The Goucher College Library has announced the winners of the Second Annual Applestein-Sweren Prize for book collecting, which was made possible by an endowment established in 2012 by Betty Applestein Sweren ’52 and Dr. Edgar Sweren.
The competition encourages Goucher students to read for enjoyment and to develop personal libraries throughout their lives; to appreciate the special qualities of printed or illustrated works; and to read, research, and preserve their collected works for pleasure and scholarship.
Annual prizes of $500, $250, and $150 are awarded to Goucher students who present thoughtfully constructed personal collections of books and related ephemera on any subject.
The winners of this year’s Applestein-Sweren Prizes are:
- First Prize: Jacqueline Cast ’14, “Mind and Iron: A Collection Inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Positronic Robots”
- Second Prize: Shayna Meisel ’16, “Collecting Heroines”
- Third Prize: Miranda Harmon’14, “Comics, Anthologies and Zines”
- Honorable Mention: Emily K. Collins ’15, “And Baby Makes…?: Reproduction (or Lack Thereof) in the Mid to Late 19th Century”
These winners will be honored on Thursday, November 21, 4-6 p.m. in the Batza Room of the Athenaeum. Selections from the winning collections will be on display. To attend this event, R.S.V.P. by November 12 to Randi Kennedy, assistant to the college librarian, at randalynn.kennedy@goucher.edu.
In addition to the cash prizes, winners will be given the opportunity to curate a small exhibition of their collections in the Goucher College Library. The first-prize winner also will be eligible for the $2,500 national prize awarded by the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, and the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division.