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The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
Duke Professor Emeritus Francis Newton meeting with class in the Flowers Room.

Faculty Services

One of the primary missions of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library is supporting undergraduate and graduate teaching. Reference archivists are delighted to provide class presentations to introduce students to materials that relate to their class research projects, to place selected materials on reserve for students to consult, or to reserve a room where smaller classes may meet to work with Special Collections materials.


Research Services librarians and archivists are happy to provide an orientation to Special Collections materials for your students and/or to supply digital images for your Blackboard course site or other networked presentation.

Please contact Linda McCurdy or Elizabeth Dunn for more information.

Reference Archivists in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture and the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History support courses that fall within their respective subject areas.

Course Reserves

Please contact us to request that Special Collections materials be placed on hold for part or all of a semester. Your students will be able to use them in our secure reading room after completing the registration process.

Meeting in Special Collections

If your class has a particular need to examine Special Collections materials as a group, please contact us to reserve a meeting room.

Middlesworth Awards

The Chester P. Middlesworth Awards have been established to encourage and reconginize excellence of research, analysis, and writing by Duke University students in the use of primary sources and rare materials held by the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.  The awards are granted annually to the authors of the best undergraduate and graduate student papers based largely on RBMSCL resources.  Funding for the awards has been provided by Chester P. Middlesworth (A.B., 1949) of Statesville, North Carolina.  To nominate a student, complete a nomination form, which must be submitted along with a clean copy of the paper