The 2024
Connecticut College
Prize for
Undergraduate
Library
Research
$500 Award | Applications due 3/08/2024 | Winners published in Digital Commons
Information Services is excited to announce the winner of the 9th annual $500 Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research:
Sydney Marenburg '24
For the project:
"Socialism, Race, and Gender: Examining the Fracturing of Leftist Politics on the Lines of Race and Womanhood"
Written in the Fall 2023 semester for Professor Taylor Desloge's course, The Black Freedom Struggle (HIS 460).
An excerpt from Sydney Marenburg's application:
"Before I had access to the Weekly People microfilm, I relied upon library resources such as the ProQuest Historical Newspaper database. In that database, I found that it was most helpful to narrow my search years down as much as possible, starting with one year increments at a time to comb through each result. Additionally, I used varying spellings of “Olive M Johnson,” and also tied her to ideas of socialism and women. A great deal of my research came from newspapers and newspaper databases, whether from ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Newspapers.com through Ancestry, or the microfilm archive of the Weekly People, borrowed from the New York State Public Library."
"My other technique was to sort mentions by state, and in this way I was successful in weeding out some casual mentions such as wedding announcements of unrelated people, even with the same name. When attempting to use OneSearch, it as a bit harder to find mentions of Johnson that were not her own writing, so at this time, I did not find the use of it when directly related to Johnson worth it. What I did use OneSearch for was finding other resources to understand subjects like early feminism, the lives and philosophy of WEB DuBois and Claudia Jones, and other political movements on the left. Through OneSearch, I found many of my sources on JSTOR, one of my most beloved parts of having access to Connecticut College’s library access."
The full-text of winning research statements is available in Digital Commons.
Acknowledgements:
We received a number of impressive applications this year from a variety of departments — including Africana Studies, Anthropology, First Year Seminar, Government, History, Sociology, and Theater — and from students in their first-year, junior year, and senior year. We encourage anyone who applied that is not a senior to consider applying again next year.
The annual prize was awarded for the first time in 2016. It is the first award at Connecticut College specifically created to recognize excellence in the research process. Its purpose is to honor students who have demonstrated excellence in research, and to motivate students to learn and deploy sophisticated research strategies. The competition is judged by a team of librarians and faculty (see Library Prize Committee).
All currently enrolled undergraduate students are eligible for the prize, and any student work for a grade (excepting work for honors projects) was accepted. Entrants submitted a copy of their work and a research statement describing their process, along with a bibliography and a note of recommendation from a faculty member.
Students are encouraged to consider applying, and faculty, similarly, are encouraged to suggest that students apply.
The Library Prize Committee is grateful to the Friends of the Connecticut College Library for their generous sponsorship of this award.
The Connecticut College Prize for Undergraduate Library Research is adapted from UC, Berkeley, Library Prize for Undergraduate Research; Temple University, Library Prize for Undergraduate Research.