  New measurements of the spin structure functions of the proton and deuteron
g1p(x,Q2) and g1d(x,Q2) in the nucleon resonance region are compared with
extrapolations of target-mass-corrected next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD fits to
higher energy data. Averaged over the entire resonance region (W<2 GeV), the
data and QCD fits are in good agreement in both magnitude and Q2 dependence for
Q2>1.7 GeV2. This global duality appears to result from cancellations among the
prominent local resonance regions: in particular strong sigma{3/2}
contributions in the Delta(1232) region appear to be compensated by strong
sigma{1/2} contributions in the resonance region centered on 1.5 GeV. These
results are encouraging for the extension of NLO QCD fits to lower W and Q2
than have been used previously.
