Cornell Dominates Collegiate Book-Collecting Contest

-- Library Journal, 08/17/2006

Daniel McKee of Cornell University has won the first Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship, which honors winners of the colleges and universities (some three dozen) that already hold their own student book-collecting contests. For his collection, "Educational Books from Japan's Meiji Period (1868–1912)," McKee wins $2500, a trip to New York for the awards ceremony Sept. 16 at the Grolier Club, a one-year membership in the club, and a $1000 donation in his name to the Cornell library. William Miglore of Amherst College won second place for his "Ray Bradbury" collection. He'll get $1000, a trip to the awards ceremony, a scholarship to the Rare Books School at the University of Virginia, and $500 donation in his name to the Amherst library.

There must be something in the water in Ithaca, since David Rando of Cornell University won third place for his "Finnegans Wake Reference Books." He'll get $500, a trip to the awards ceremony, and a $250 donation in his name to the Cornell library. A panel of judges, including a librarian (Joel Silver, curator of books at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington), a bookseller, and a collector, reviewed 44 entries from campus winners. The contest is sponsored by the used/rare book marketplace Biblio.com, the San Francisco auction house PBA Galleries, the Los Angeles antiquarian booksellers Heritage Book Shop, and the New York-based Grolier Club, the country's most prestigious book-collecting society. "It's hard for me to imagine what it was like before the Internet," Migliore commented. "Abebooks.com started me collecting in 1996." Next year, the competition will be open to students whose institutions don't have their own contests.