How to Find Special Collections Materials

Use the online catalog to search for materials in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library and limit the Locations (using the drop-down box labelled "All Locations") to "Rare Books, Mss. and Spec. Coll.".

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 Methosistics, 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 materails

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

• The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History
• The John Hope Frankling Collection of African and African American Documentation
• The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture
• The Jay B. Hubbell Center for American Literary Historiography