2012 Betty and Edgar Sweren
Student Book Collecting Contest

About the Contest    Prizes    Criteria    Guidelines    Application Information    Entry Deadline    Selected Past Prize Winners

About the Contest

The Betty and Edgar Sweren Student Book Collecting Contest recognizes the love of books and the delight in shaping a thoughtful and focused book collection. All undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a degree program at Johns Hopkins are eligible to enter. All entries are welcome except past winning collections.

Prizes

The competition includes a graduate division and an undergraduate division and winners in each division are awarded:

• Cash prizes
  Prizes                                     1st Place      2nd Place       Honorable Mention
  Undergraduate Division            $1,000         $500               $250
  Graduate Division                    $1,000         $500               $250
• Display of selected titles from the winning collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library
• A one year honorary membership in the Friends of the Johns Hopkins Libraries
• Awards will be presented to the winners on March 29, 2012.  All contestants will be notified by mail of the names of the contest winners.
  
  

Criteria

Each entry will be judged on the extent to which the items in the collection form a coherent pattern of inquiry and/or represent a well defined field of interest. Additionally, consideration will be given to how well the collection reflects the student’s stated goals and interests.

Guidelines:

1. Any student, undergraduate or graduate, enrolled in a degree program at the Johns Hopkins University (Schools of Advanced International Studies, Arts & Sciences, Carey Business School, School of Education, Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health and the Peabody Institute of Music) is eligible to enter.
2. All items must be owned and collected by the student who enters the contest.
3. A collection need not consist of, or include, rare or valuable books.  Paper-bound books may be included.  Although the focus is books, the collection may include other media that supports the collection.
4. Collections can be on any subject. Nonacademic subjects are welcome (past entries include Colonial America, Feminism, Running, Music, and more).

Application Information:

Each contestant must submit:

1. A cover sheet (Word) (PDF)
2. A 2-3 pages essay outlining:  the purpose of the collection, how you started the collection, how the collection was assembled, the items of greatest interest, ideas for the collection’s future development.
3. A bibliography of 20 or more items (maximum of 50) in the collection.  Each item should be numbered, given a full bibliographic description, and briefly annotated as to its importance to the collection. Please use the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition.
4. A wish list - A second bibliography listing up to ten items that you would like to add to your collection, with brief annotation stating the reason for adding each item.

*Finalists may be asked to bring a portion of their book collection to the Eisenhower Library for final judging.  The winning entries will be displayed on M-Level at the Eisenhower Library. Top-prize winners of the Hopkins contest are also eligible to enter the 2011 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS) and the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

Maggie Murray, a JHU Writing Seminars Master Candidate, won the second prize of the 2011 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest.

Entry Deadline:  February 17, 2012

Submit all entries to:
The Friends of the Libraries Book Collecting Contest
The Milton S. Eisenhower Library
The Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21218
or via e-mail: libraryfriends@jhu.edu
or by fax: (410) 516-5080

Last Year’s Betty and Edgar Sweren Student Book Collecting Contest Winners:

Undergraduate Division

• First Prize ($1000): Laura Veldhuis, The Ends of the World
• Second Prize ($500): Katherine Magruder, Gastronomy: Food Literature that Enlightens and Informs
• Honorable Mention ($250): Ian White, Surrealism and the Surreal

Graduate Division

• First Prize ($1000): Maggie Murray, Literature of the Little Review
• Second Prize ($500): Carl G. Streed Jr., A Gay Education
• Second Prize ($500)*: Troy Tower, Pierre Huyghe: Capture in Media

*Two participants both deserved a second prize, so we didn’t give an Honorable Mention prize.