The Penn Libraries have purchased the current scholarly frontlist of Duke University Press humanities and social sciences monographs through ebrary's e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection. This acquisition gives Penn readers access to more than 1,000 Duke University Press e-books published.

The e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection reflects Duke University Press's strengths in American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, Film and Television Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Latin American Studies, Literary Criticism and Theory, and Postcolonial Studies. Some titles by current and former Penn-affiliated authors illustrate the breadth of the e-book collection:

The collection does not include every recent Duke University Press (DUP) title: nonscholarly works are excluded from the package, and DUP is negotiating rights for other titles. The subscribed backfile will grow as DUP continues retrodigitizing its older titles. All e-Duke titles appear in Franklin, with PennKey-proxied URLs for offcampus reading.

The e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection uses the ebrary e-book interface, which offers two readers: the QuickView web browser plug-in and the more versatile ebrary Reader client (for Windows and Linux only). With both readers, all e-Duke titles have searchable fulltext and browseable tables of contents. Ebrary offers personal bookshelfing, bookmarking, and annotating: these personalization tools may also be used for groupwork. Ebrary permits text copying and page-image printing with some page-count limits.

Duke University Press participates in the Portico digital archiving program, and will provide Portico with copies of its e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection titles (see Portico press release (February 17, 2009). The Penn Libraries' Portico membership safeguards continuing access to our purchased e-Duke books.

For more information:
Martha Brogan, Director of Collection Development & Management, University of Pennsylvania