Guidelines

The Center for Archival Collections is currently accepting submissions for its 2025 Local History Publication Awards, awarded to works on northwest Ohio history published during the calendar year 2024. Works published between Jan. 1, 2024 and Dec. 31, 2024 will be accepted for consideration.

The Local History Publication Awards seek to encourage and recognize authors for outstanding publications in the field of Local History. For this award, local history is geographically defined as the nineteen counties within the Center’s collecting scope (Allen, Crawford, Defiance, Erie, Fulton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Huron, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, Williams, Wood and Wyandot), The Firelands, and Maumee Valley Region.

Divisions

The Local History Publication Awards recognize authors for outstanding publications in two divisions:

• The Professional Division includes works prepared and submitted by authors who exclusively or primarily make their living as a historian, scholar or practitioner in a related field, journalist, and/or writer.
• The Independent Division includes works prepared and submitted by amateur historians and others who do not claim any of the disciplines referenced above (in the Professional Division description) as a profession.

Categories

Each division consists of two award categories:

• The Book Category will consider monographs in either electronic or print formats.
• The Article Category will consider scholarly articles, essays, single long-form (minimum 750 words) blog posts, and long-form (minimum 750 words) articles published in magazines, newspapers, or newsletters. Submissions should have a maximum of 10,000 words and may be published in electronic or print formats.
• Textbooks, guidebooks, manuals, craft books, works of fiction, and genealogies composed principally of genealogical charts are NOT eligible for consideration.

Awards

Each award winner will receive a $300 cash award and plaque, as well as an invitation to deliver a public lecture on their work at BGSU's William T. Jerome Library. With authors' permission, lectures will be audio-recorded and later made available for streaming on the CAC's website. See the Lecture Series page to access recordings of previous years' lectures.

Qualifications

1. The awards will be given for works of either general or specific subject interests (i.e. Native American history, prehistoric, territorial and early statehood, War of 1812, Civil War, business history, women’s history, labor history, family history, historic preservation, rural agricultural history, Great Lakes maritime (Ohio) history, or biography).
2. Any work submitted for the awards must have been copyrighted or published in the past year preceding the year in which the award is given.
3. Works shall be judged by the Awards Committee on literary merit, overall significance, and contribution to explaining and understanding the history of the described region. Other considerations will include style, content, grammar, citations, accuracy, illustrations, layout, indexes, and distribution.
4. The Awards Committee and the Center for Archival Collections reserves the right not to present the awards during any given year.

Submission Guidelines

1. Submit the online form.
2. Authors should send two copies of each work to the address below. Both copies become the property of The Center for Archival Collections. Submissions must be postmarked by March 15, 2025.
   The Center for Archival Collections
   Jerome Library, 5th Floor
   Bowling Green State University
   Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0175
3. If you have questions about these guidelines, please contact us.