Robert B. and Blanche Campbell have been with UCLA from the beginning.
When UCLA was located on Vermont Avenue in the early 1900s, the Campbells ran the student store. When UCLA moved to Westwood Village, they followed, and continued to be the book supplier to UCLA for 50 years.
Because of their influence on UCLA, Librarian Lawrence Powell established the Robert B. and Blanche Campbell Student Book Collection Competition in 1948 to honor the Campbells.
The 62nd annual Campbell Student Book Collection Competition provides an opportunity for students to share their book collections for cash prizes.
“The Campbell Competition gives students some recognition and encouragement before pursuing book collecting. It becomes more than just a hobby,” said Lucinda Newsome, manager for the competition.
Fictional books about magical creatures and diaries belonging to political figures from all across the world are only a few of the collections featured in the competition.
The Campbells created an endowment for a competition to encourage undergraduate and graduate student book collectors to collect and show their collections at the library.
Their endowment provides funding for the undergraduate and graduate prizes.
The first prize for students is $500 and the second prize is $300. The other prizes presented in the competition are gifts from multiple donors like Clarice Campbell Olcott, daughter of the Campbells, and from former Campbell winners Dr. Bruce Tyler and Andrew O. Krastins, among others.
Krastins was an applicant in the Campbell Student Book Collection Competition in 1980 where he won the award for the first place Undergraduate Prize and the best collection overall for his collection of periodicals, music, newspapers and more from the founding of the United States Republic to the Civil War.
Krastins has donated a $1,000 award to the competition for a collection that features printed, manuscripts and recorded materials prior to 1930.
“I am not looking for someone to go out and buy a first edition of some famous writer,” Krastins said. “I want someone who goes and digs around in a flea market. Something that is assembled with some care and some skill and some imagination.”
University Librarian Gary Strong also has experience in book collecting. Strong presents the awards at the award ceremony and appoints judges on the committee.
Strong said he always tries to get a celebrity judge that has been prominent in the book world. This year’s celebrity judge has not been announced yet.
Participants of the competition also have the opportunity to be selected to compete in the national book competition. Winners of the Campbell Book Collection Competition two years ago were submitted by UCLA and won the national competition, Strong said.
Strong said he hopes that many students apply for the Campbell Student Book Collection Competition.
“We really want students to think about what the strategy is behind collecting. That’s the beauty of something personal. You can put your own context against it. No one else tells you necessarily how to do it,” Strong said.
Applications are available online at www.library.ucla.edu/campbell and are due on April 16.