American Newspaper Repository at Duke University
Bob Byrd
Director, Rare Book, Manuscript & Special Collections Library

American newspapers published some of the great writers and historical figures of the late nineteenth and twentieth century, and because the Repository's collection contains what are apparently the only surviving long runs of papers such as the New York World, the New York Tribune and Herald Tribune, and the Chicago Tribune (among others), we have the only extant "first editions" and original copies of work by H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E.B. White, Joseph Mitchell, James M. Cain, Zona Gale, Israel Zangwill, Alexander Woollcott, Deems Taylor, Leo Tolstoy, Walter Lippmman, P.G. Wodehouse, Frances Hodgsen Burnett, Joel Chandler Harris, Ida Tarbell, Grover Cleveland, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, Gertrude Atherton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.G. Wells, E.F. Benson, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, William Jennings Bryan, Heywood Broun, Rebecca West, Don Marquis, and Robert Frost.

Duke University is home to a rare collection of newspapers chronicling American life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The American Newspaper Repository features about 90 titles - from major metropolitan dailies to ethnic and foreign language papers. Librarians say these are the only surviving original editions of many of the papers, and they feature a uniquely detailed perspective on American history. The collection is part of Duke's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Researchers from across the country have used the Repository since it arrived at Duke in 2004. It is also accessible to the public, and librarians request visitors contact them in advance.

Click on the video link to see the North Carolina Now story on this unique collection.