Duke Image Collections

A number of Duke University's own collections are available online. Here are some of them:

Duke University Beauty Queen in 1948 soap advertisement
Ad*Access collection

Ad*Access
An image database of over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Covering five categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II - Ad*Access provides a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies preserved in one advertising collection at Duke University. Brief histories of the industries and timelines of world and national events help put the ads in the context of their times. [ Also available via the Duke Online Collections system. ]

Classical Studies
Images of nearly 2000 images from instructional slide collection at the Duke Department of Classical Studies. [ Access to this database is limited to computers on the Duke network. See our off-campus access page for information on how Duke users can connect when not on the Duke network. ]

Historic American Sheet Music
Digital images of over 16,000 pages of sheet music from 3042 pieces published in the United States between 1850 and 1920. A rich database of information about the music is searchable and browsable in a variety of ways, and the site includes background information about the music itself as well as the social, cultural, and political events that shaped the songs and that are depicted in the pieces. [ Also available via the Duke Online Collections system. ]

Medicine and Madison Avenue
A database of over 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1958, as well as 35 selected historical documents relating to the creation and influence of health-related advertisements. Includes Instructor's and Student's Guides to provide ideas for use of the database in the classroom.

The Emergence of Advertising in America
A database of over 9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States. The project organizes the materials into eleven categories, including advertising cookbooks, early Lux ads, J. Walter Thompson Company "house ads" and tobacco promotions, and includes transcriptions of the title pages and tables of contents/indexes for the Early Advertising Publications and the Nicole DiBona Peterson Advertising Cookbook categories; descriptive essays for each category; and Boolean searching within each category as well as general searching across all categories.

William Gedney Photographs and Writings
From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s, William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the United States, in India, and in Europe. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment to the daily chores of unemployed coal miners, from the indolent lifestyle of hippies in Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney was able to record the lives of others with remarkable clarity and poignancy. These photographs, along with his notebooks and writings, illuminate the rare vision of an intensely private man who, as a writer and photographer, was able to reveal the lives of others with striking sensitivity. Included here are selections from Gedney's finished prints, work prints, contact sheets, notes, notebooks, handmade photographic books, book dummies, and correspondence.

The Urban Landscape
A database of images from various collections held by the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The database contains 1000 images from fourteen different collections pertaining to the theme "The Urban Landscape," and can be searched or browsed.

The Duke Papyrus Archive
The Duke Papyrus Archive provides electronic access to texts about and images of 1,373 papyri from ancient Egypt. You can browse the papyri by subject or search by keyword, and images of each papyrus are available in various magnifications. Background material about papyri and papyrology introduces the archive.

Historical Images in Medicine
The Medical Center Library's Historical Images in Medicine (HIM) collections encompass over 3,000 photographs, illustrations, engravings, and bookplates from the history of the health and life sciences.

Foundations of Excellence
An archival image collection celebrating the 75th anniversary of Duke Medicine.

Duke University Medical Center Physician Asistant History Center
Image collections about the physician assistant profession.

Duke University Libraries Exhibits

Duke University Archives Exhibits

Duke University Medical Center Library Exhibits

Other collections and exhibits from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library