Digging Through Duke Digital Collections

I’ve been digging through the Duke Digital Collections site for a few months now and wanted to share some of the best galleries I’ve found.

Historic American Sheet Music

I first found my way to the Duke Digital Collections site by way of a link to this Historic American Sheet Music Collection. The collection features wild and beautiful examples of typography throughout the featured decades as well as some culturally interesting song titles and images.

Ad*Access

This collection features ads printed in Canada and the US between 1911 and 1955 in the areas of Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II. The imagery and copy writing in these ads are quintessential and really fun to browse through.

Emergence of Advertising in America

For more type goodness and political incorrectness dive into the Emergence of Advertising in America archive and see the enormous variety housed in the catalog spanning 1850-1920. My favorite three sections, exemplified above, are:

Tobacco Advertising (1872 – 1918)
Early Advertising Publications (1870 – 1925)
Advertising Ephemera (1853 – 1921)