Winners of the Betty and Edgar Sweren Student Book Collecting Contest celebrated with judges, sponsors and Friends of the Libraries at the Awards Ceremony on April 18 at the Eisenhower Library. From the left: Edgar Sweren, Friends member and contest sponsor; Jay Brooks, Friends president; Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and judge; Betty Sweren, Friends member, contest sponsor and judge; Colin Azariah- Kribbs, first place, undergraduate division; (back) Jeremy Pope, second place, graduate division; Sarah Montague, honorable mention, undergraduate division; Dmitry Shapovalov, honorable mention, graduate division; Matthew Gibson, first place, graduate division; and (front) Professor Richard Macksey, judge and Friends member. Not pictured: Alexander Baish, second place, undergraduate division. Photo by Jay Vanrensselaer / HIPS

By Pamela Higgins
Sheridan Libraries

Six prizes have been awarded in the 2008 Betty and Edgar Sweren Student Book Collecting Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries. Begun in 1993 and endowed this year by longtime members Betty and Edgar Sweren, the contest recognizes the love of books and the delight in shaping a thoughtful and focused book collection.

Open to all undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in a degree program at Johns Hopkins, this year's contest attracted 26 entries from six academic divisions. Participants wrote essays describing how and why the collection was assembled and submitted a bibliography of up to 50 titles and a wish list of up to 10 titles to reflect their future goals and areas of interest in developing. Cash prizes of $1,000 and $500 were awarded to first- and second-place winners and $250 to honorable mention.

Colin Azariah-Kribbs won first prize in the undergraduate category for her collection of otherworldly and supernatural works called A Library of Weird Fiction. A freshman from Athens, Ga., Azariah-Kribbs is an English major in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Matthew Gibson of Washington, D.C., a first-year graduate student in the Krieger School's Master's in Applied Economics program, won first place in the graduate student category for his collection of Russian literature, Learning to Read Russia.

Sophomore Alexander Baish of Rockville, Md., won second place in the undergraduate category for his entry, For the Love of Birds, a collection devoted to finding, identifying, studying and protecting birds and their habitat. Baish is an environmental engineering major in the Whiting School.

Jeremy Pope, a doctoral candidate in Egyptology in the Krieger School's Near Eastern Studies program, won second place in the graduate division for his collection of works on Africa's ancient past titled Africa in Antiquity.

Senior Sarah Montague of Brookline, Mass., won honorable mention in the undergraduate division for Fairy Tales and Folklore, a collection of tales from many cultures around the world. Montague is completing her degree in biology in the Krieger School.

Dmitry Shapovalov, a doctoral candidate in astrophysics in the Krieger School, won honorable mention in the graduate division for his collection on climbing and exploring the great mountain ranges of the world titled Mountaineering in the Greater Ranges. Shapovalov was born in Tajikistan and grew up in Kiev, Ukraine.

In addition to the cash awards, winners receive a one-year honorary membership in the Friends of the Johns Hopkins Libraries. Top-prize winners of the Johns Hopkins contest are also eligible to enter the 2008 Collegiate Book Collecting Championship, sponsored by Fine Books & Collections Magazine. The three top winners of this contest receive cash prizes, and a donation in their name is made to their library.

Selections from the winner's collections are on display on the main level of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Homewood campus, through May 23.

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