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Contest honors creative collecting

By Rhea Cortado

March 16, 2004 9:00 p.m.

The average college student has some sort of inexpensive trinket
collection, be it souvenir shot glasses or postcards from friends
traveling abroad. Though students swipe their credit cards for
hundreds of dollars worth of books every quarter, they rarely (if
ever) consider their piles of literature as a precious
collection.

The Robert B. and Blanche Campbell Student Book Collection
Competition, now open for submissions until April 14, brings method
to the madness of book accumulation by honoring the most cohesive
collections.

One goal of the competition is to stimulate student interest in
reading, treating the book collection as an expression of the
collector’s own quirky values. Some of the most famous book
collectors never read the precious books they’ve collected
for fear of damaging the book’s condition, or because of the
vast quantity they’ve amassed.

“In the English department, we’re taught to use
books and interact with (them) in a way that would frighten
bibliophiles. “˜This is a first edition; it should never be
opened. Treat it as an object.’ That’s really counter
to the English department’s spirit,” said English
graduate student Lars Larson, a previous winner who has written in,
photocopied, and torn pages out of his books.

Making the jump from unorganized books on a shelf to a book
collection can be as easy as telling a story.

“Putting (a book collection) together is a great exercise
in creativity. “¦ You start weaving a thread from one book to
the other “¦ and there is a lot of fun involved in realizing
that there are some interesting connections in some books”
said Larson, who has won first place twice. His winning collection
in 1999 was titled “California Classics, Part II” and
contained books written about California. His second win was in
2001 with “Growing Up In America,” comprised of books
exemplifying different perspectives from each of the 50 states.

Although most people associate a book collection with expensive
“high-art” rare books and first editions, both of
Larson’s collections were composed of novels he bought for
either his own interest or his graduate studies. Many titles from
“Growing Up In America,” such as J.D. Salinger’s
“The Catcher in the Rye” for New York and Harper
Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” for Alabama are
neither rare nor obscure.

Bruce Whiteman, head librarian at UCLA’s rare books Clark
Library, taught a crash-course, one-hour seminar in February that
outlined what it means to have a book collection and explained the
purposes of the Campbell Competition.

“What really mattered a lot (to the judges) is what the
student said about the book in the annotated bibliography and how
they that found that interrelatedness between the books. On the
surface there may have been 20 children’s books ““
something that in the greater world wouldn’t be considered
much of a collection ““ but there was something personal about
the choice of each one of those books,” said Whiteman.

Some of the more eccentric winning book collections since the
competition’s birth in 1949 include “Nigerian
Chapbooks,” “Anglo- And Afro-American Fiddling,”
“Cyberpunk, Yeah” and “Enough to Drive One Mad:
Two Centuries of Learning and Teaching Organic
Chemistry.”

Fourth-year English student Martha Webber won second place in
the undergraduate category last year for her collection,
“Constructing Clothing, Constructing Identity.” She
submitted a denim bustier she had sewn as one of the non-book items
to supplement her collection of historical costume books, technical
books and cultural studies theory books.

“It wasn’t until the contest that I really knew I
had something that could be called a collection. I was (just) going
out to different thrift stores, and it was so exciting (to acquire)
a book that I’d heard of, or get something by an author that
I’d always wanted to read,” said Webber, who lost the
first place undergraduate prize to Yanni Afendoulis’
collection, “The Eastern Orthodox: A Collection of Books and
Cultural Items from a Former Eastern Orthodox Monk.”

As Webber scours the thrift stores for vintage clothing patterns
to add to her collection, she has often seen individuals digging
alongside her for hardcover first editions to sell for monetary
gain.

But Whiteman confesses that studies have shown that investing in
first editions is not as profitable as putting the same amount of
money into the stock market: “If you started collecting books
purely for investment value, you’d start to lose interest. If
you’re buying these books without some interest or passion,
“¦ why buy books?”

More information available at
www.library.ucla.edu/committees/campbell.

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