Fine Books announces Collegiate Book Collecting Champions

Scott Brown and the fine folks at Fine Books have announced the winners of the 2007 Annual Collegiate Book Collecting Championship. This contest is open to winners of any college/university collecting contest and, this year, has become quite international. Lux Mentis is extremely pleased to be a sponsor of this event. The future of this profession rests with emerging collectors...and if this year's crop of entrants is any example, there are some brilliant collections (and collectors) in the making.

I have copied the Fine Books press release below (a bit more information is available at their blog):

World-Champion Book Collectors Named
The passion for books is alive and well
on college campuses

(Eureka, Calif.) – Fine Books & Collections magazine announced the winners of its second annual Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship today. The international coterie of winners include a British classics student, a New Zealand citizen studying in New York state, and a young mathematician from Los Angeles.
With a collection of ancient Greek and Roman writers in editions dating back to 1515, Cambridge University student David Butterfield took first place in the championship and a $2,500 cash prize. Diana Looser, a New Zealander studying drama at Cornell University, earned second place for her collection of plays written by Pacific Island natives. She wins $1,000 for her efforts. The $500 award for third place goes to Craig Citro, of UCLA, for his collection exploring the works and influence of mathematician Emil Artin. Each winner also receives an expense-paid trip to Seattle for the awards ceremony to be held on October 12. Fine Books & Collections magazine, which started the competition in 2006, will also make a donation to each student’s college library.
The Fine Books & Collections Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship is open to the winners of all college contests held anywhere in the world. It’s a runoff among the best of the best student collectors. The judges consider how well the students pursued their particular theme, not the monetary value of their collection.
The first place winner, Butterfield, 21, built a collection of several thousand antiquarian books in just four years, using money received from scholarships and for co-editing the forthcoming Penguin Latin Dictionary. Looser assembled her second-place collection, a library of the plays of Oceania, on a more modest budget. “Most of her books and manuscripts are not terribly expensive or rare,” Fine Books & Collections’s editor Scott Brown said. “But as a group, they comprise the most significant collection of such material in the mainland United States. Her collection preserves an indigenous art that otherwise might have been lost precisely because they have little monetary value.”
The tradition of book-collecting competitions began in the 1920s, when the first contest was held at Swarthmore College. Today, more than three dozen universities in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain hold contests. While the rules vary from place to place, students typically write a brief essay describing their collection and provide an annotated list of their books. At Yale, which has one of the oldest competitions, the judges still visit the competing students in their dorm rooms. Many leading librarians, book historians, and antiquarian dealers won book-collecting contests as undergraduates.

Congratulations to all the winners. We look forward to meeting you (and seeing all who are inclined to join us) at the awards ceremony during the Seattle Book Fair.