Kelvin Smith Library hosted an awards reception and pop-up exhibit for its annual book collecting contest on Wednesday, April 13, in the library’s Dampeer Room. To enter, contestants wrote essays describing the theme of their collection and provided an annotated bibliography and explanation of how each book fit the collection theme. The library provided a first-place prize of $700 for best undergraduate student and graduate student collection.
This year’s winners include:
- 1st place undergraduate: Andromeda Vorndrant, “Scavenging the Revolution: A Collection of Second Hand Radical Works”
- 1st place graduate: Samuel Nemeth, “Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Expansion”
- 2nd place: Francesca Mancino, “Reassessing Modernism: Women Writers and Publishers of the Lost Generation”
- 3rd place: Carson Smith, “Epics: Vehicles of Culture”
The contest is part of the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. In addition to cash prizes, first-place winners received a gift certificate to Loganberry Books. All four winners received complimentary one-year memberships to the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (NOBS).
The event and its prizes are made possible with the generous support of Julia Gelfand (LYS ‘77, GRS ‘77), who has sponsored the contest and other book-collecting events at the library since 2017. NOBS is a co-sponsor of this year’s event.