These awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogues and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for electronic exhibitions of such materials. They are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current.
A printed citation to be presented to the winning institution organizing the exhibition.
Catalogues must be issued between September 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009. Electronic library and archival exhibitions are limited to those with stable URL addresses that were initially released between September 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009. Electronic exhibitions submitted for consideration should be available online through September 2010, to allow adequate time for public views.
The entries will be divided into five categories: expensive, moderate, inexpensive, brochure, and electronic exhibition. The five categories shall be determined by production costs as outlined in the entry form. The budget categories will be defined by the committee according to the range of costs of catalogues submitted. Catalogues may be of varying formats, styles, and scope, e.g., an inclusive list of items in an exhibition, a selective list, or a narrative with some specific citations. Publicity materials, collections of essays, and other publications lacking specific references to displayed objects as such are not eligible.
Catalogues will be judged on originality, accuracy of detail, informational content, visual impact, contribution to scholarship, and usefulness to the intended audience.
Printed catalogues and brochures: Four (4) copies of the catalogue or brochure must be submitted with accompanying entry forms. Electronic exhibitions: Only the entry form is required, though the committee encourages submission of CDs or DVDs for the Leab Award archives. All submissions should be addressed to the Exhibition Awards Committee chair, Richard Noble, Brown University, John Hay Library, Providence, RI 02912; T. 401-863-1187; e-mail: Richard_ Noble@brown.edu.
All catalogue submissions become the property of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), and are archived at the Bancroft Library, University of California; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; and the Grolier Club, New York, N.Y.
Further information about the awards, guidelines and rules for submission, and online entry forms are available at http://www.rbms.info/committees/exhibition_awards/index.shtml.
Questions concerning the awards and the submission process should be directed to Richard Noble, Chair of the Exhibition Awards Committee, Richard_ Noble@brown.edu, or Megan Griffin, ACRL Program Coordinator, mgriffin@ala.org.
Deadline: Postmarked by October 15, 2009
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
The Getty Research Institute, for "China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century," edited by Marcia Reed and Paula Dematte, with contributions by Gang Song and Richard Strassberg; designed by Jim Drobka with Stuart Smith.
Category 1 Honorable mention:
The Grolier Club, for "The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse," by Mindell Dubansky, with Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and Josephine M. Dunn; designed by Jerry Kelly.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately expensive)
Stanford University Libraries' Department of Special Collections, for "Experiments in Navigation: The Art of Charles Hobson," by Charles Hobson; preface by May Castleberry; designed by Elizabeth Fischbach.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
Rare Books and Special Collections department at the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, for "Scottie Fitzgerald: The Stewardship of Literary Memory," by Matthew J. Broccoli; curated by Jeffrey Makala; designed by Kimberley Massey, USC Publications; CD produced by Edwin C. Breland.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
The Book Club of California, for "The Book Art of Edward Gorey," by Malcolm Whyte; designed by Ivar Diehl.
Category 5 Winner (Electronic exhibition)
Modern Books and Manuscripts unit at the Harvard University Houghton Library, for "Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200," Christoph Irmscher, curator; designed by Enrique Diaz and Leslie A. Morris; available online at http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/exhibits/longfellow/.
2008
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
The winner is Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros' Eragny Press, 1894-1914: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Books, Prints & Drawings Related to the Work of the Press, submitted by The Grolier Club.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately expensive)
Chicago Public Library, Special Collections and Preservation Division, "One Book, Many Interpretations," by the Special Collections and Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library; designed by Kathryn Tutkus, 2006. Softcover, 40 pp., 51 ills., Color.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
Vassar College, "Mapping America: 500 years of Cartographic Depictions," by Ronald Patkus, Mary Ann Cunningham, and Philippe Thibault; designed by the Office of College Relations, Vassar College, 2007. Softcover, 32 pp., 7 ills., Color.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, "Collecting an Empire: The East India Company (1600-1900)," by Ayesha Ramachandran; designed by Jo Ellen Ackerman, Bessas and Ackerman, 2006. 12 pp., 6 ills., Color.
Category 5 Winner (Electronic exhibition)
The North Carolina State University Libraries Special Collections Research Center for B. W. Wells, Pioneer Ecologist, http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/wells/.
2007
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
The co-winner is "Half-Life: 25 Years of Books by Barbara Tetenbaum and Triangular Press" submitted by the Multnomah County Public Libraries, John Wilson Special Collections Room in Portland, Ore.
The co-winner is "No Other Appetite": Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry, by Stephen C. Enniss and Karen V. Kukil, 2005, submitted by The Grolier Club.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately expensive)
The New York Public Library, Dorot Jewish Division for their piece entitled "Letters to Sala: A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor Camps," by Ann Kirschner.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
The co-winner is "Ezra Pound in His Time and Beyond: The Influence of Pound on Twentieth-Century Poetry," submitted by the University of Delaware Library.
The co-winner is "Maxwell Did It! Photographing the Atlantic City Boardwalk, 1920s-1950s. Highlights from the R. C. Maxwell Company Collection," by Richard L. Collier, Jr. and Jacqueline V. Reid, 2006, submitted by John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
Getty Research Institute brochure entitled "A Tumultuous Assembly: Visual Poems of the Italian Futurists."
Category 5 Winner (Electronic exhibition)
"Vanished Worlds, Enduring People: Cornell University Library's Native American Collection," by Mary Dana Marks, Ken Williams, David Block, Katherine Reagan, and Susette Newberry, 2005, submitted by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
"A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books," submitted by the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately expensive)
Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, "Don't pay any attention to him. He's 90% water.": The Cartooning Career of Boris Drucker, by Johanna Drucker and Christian Dupont, 2005.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately Expensive)
Huntington Library, Huntington Library Press for their piece entitled "Objects of American Art Education: Highlights from the Diana Korzenik Collection," by Diana Korzenik.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
Vassar College’s brochure entitled "Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Print: The Collection of Mary C. Schlosser," by Mary Schlosser, Ronald Patkus, and Joyce Bickerstaff.
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
Elizabeth I: Then and Now, by Georgiana Ziegler, compiler, and submitted by the Folger Shakespeare Library
First Impressions: The Fledgling Years of the Black Sparrow press 1966-1970, by Professor Michael O’Driscoll, et al.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
The Auroral Light: Photographs by Women from Grolier Club Member Collections, by Anne H. Hoy and Kimball Higgs, from The Grolier Club
Robert Motherwell: A la pintura/To Painting
Category 5 Winner (Electronic Exhibitions)
Bancroft Library of the University of California, The California Grizzly at the Bancroft Library, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/bearinmind
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
Getty Research Institute, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen
Honorable Mention: Stanford University Libraries, Johannes Lebek: The Artist as a Witness of His Time
Category 2 Winner (Moderately Expensive)
College of the Holy Cross, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery and the American Antiquarian Society, Sacred Spaces: Building & Remembering Worship in the Nineteenth Century.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
The New York Public Library, Graphic Design Department, Victorians, Moderns, Beats: New in the Berg Collection, 1994-2001.
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
Library of Virginia, Virginia Roots Music: Creating and Conserving Tradition.
Honorable Mention: Pierpont Morgan Library, A Love Affair with Line: Drawings by Al Hirschfeld.
Special Commendations for Electronic Exhibitions: The Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley, Images of Native Americans
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
The Great Wide Open: Panoramic Photographs of the American West, Huntington Library.
Honorable Mention: Trout Gallery at Dickinson College for Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.
Category 2 Winner (Moderately Expensive)
The Ecstatic Journey: Athanasius Kircher in Baroque Rome, Dept. of Special Collections at the Univ. of Chicago.
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
Cut and Paste--California Scrapbooks, California Historical Society at the North Baker Research Library
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
Ruskin's Italy, Ruskin's England, Pierpont Morgan Library Publications
Special Commendations for Electronic Exhibitions
From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics, Cornell University Library, and Heading West/Touring West, New York Public Library.
Category 1 Winner (Expensive)
Ulysses in Hand: The Rosenbach Manuscript, The Rosenbach Library
Category 2 Winner (Moderately Expensive)
Word and Image: Samuel Beckett and the Visual Text, Emory University Robert W. Woodruff Library and Insistut Memoires de l'edition contemporaine, Paris
Category 3 Winner (Inexpensive)
Curious George Comes to Hattiesburg: The Life and Work of H.A. and Margaret Rey, University of Southern Mississippi Libraries, de Grummond Children's Literature Collection
Category 4 Winner (Brochures)
So Fairly Bound: Fine Twentieth-Century Bookbindings and Illuminated Manuscripts from the Edward R. Leahy Collection, University of Scranton, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library