Locus Archives Go to Duke University Special Collections

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University now houses the Locus Science Fiction Foundation collection, including 16,000 volumes of SF/F, full runs of the pulp magazines and digests, and decades of correspondence with authors such as Isaac Asimov, Octavia E. Butler, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein, Dean Koontz, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), and more. The collection is currently being used by Duke professors and students as a resource for coursework. Sara Seten Berghausen, Associate Curator of Collections in the Rubenstein Library, said:

The opportunity to acquire the Locus Foundation library is a tremendous one for Duke. Because it’s a carefully curated collection of the most important and influential works of science fiction of the last several decades—most in their original dust jackets, with fantastic artwork—it complements perfectly our existing collection of utopian literature from the early modern period through the mid-twentieth century.

Liza Groen Trombi, publisher and editor-in-chief of Locus said:

“Historical literary treasures abound in the Locus collection, from full runs of the pulps to vintage first editions to contemporary works, and its preservation is deeply important. It is the product of decades of collecting and curating, starting in the 1940s, the Golden Age of science fiction, when Locus’s founding publisher Charles N. Brown was an avid reader with a deep love of genre, through his time working within the science fiction field, and up to the present day under the current Locus staff. Housing those core works in an institution where they’ll be both accessible to scholars and researchers at the same time as they are carefully preserved is a goal that I and the Locus Science Fiction Foundation board of directors had long had. I am very happy to see them in the dedicated care of the curators and librarians at Duke.”

The acquisition of the collection by Duke was brokered via bookman Henry Wessells of James Cummins Bookseller in New York. For more information, see the Duke University website.

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