College News at StudentStuff.com

Calling College Book Collectors! A Contest Just For You!

The musty smell of yellowing pages, delicate paper petals that crinkle at the touch, the hazy impression of an illustration seen through a translucent tissue guard – if these things bring warm fuzzy feelings to your bibliophile heart, you might be eligible to enter The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest for a grand prize of $2500.

For me, bookstores are romantic places. I get lost in them, always have. Every book holds a mystery, a life, a promise of discovery. And old books – I’m talking 1930s and older – are my crack. I’ll sniff the pages, high on the heady musk of paper and ink. Illustrations thrill me. There’s this one edition of Roxanne, The Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe from 1931 that has downright raunchy ink illustrations of partially nude 18^th century women. And, on the more wholesome side, my Victorian children’s books contain brightly painted illustrations of princes and princesses. If it sounds like I read books for their pictures, it’s true – I do.

When I studied abroad in London I found Charing Cross Road, a street lined with used and antique bookstores near Trafalgar Square. I spent hours crouched on the creaky wood floors of those stores teaching myself how to tell a book’s date of publishing by the binding, the cover art styles, and the smoothness or rough edges of the pages, before even opening the book to check the copyright date.  And, I brought many old books home with me to start my own collection of antique texts.

If only I had known about The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest when I was in college!  If you share my fascination for old books, don’t make my mistake – enter this contest.

Here’s how it works:

The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest is run through individual colleges and participants must win their school’s contest before moving on to the national contest. So find out if your college is among those taking part. To enter the college level of the competition, submit an annotated bibliography of your collection with a cover letter explaining what the collection is about. You can also send supplementary material like photos and wish-lists. No, you can’t just send a list of all the old books you have – your collection has to have a theme, a hook, a reason for being.

According to the contest website, the criteria is the “intelligence and originality of the collection and the potential of the entrant to evolve the collection and develop new collections.” You have to know your books, the subject of your collection, and appreciate the art of the physical book in addition to its contents. Is the binding style unique? Do you collect a specific artist, or a specific genre? Uniqueness of the books is more important than the monetary value, so don’t worry if you don’t have the money to buy a 16^th century folio of The Tempest. It’s also noted if the collection “helps to preserve material that may otherwise be lost or forgotten.”

Basically, if you collect books that you are passionate about, you should enter. For me, I would probably submit my collection of Victorian travel writing – Untravelled England by James Hissey starts out with the author trying to decide whether to travel by horse or by newfangled car. But alas, it is too late for me. It is not, however, too late for you.

Entries for National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest are accepted until June 4^th, but first check to see if your college is taking part, since you have to win there first.