Lawrence G. Blackmon
Book Collecting Contest
Contest Rules
History of the Contest
Since 1967 the Friends of the Libraries of Boston
University has sponsored a book collecting contest open to
all students at the University in the undergraduate, graduate,
and professional schools. Conceived by members of the Board
of Directors of the Friends, the contest was devised to stimulate
the student body to pursue the gratifying and exhilarating
experience of creating a collection of books, with all the
ancillary benefits such an interest involves. The Board recognized
that to discover the difference between a "library"
and a "Collection," a student must start the acquisitive
process early, and that the Friends organization itself could
offer the incentives of encouragement, advice, and cash rewards.
Thus it has been for over thirty successful
past contests. Our students have learned the joys of embarking
upon a pursuit which can be with them all their lives, one
which will bring excitement, adventure, and expertise. To
enable the contest to continue uninhibited by financial restraints,
and to increase the cash rewards, and in recognition of the
values encompassed by such a program, Mr. Lawrence Blackmon
endowed the contest, beginning in 1984.
Mr. Blackmon, Bookman
READER AND THEN COLLECTOR: that is how industrialist
Lawrence G. Blackmon describes himself. In the great tradition
of the legendary collectors of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, Mr. Blackmon came to possess bibliomania through
omnivorous reading, insatiable curiosity, and the fevered
excitement of the search. How fitting that the collector and
the contest should coalesce, that the man who has read a book
a week throughout his lifetime, should now seek to pass that
addiction on to a new generation of bookmen.
"What I want is to encourage people
at the earliest age to learn the value of, and therefore to
enjoy, the literature of the world so much that they will
find irresistible the desire to form their own libraries"
So wrote Lawrence Blackmon upon generously endowing the Student
Book Collecting Contest sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries
of Boston University. For several decades Mr. Blackmon, President
and Chief Executive Officer of Microdot, Inc. (a subsidiary
of Northwest Industries, producing connecting devices and
ingot molds for the automotive, aerospace, and steel industries)
has avidly collected rare books, specializing in eighteenth-century
literature.
First editions of Boswell, Johnson, Fielding,
Smollett, Goldsmith, Sterne, Gray, Reynolds, Swift, Burke,
Pope, Lord Chesterfield, Hannah More, Sir John Hawkins and
Addison fill Lawrence Blackmon shelves. These came via antiquarian
book shops, auction houses, and specialized rare book dealers.
All the books on Mr. Blackmon shelves have been read by the
owner, who possesses an intimate knowledge not only of the
author of each volume, but of the provenance of each copy
possessed. A true collector in the most traditional sense
of the term, Lawrence Blackmon is well-suited to be the guiding
spirit behind a student book-collecting contest.
Need an idea? Unsure if your collection
could win? Here is a complete list of First
Place winners and the subjects of their collections.
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