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Book Collecting Competition

Students, enter to win $500 for your book collection! The deadline is March 30th!

March 04, 2026

The Himes & Duniway Society generously supports an annual book collecting competition to recognize and encourage undergraduates and graduate students at Lewis & Clark College who collect printed works to enable them to continue building their own libraries, to appreciate the special qualities of the printed word, and to read and collect for pleasure and education.

The Book Collecting Prize will be awarded to two students for outstanding book collections and essays explaining their collection choices. Each prize will be $500 to be spent on further bibliographic acquisitions.

In order to enter the competition, collections must have been started by the contestant and all items in the collection must be owned but not created by them. A collection may include any printed item, such as books, posters, broadsides, postcards, or ephemera (in paper-based formats); it may be organized by theme, author, illustrator, publisher, printing technique, binding style, or another clearly articulated principle. The winning collection will be more than a reading list of favorite texts: it will be a chosen group of printed items, creatively put together. Collections will not be judged on their size or their market value, but on their originality and success in illuminating their chosen subjects or formats.

To enter, each contestant must submit a portfolio to apply for the competition by the Monday March 30th.

Exhibit: Saying Yes to Ambiguity Phyllis Yes and Resisting Gender Norms

This exhibit showcases the works of Phyllis Yes, an artist and emerita professor at Lewis & Clark. Yes’s art encourages viewers to challenge their perceptions of societal gender norms. The collection features prints, sketches, and articles related to her work. Curated by L&C student Zainab Hamib ’29. On display on the top floor of Watzek Library.

Exhibit: Do You Subscribe to the Impossible? Portland’s Imps 1975-1985

The Impossibilists—or Imps—were a group of artists, writers, and performers living in Portland and cohering around an artistic commitment to the new, the experimental, the bold, and, fittingly, the impish. This exhibit includes material from the Impossibilists and others that document the literary scene in Portland from the mid 1970s through the 1980s.

On display in Watzek Library beginning March 15, 2026.

Medieval Marvels

Rare Medieval Manuscripts on View at Watzek Library

Watzek Library hosts Shaping the Soul, Portland’s first medieval manuscript exhibition in decades. Featuring 30 rare manuscripts, the exhibition provides a unique connection to medieval Europeans and their intimate relationships with books.

Watzek Winter Reading

’Tis the season for recreational reading! Stretch yourself with Watzek’s (very gentle) reading challenge.