Seeking nominations for awards...

Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries invite submissions for two student awards: the new Book Collecting Contest for undergraduates and graduate students, and the second annual Friends of the Library Undergraduate Research Award. The deadline for both contests is February 19, 2010. Winners will be announced in late March and first place recipients will receive their awards at the Library’s Dinner with Friends on Saturday, April 10, 2010.

The Book Collecting Contest celebrates reading and the pleasure of creating personal book collections around a theme or interest. UMass Amherst undergraduates and graduate students are invited to participate. Entries should consist of an essay describing the collection and an annotated bibliography. There will be two first place awards of $750 each, one for undergraduates and one for graduate students. Winners may be invited to display selected items from their collections in an exhibit in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.

The second annual Friends of the Library Undergraduate Research Award recognizes excellence in the use of primary sources in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Undergraduate students are invited to submit papers or projects they have completed at UMass Amherst for a class or independent study during the 18months prior to the submission deadline of February 19, 2010. The first place award is $750, with two honorable mention awards at $250 each. Winning papers/projects will be displayed on the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) web site and added to the University Archives.

A primary source is a record of an event, an occurrence, or a time period produced by a participant or observer at the time, such as letters, diaries, writings, speeches, photographs, and scrapbooks, or the historic records (archives) of an organization (such as correspondence, memoranda, minutes, annual reports, etc.). Primary sources can also include government documents, artwork, artifacts, maps, music, audiovisual materials (film, audio and video tape), and computer files.

Submission guidelines and evaluation criteria for both the Book Collecting Contest and Undergraduate Research Award are available at: http://bit.ly/contest_award. For questions, contact Special Collections at askanarc@library.umass.edu.

The Book Collecting Contest and Undergraduate Research Award are sponsored by the Friends of the Library, the Library Director’s Council, and the Library’s Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Prizes are made possible thanks to generous donations from Friends of the Libraries. The anonymous entries will be judged by panels of faculty and community experts.