KU News Release

KU Libraries book collecting event to feature distinguished speaker

LAWRENCE — Barbara Backus McCorkle, a former librarian at the University of Kansas, will be the keynote speaker at the 51st annual Snyder Book Collecting Contest awards reception.

The reception will take place Friday, April 27, at Oread Books in the Kansas Union. The public is invited to attend, but an RSVP is required. Contact Rebecca Smith at (785) 864-1761 for more information.

McCorkle recently donated to the KU Libraries Department of Special Collections 125 geography texts, gazetteers and geographical dictionaries that she collected while compiling a carto-bibliography of the maps that such books contain. The gift doubled the Spencer Research Library’s holdings of geography books published in 18th-century Britain and North America. Her keynote address will focus on starting and maintaining book collections.

“It is fitting that Barbara is speaking at this event, as she embodies the ideal and spirit of the Snyder Book Collecting Contest,” said Richard Clement, director of special collections at KU Libraries. “She has spent most of her career seeking out and acquiring these significant 18th-century geography texts.”

McCorkle is well-known as the author of “New England in Early Printed Maps, 1513 to 1800: An Illustrated Carto-bibliography,” published in 2001. She earned a master’s degree in library science from Emporia State University in 1968 and was curator of historical maps at KU from 1968 to 1974. She also was a reference librarian at Purdue University and head of the map library at Yale University. In 2000, she was recognized by the Map and Geography Round Table of the American Library Association for outstanding lifetime achievement and major contributions to map librarianship.

The Snyder contest was created by Elizabeth Morrison Snyder and Robert Vosper, then-director of KU Libraries, in 1957 as a way of encouraging students to collect books. To enter, students submit a bibliography of the collection and an essay on the collection’s intentions. Winners will be awarded cash prizes and KU Bookstores gift cards. The KU Libraries have sponsored the Snyder contest since 1957, with Oread Books in the Kansas Union joining as a co-sponsor in 1974.

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