How to Find Manuscripts

In the online catalog choose the "Duke Libraries" tab and limit your search to "Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library".

Additional help in locating information in this closed stack library is available from the Research Services staff in 103 Perkins. These reference librarians answer questions, provide consultations on research topics, and assist with use of additional finding aids for the materials.

Rare Books & Manuscripts

Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library has over 15 million manuscript items ranging from ancient papyri to contemporary letters, diaries, and organizational archives. There are over 200,000 printed books and pamphlets, as well as broadsides, maps, music and newspapers. Notable printed holdings include Confederate imprints, southern literature, African American autobiographies, emblem books, eighteenth-century British political pamphlets, English literature, utopian literature, Wesleyana and Methodistica, German Baroque literature and German Americana, German Nazi imprints, American comic books, the American Newspaper Repository, and the Mazzoni collection of rare Italian Imprints.

Other Special Collections materials

The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collection Library administers several specialized centers that provide extensive documentation in their fields. These include:

• The Archive of Documentary Arts
• The Archive for Human Rights
• The Jay B. Hubbell Center for American Literary Historiography
• The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
• The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History
• The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture