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Utopias a key stroke away

 

 

 

 

If you want to find a perfect world, Duke now lets you do it online. Duke's Digital Collections Project has started digitizing books in the Special Collection's Glenn Negley Collection of Utopian Literature.

The collection is one of the library's most prized and unusual. It consists of some 1,650 books dating back for centuries. The word utopia first appeared in Sir Thomas More's 1516 book of that title -- the collection has more than a half-dozen editions of that work.

But while the books in the collection are notable, most aren't as famous as More's work. One recent addition to the digitized collection is The Lunarian professor and his remarkable revelations concerning the Earth, the moon, and Mars : together with an account of the cruise of the Sally Ann, a much forgotten 1909 work by a James B. Alexander.

Others are by more prominent authors, including legendary British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli's 1828 book The Voyage of Captain Popanilla.

The digitized collection also includes to date several foreign language books and others dating back to the pre-modern era.

Nearly two dozen utopian books from the collection have been digitized, joining materials from the library's advertising and sheet music collection. The library's Jill Katte said the project wanted to identify strengths from Special Collections and show off a variety of its holdings. To browse the latest in Duke's digitized collection, click here.