Congratulations to Joshua Shelly, a newly minted Ph.D. from the Carolina-Duke German Studies Program, who just won second place in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest!
In recognition of his bibliophilic brilliance, he will receive a $1,000 cash prize (presumably to spend on more books!) and a trip to Washington, D.C., to represent Duke at a special awards ceremony on September 22 at 5:00 p.m. at the Library of Congress’s Whittall Pavilion. As his home institution, the Duke University Libraries also receives $500.
The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest is the Final Four of book collecting competitions, bringing together the winners of more than three dozen local competitions at colleges and universities across the United States, including Duke. It is sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS), the Center for the Book, and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.
Joshua’s collection was inspired by an essay he came across while in an archive working on his dissertation. “Alte Bücher in Haifa” (Old Books in Haifa), published in Paris in the 1930s, captures the experience of a German-reading Jew seeking to rebuild his library through Haifa’s used book market. Joshua’s collection focuses on works important to German Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He notes, “Whether clicking through internet pages on the path to that one title, browsing Bücherschränke (little libraries) in Berlin, or else leafing through physical pages in a book shop in Jerusalem, my decision to add a book to my collection is shaped by factors such as the book’s physical condition, price—where relevant—and my own idiosyncratic literary taste.”
Earlier this year, Joshua took first place in the graduate category of the Andrew T. Nadell Book Collectors Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the Duke University Libraries, for his collection “Alte Bücher in Haifa: (Re)building a German Jewish Library in the 21st Century.” That earned him a $1,500 cash prize and the eligibility to compete on the national level.
Duke has been well-represented in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Competition. Past winners include:
- 2021 Winner, Essay Prize: Joseph E. Hiller, Como un detective salvaje: Gathering Small Press, Experimental, and Untranslated Latin American Literature
- 2015 Winner, Essay Prize: Anne Steptoe, Look Homeward: Journeying Home through 20th Century Southern Literature
- 2013 Winner, 2nd Prize: Ashley Young, New Orleans’ Nourishing Networks: Foodways and Municipal Markets in the Nineteenth Century Global South
- 2011 Winner, 1st Prize: Mitch Fraas, Anglo-American Legal Printing 1702 to the Present
Look for the announcement of the applications for the 2025 Nadell Book Prize in Spring 2025!