Over the course of this semester, you'll schedule individual and small group visits to Mount Holyoke's Archives and Special Collections (ASC) to do research using the Glascock Prize Records. The following records can help you navigate the collection:
Using the list of Contestants and Judges, you can determine which years are of interest and then look at the Inventory to determine which boxes and folders within them you'll need for your research. This is helpful both for focusing your work and having a list of the boxes you'll need to share with ASC when you schedule your visit (the archivist needs to pull the materials from ASC's closed stacks for you before you arrive). A further tip: use the reference works in the Poetry research resources section of this guide to look up the poets who participated in the Glascock Contest. These may help you determine their significance and narrow down the list of poets you wish to focus on.
Email archives@mtholyoke.edu. Be sure to include a list of the boxes/folders you wish to look at. Keep in mind that ASC's hours are shorter than the rest of the LITS complex and that you should schedule your appointment for at least a week before your assignment is due. More lead time is even better - plan ahead!
Archives and Special Collections Reading Room Regulations 2022
This video from Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library shows how to handle materials in a way that helps to preserve them and their arrangement so future researchers can make use of them too.
ASC has a paper form for requesting digital reproductions of materials in the collection. In addition to filling out the form, you can also bookmark the place in a folder where the item you wish to be digitized is located. Copies of the form and bookmarks are available in ASC. It's best not to request reproductions at the last minute - give yourself at least a week. In a pinch, you can always take a photograph using your cell phone camera.
Keep in mind that while you can request reproductions and take photos of ASC materials for your own personal research use, it's not necessarily okay to reuse them on social media or in a publication. See the ASC Policies and Services page, especially the Terms of Use section. Also, see the Copyright & Fair Use part of this guide for more information about determining how/when you can use copyright protected materials.
These reference works can help you find out more about the poets who have participated in the Glascock Contest over the years. Note that you may need to check more than one source to find information about a particular poet.
If you're not familiar with the time period in which a poet was writing, a general encyclopedia can help you get oriented quickly.
For more in-depth information about any given poet, search the databases on the English Research Guide's Tools for Finding Secondary Sources page.
A few general histories of American poetry that may be useful:
The Columbia History of American Poetry by 
The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945 by 
The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First-Century American Poetry by In addition to working with the physical Glascock Prize Records in ASC, you may also find information about the contest (including the most recent 25 years) in these digitized sources:
