Contact:  Megan Griffin
ACRL Program Coordinator
312-280-2514
mgriffin@ala.org
 
For Immediate Release
April 9, 2007

 

ACRL announces 2007 RBMS Leab Exhibition award winners

     

CHICAGO – The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is pleased to announce the seven winners for the 2007 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Awards.

 

These awards, funded by an endowment established by Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab (editors of American Book Prices Current) and sponsored by the ACRL Rare Books & Manuscripts Section (RBMS), recognize outstanding exhibition catalogues issued by American or Canadian institutions in conjunction with library exhibitions as well as electronic exhibition catalogues of outstanding merit issued within the digital/Web environment.

 

Division One (expensive), the co-winner is “No Other Appetite:’ Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Blood Jet of Poetry,” by Stephen C. Enniss & Karen V. Kukil submitted by The Grolier Club.

 

“In a deep red binding, this memorable volume brings together two significant collections of twentieth-century literature,” said Marcia Reed, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee. “Mirroring the poets’ marriage, the beautifully designed and well illustrated catalog succeeds admirably in publishing a book that conveys the weight of its subjects’ lives and works in both text and image.”

 

The next Division One 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.

 

“An artist’s book with text in both English and German serves as a retrospective catalog to an exhibition with a focus on the artist and her work,” said Reed. “Addressing the world of books and readers energetically and with humor, Tetenbaum transcends her own production and concludes with a stirring contemporary manifesto: “To create books out of passion, to give self-will a form and thus to stimulate the reader’s and observer’s every sense, this is where we share common ground.”

 

Division Two (moderately expensive) the winner is 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.

 

“Elucidating the biography of Sala Garncarz and the genesis of the archive, this volume tells the story of the young woman’s five years in a Nazi labor camp in Poland,” said Reed. “Illustrations, letters, and related documents from the collection support the somber account of a Holocaust survivor who came to start a new life in New York City.”

 

Division Three (inexpensive), the co-winner is “Maxwell did it! Photographing the Atlantic City Boardwalk, 1920s-1950s,” submitted by the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

 

“Highlighting photographs from Duke’s R.C. Maxwell Collection of billboards and electric signs in the New York metropolitan area, the period design and commercial format of this booklet showcase a bygone era of advertising signage, featuring Atlantic City along the boardwalk and the Miss America pageants,” said Reed. The exhibition and its catalog present a unique kind of special collections material that sheds light on mid-century American popular culture.”

 

The next Division Three 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.

 

“A catalog from the University of Delaware Library’s strong twentieth-century literary special collections celebrates the recent acquisition of the Robert A. Wilson Ezra Pound Collection,” said Reed.  “Modestly illustrated with titles and pages from modernist publications, the volume provides a well rounded discussion of Pound’s singular production and his impressive circle of friends and contacts.”

 

Division Four (brochures), the winner is the Getty Research Institute brochure entitled “A Tumultuous Assembly: Visual Poems of the Italian Futurists.”   

 

“The tabloid format of Futurist manifestos used for this brochure reproduces the “words-in-freedom” of the original avant-garde publications featured in the exhibition, pairing the images of the works and helpful translations with a thoughtfully written text on the history and context of Italian Futurist production,” said Reed.

 

Division Five (electronic exhibition) the winner is the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library for “Vanished Worlds, Enduring People: Cornell University’s Native American Collection,” http://nac.library.cornell.edu/exhibition/introduction/.

 

“Utilizing Cornell’s well-designed template to present a clear and readable overview of the exhibition design and principal objects, the electronic resource provides more than a catalog’s worth of information and images attractively and effectively,” said Reed. “The exhibition and its electronic version herald the transfer of the Huntington Free Library’s Native American Collection to Cornell University in 2004.”

 

Certificates will be presented to each winner during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. at the RBMS Program on Sunday, June 24, 2007, at 1:30 p.m.

 

ACRL is a division of the American Library Association, representing 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians.  Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

     

 

 

 

 

ACRL announces 2007 RBMS Leab Exhibition award winners