Browse funds
University Librarian's Discretionary Fund
Established in 2009 by Douglas W. Squires, Class of 1973, to provide unrestricted support for additions to the University Library's collections and for an annual award recognizing that undergraduate whose course-related research project best exemplifies the use of the University's collections.
The 2015 winner of the Undergraduate Prize for Excellence in Library Research was Beatrice Senocak for her paper entitled "A Providence Affair". Senocak's paper, done for Prof. Elizabeth Taylor's class "Narrating History" employs creative non-fiction to tell the story of the delicate courtship of Sarah Helen Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. Senocak's story draws heavily on primary source documents including the papers of Sarah Helen Whitman in the John Hay Library and the online archives of the "Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore" (transcripts of the Whitman-Poe correspondence). She scoured local libraries, archives, museums and historical societies to discover details of the fashion, music, dancing, public transportation, etiquette and architecture of the period in Providence to set the stage for her story. She made use of Brown's own online collections to discover digital images of original daguerreotype portraits of both Whitman and Poe. As one of the judges observed, "This is an elegantly written essay about the relationship between Poe and Whitman that is based on a rich array of print and archival sources...she has transformed the sources in creative ways and drawn out a compelling story full of contextual details drawn from the meticulous research."