Duke's Past Goes Digital

Some things about The Chanticleer, Duke's yearbook, remain the same since 1912*. The faces of seniors still look out at the reader, the Gothic buildings of West and the Georgian architecture of East Campus always shine, and there are stories of Duke athletics to praise.

But the Chanticleer is also great way to document the change and growth of Duke University from a small regional college to a major national and international player. Now decades of past yearbooks are available in a reader-friendly digital form.

A joint project of the University Archives and Duke Library's Digital Collections Program has put Chanticleers between 1912 and 1960 online. (To view, click here)

This isn't the first digitized project for the library, but it is one that officials expect will be popular.

"As the Archives has increasingly placed digitized content online, the materials most requested for digital access have been the Chanticleers," said University Archivist Tim Pyatt.

"When Digital Collections asked us for ideas for mass digitization projects, we quickly volunteered the Chanticleers."

The Chanticleers are posted in a variety of files, including text and pdf. The most advanced and valuable form is a "flip book" that allows users to search the text and photos.

The flip books make for quick browsing as well as searching. Users can view full pages or zoom in on sections.

Administrative portraits from 1921.

Flipping through the pages, readers get a glimpse of the people and events that have made Duke from past presidents and administrators to noted teachers and students who went on to fame.

But that history had a helping hand from a rival eight miles down the road: To get the yearbooks online, library officials turned to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's high production scanner.

"The filming of the yearbooks took place at UNC," said Jill Katte, project leader with the Digital Collections Program. "We partnered with them, and I think it's a nice touch that they are helping us make available a valuable part of Duke's history."

The UNC "Scribe" machine can manage a variety of printed material, but Katte said the yearbooks, with its unusual print size and pictorial nature, provided some challenges in getting the sharpest rendering.

Digitization of library materials has been ongoing in different forms since 1995, said Paolo Mangiafico, who led the first projects but has now taken on a wider role as director of Duke's digital strategy. Current projects include texts from the library's Glenn Negley Collection of Utopian Literature (see accompanying story). Earlier efforts included material from the library's sheet music and advertising collections.

More is on the way. Special Collections may start migrating the famed ancient papyri collection, and Pyatt said Archives is interested in digitizing past Chronicles as well.

The current Chanticleer staff is pleased with the effort, saying it should bring more attention to their work. Recently the 2007 Chanticleer won first place in the Premier Print Award competition for college yearbooks sponsored by the Printing Industries of America and the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation.

"I'm glad that early editions of The Chanticleer are now so easily accessible," said Devika Jutagir, current Chanticleer editor. "We're proud of our tradition of high quality photography, and the online archives are a great way to bring us recognition from Duke and beyond.

"We also hope the digitization will help the Duke community realize how useful the yearbook can be, by making research projects using the Chanticleer much more feasible."

The pictured alumni are clockwise from top left: Jack Matlock, ambassador to Czechoslovakia and the USSR under Ronald Reagan; Elizabeth Hanford Dole; Reynolds Price and Anne Tyler.

* Correction: The original story stated that the online Chanticleers begin with the 1918 edition. All issues dating back to the original 1912 yearbook are online.