to read from their own writing will be Melissa Delbridge, a member of the library staff, and two Duke student writers. Perkins Library Rare Book Room, 5:00 p.m.

November 7

    Engaging Faculty Series: Caroline Bruzelius, Anne Murnick Cogan Professor of Art and Art History, "The Church That Isn't There: San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples." Professor Bruzelius tells of a discovery she recently made about one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in Naples. Perkins Library Rare Book Room, 5:00 p.m.

November 14

    Engaging Faculty Series: James Tulsky, M.D., "In Search of a Good Death." Dr. Tulsky is director of the Program on the Medical Encounter and Palliative Care and associate director of the Institute on Care at the End of Life. In his lecture Dr. Tulsky will explore what patients, families, and health care providers believe is important at the end of life. Perkins Library Rare Book Room, 5:00 p.m.

November 14

    A reading by Joe Ashby Porter from Touch Wood, his new collection of short stories. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews describes the stories as "smart, hard, and rewarding." Porter is also the author of Lithuania: Short Stories, The Kentucky Stories, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and the novels Eelgrass and Resident Aliens. Perkins Library Rare Book Room, 7:30 p.m.