The Library History Award
Annual Award for the best Essay on Library
History published in the British Isles
The Library History Award is an annual award for the best essay on library
history published in the British Isles. It is organised by the Library
History Group of the Library Association. The Award aims to improve the
quality and increase the quantity of writing on library history in the
British Isles. It is sponsored by the MCB University Press and thanks to
their generosity the award was made for the first time in 1996.
Scope and Quality
Items considered for inclusion will normally come within the scope of the
former Bibliography of British Library History. Normally the essay will
relate to a British Isles theme but high quality contributions on foreign
themes will be considered. The author should ordinarily be resident in the
British Isles but need not be a UK citizen.
Essays should embody original historical research on a significant
subject, should be based on original source materials if possible and should
use good composition and style. Essays showing evidence of methodological
and historiographical innovation will be particularly welcome.
Method
The Award will be made for the best essay on library history published in
the United Kingdom within the previous calendar year (1999). Any member of
the Library Association may nominate a published essay for consideration.
The entries will be judged by a panel of four, viz.:
1) The Chairman of the Library History Group or his nominee who will act as
administrator
2) One other member of the Library History Group committee
3) An external assessor (not a member of the Library History Group
committee,
at the invitation of the Committee)
4) A representative of MCB University Press, normally the editor of Library
Review.
All members of the panel will be excluded from nomination. Members of the
panel may nominate candidates in the absence of other nominations.
Award
The value of the Award will be a cash prize of £200.
1999 winner
The entries in 1999 were all of a high quality but the judges felt that Mark
Purcell's entry was the best. Mark Purcell was appointed Libraries Adviser
to the National Trust in September 1999, following on the successful
fund-raising campaign for country house libraries run by the Royal Oak
Foundation, the Trust's US support group. He was previously Early Printed
Books Librarian at Christ Church, Oxford, and has a particular interest in
libraries and collecting in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England.
Although his essay was concerned with one particular library he related the
work and ideas of it owner to a much wider world of scholarship and
intellectual activity ('Useful Weapons for the Defence of that Cause':
Richard Allestree, John Fell and the Foundation of the Allestree Library,
The Library, vol. 21 (2))
Dissemination
The editor of Library Review will have the right to publish an abstract or
shortened version of the essay.
Nominations including 5 copies of the essay which should have been published
during 1999 should be sent, by 30th June 2000, to
Dr John C Crawford,
Library Research Officer,
Glasgow Caledonian University Library,
Cowcaddens Road,
Glasgow G4 OBA
Tel : 0141-331-3847
Fax : 0141-331-3005
Email : [log in to unmask]
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