Contest Puts BYU Bookstore All Over the Map

As Linda Brummett, manager of the book department of BYU Bookstore, put it, "centennials are rare." So the Provo, Utah, bookstore has devoted the entire year to celebrating its 100th anniversary by giving away thousands of dollars worth of gift cards, iPods, digital cameras, textbook rebates, and other prizes.

Bag Photo Contest Grand Prize Winner - Ice fishing in Alaska

The BYU Bookstore, originally named the Students' Supply Association, opened during the 1906 - 1907 school year in a space that Brummett described as little more than a broom closet, with room for one employee. Today, at 110,000 square feet, the BYU Bookstore, which is owned by Brigham Young University, is among the largest college bookstores in the country, and it takes pride in its independence. "We absolutely consider ourselves independent booksellers and have been proud and involved members of ABA," said Brummett, "as well as other regional and national trade associations, for many years."

As part of its centenary celebrations, the store also invited the BYU community to participate in its fourth annual Bag Photo Contest, which called for entries of photos of the plastic, blue-and-white striped BYU Bookstore bag in various exotic, and not so exotic, locales. This year, BYU bags were all over the globe, including up a coconut tree in the Fiji Islands, on the Mongolian steppe grasslands, and the North Pole. And those didn't even take the grand prize.

First Prize - Living with Mongolian nomads

A photo of a student holding a bag underwater while sharks swam in the background garnered only an honorable mention. The grand prize, out of 1,100 entries, went to Merella Shuster, a BYU student from Kotzebue, Alaska. She won a $1,000 BYU Bookstore gift card for her photo of ice fishing and what appears to be a sockeye salmon bigger than the BYU bag into which it's being placed. First prize went to the photographer of two Mongolian nomads each holding BYU bags, standing next to their ger with a camel nearby.

BYU is displaying the winning photos in the store and on in-store TVs. Before the weather turned cold, the store had an outdoor "gallery" and hung all 1,100 entries, said Brummet, who added that two Salt Lake City television stations ran a slide show of the winners.

Second Prize - Bookstore Bathroom

The contest started four years ago when a customer told Brummett that he had seen a traveler with a BYU Bookstore bag at a London tube station. "The idea grew from there and the first year the contest was simply, 'How far can your bookstore bag travel this summer?'" she explained. "We had entries from the Great Wall of China, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Red Square. We turned to the Geography Department to judge that one.... Last year, we had one entry from India with cobras coming out of the bags. College students go many places during the summer months."

One of Brummett's favorites for 2006 was a submission that stayed close to home. It was a bathroom furnished with a BYU Bookstore bag shower curtain, toilet seat cover, shampoo bottle, and bathmat. "I loved the bathroom entry," she said. "The bags didn't go far, but that entry was so clever." --Karen Schechner