Canada's First National Book Collecting Contest

The National Book-Collecting Contest was created by the Bibliographical Society of Canada to encourage young Canadians to collect books and study the discipline of researching and writing bibliographies. Our partners the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada (ABAC), and the Alcuin Society are all passionate about reading, collecting, and studying book history.

Click on poster to enlarge

Prizes

First Place: $2,500
Second Place: $1,000
Third Place: $300

The prizes will consist of money and gifts from our partners and co-sponsors. There will be three prizes including first, second and third place. A one year membership subscription to the BSC and its papers will be part of the prize(s).

Requirement for Entry

• The Contest is open to all Canadian residents under thirty years of age as of the deadline date for submissions.
• Present members of the BSC, ABAC, and the Alcuin Society are not eligible.
• The collection must be owned and collected by the contestant.

Entries will not be returned and become the property of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. Entrants agree to allow the BSC and its partners, to publish their essay in full or in part, in print or electronic form in a future issue of the BSC Papers/Cahiers and its website.

Entries must be postmarked no later than 2 March 2009.

Entries should be mailed to:

The Bibliographical Society of Canada
P.O. Box 575, Postal Station P
Toronto, ON
M5S 2T1

Winners will be notified by 4 May 2009.

The winners names will be publicly announced and prizes awarded at the the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the BSC. The winning essay and possibly photographs of the collection will be posted on the BSC website.

A sampling of the winner's collections may be exhibited in a display case at the BSC annual conference and possibly at another location(s) with our partners.

The required submission materials

Additional contact information for the month of May 2009 should be provided if the entrant will be away during this time.

The Essay

The contest requires participants to write a 1,500 to 2,000-word essay on their collection, including where appropriate, the description of the books: binding, cover decoration, illustrations, and bibliographical features such as format, printing, and publication data. Example collections include children's books, illustrated books, artists books, flip books, Arthurian legend, Generation X, eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature, serial fiction, graphic novels, a single author, cookbooks, modern authors, travel, experimental poetry, little magazines, etc. The essay may be written in French or English.

The List

The list of books must be organized according to some logical principle: most probably, by author or by subject. Each book listed should include at least the following information: author, title, date, place, publisher, format (e.g. hardback or paper), and an indication of condition.

Full Contest Rules are located here and on our partners' websites.

These Rules are subject to change.

Judging

The Jury is comprised of senior bilingual BSC, ABAC and Alcuin Society members. The panel of judges will include no more than five persons.

Judging Criteria

The criteria for judging collections include the focus of the collection, method of collecting, progress made in creating the collection, and the quality of the explanation of the collections focus. Where appropriate, the quality of the description of the books, that is, of the physical characteristics such as binding, publication details, are taken into consideration. Collections will not judged on dollar value or size.

Suggested reading that may prove useful in answering questions about book collecting:

Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. (revised by Nicolas Barker).
Peters, J., (editor). Book Collecting: A Modern Guide. NY: R.R. Bowker (1977)
Peters, J., (editor). Collectible Books: Some New Paths. NY: R.R. Bowker (1979)
Bowers, Fredson. Principles of Bibliographical Description. Oak Knoll (1994)
Tanselle, G. Thomas. Selected Studies in Bibliography. U. of Virginia (1979)