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The average college student has some sort of inexpensive trinket collection, be it souvenir shot glasses or postcards from friends traveling abroad. Though students swipe their credit cards for hundreds of dollars worth of books every quarter, they rarely (if ever) consider their piles of literature as a precious collection.

The Robert B. and Blanche Campbell Student Book Collection Competition, now open for submissions until April 14, brings method to the madness of book accumulation by honoring the most cohesive collections.

One goal of the competition is to stimulate student interest in reading, treating the book collection as an expression of the collector’s own quirky values. Some of the most famous book collectors never read the precious books they’ve collected for fear of damaging the book’s condition, or because of the vast quantity they’ve amassed.

“In the English department, we’re taught to use books and interact with (them) in a way that would frighten bibliophiles. ‘This is a first edition; it should never be opened. Treat it as an object.’ That’s really counter to the English department’s spirit,” said English graduate student Lars Larson, a previous winner who has written in, photocopied, and torn pages out of his books.

Making the jump from unorganized books on a shelf to a book collection can be as easy as telling a story.

“Putting (a book collection) together is a great exercise in creativity. … You start weaving a thread from one book to the other … and there is a lot of fun involved in realizing that there are some interesting connections in some books” said Larson, who has won first place twice. His winning collection in 1999 was titled “California Classics, Part II” and contained books written about California. His second win was in 2001 with “Growing Up In America,” comprised of books exemplifying different perspectives from each of the 50 states.

Although most people associate a book collection with expensive “high-art” rare books and first editions, both of Larson’s collections were composed of novels he bought for either his own interest or his graduate studies. Many titles from “Growing Up In America,” such as J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” for New York and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” for Alabama are neither rare nor obscure.

Bruce Whiteman, head librarian at UCLA’s rare books Clark Library, taught a crash-course, one-hour seminar in February that outlined what it means to have a book collection and explained the purposes of the Campbell Competition.

“What really mattered a lot (to the judges) is what the student said about the book in the annotated bibliography and how they that found that interrelatedness between the books. On the surface there may have been 20 children’s books – something that in the greater world wouldn’t be considered much of a collection – but there was something personal about the choice of each one of those books,” said Whiteman.

Some of the more eccentric winning book collections since the competition’s birth in 1949 include “Nigerian Chapbooks,” “Anglo- And Afro-American Fiddling,” “Cyberpunk, Yeah” and “Enough to Drive One Mad: Two Centuries of Learning and Teaching Organic Chemistry.”

Fourth-year English student Martha Webber won second place in the undergraduate category last year for her collection, “Constructing Clothing, Constructing Identity.” She submitted a denim bustier she had sewn as one of the non-book items to supplement her collection of historical costume books, technical books and cultural studies theory books.

“It wasn’t until the contest that I really knew I had something that could be called a collection. I was (just) going out to different thrift stores, and it was so exciting (to acquire) a book that I’d heard of, or get something by an author that I’d always wanted to read,” said Webber, who lost the first place undergraduate prize to Yanni Afendoulis’ collection, “The Eastern Orthodox: A Collection of Books and Cultural Items from a Former Eastern Orthodox Monk.”

As Webber scours the thrift stores for vintage clothing patterns to add to her collection, she has often seen individuals digging alongside her for hardcover first editions to sell for monetary gain.

But Whiteman confesses that studies have shown that investing in first editions is not as profitable as putting the same amount of money into the stock market: “If you started collecting books purely for investment value, you’d start to lose interest. If you’re buying these books without some interest or passion, … why buy books?”

More information available at www.library.ucla.edu/committees/campbell.