2009 Adam Repán Petko Memorial Student Book Collection Competition

Jury Decision

Jury: Manuel Urrizola, Chair; Margaret Hogarth; Gwido Zlatkes

The jury congratulates all the applicants for competing in the 2009 Petko Memorial Student Book Collection contest. Each narrative illustrates a clear love of books. We wish each participant well on a promising beginning to a life-long passion of collecting books. Prior to reading the submissions, each juror carefully reviewed the competition rules. Then we discussed and agreed upon criteria for judging the collections. Criteria included:

• Well defined collection (Has the contestant explained how each book fits into the theme of the collection?)
• Coherence (Does the collection focus on an author, subject, genre, printer, publisher, illustrator, etc.?)
• Quality of the essay and bibliography (Remember, we do not see the actual books; we have only the contestant's language and description.)
• Quality of the collection (Does the collection include important works in the field or of the genre or by the author?)
• Uniqueness (Are there first editions, scarce editions, special editions, signed editions, etc.?)
• Books as objects (In addition to the content, does the contestant describe the books as physical objects, e.g. bindings, endpapers, printing, illustrations, etc.?)
• Potential growth (Does the contestant make convincing choices for additions to the collection?)

We thank the participants for following directions when preparing their submissions. Each submission was judged on the narrative explaining the origin and growth of the collection and the annotated bibliography. The jury debated the issues of broad vs. focused coverage and content vs. books-as-objects.

The GRADUATE winner of The Adam Repán Petko Book Collection Competition for 2009 is

Brett Goforth for collection entitled Historical Plant Geography with Emphasis on California Vegetation Change. All the graduate entries were at a very high level and it was a difficult choice. Goforth's essay was interesting and informative. It was exceptionally well written giving the reader a clear understanding of the focus, background, condition, and organization of the collection. Goforth presented a well-defined scientific collection with the focus on local area and a clearly defined potential for growth. Descriptions of books were succint yet informative, covering not only their content, but also the book as an object. Goforth included quaint details, such as binding, maps, illustrations - which brought the books to life.

The UNDERGRADUATE winners of The Adam Repán Petko Book Collection Competition for 2009 are:

Sharon Chan for her collection entitled No Need for a Knight in Shining Armor: Heroines in Children and Young Adult Literature. Sharon presented a very impressive list of books. She wrote excellent summaries and critiques. Her knowledge and wonderful writing style suggest a possible career as a reviewer of books.

James Nam for his collection entitled Food: Culture through Recipes and Gastronomy. James Nam's essay and descriptions were very impressive. They were a pleasure to read. They conveyed his knowledge of the collection and his thoughtfulness about the subject.

Among the undergraduate entries two stood out: Chan's and Nam's. These two collections were well defined, thoughtfully selected, and interestingly described. A definite weakness of all undergraduate entries was the lack of descriptions of books as material objects; the entrants concentrated overwhelmingly (in some cases, exclusively) on the content.