Graduating senior Mark T. Humphrey won Holyoke Community College Library’s annual BUILD Research Competition with his project "Wal-Mart: How It Hurts Us and Why We Love It Anyway."

Mark's project was written for the honor's Learning Community "Philosophy of Sustainability," under the direction of Professors Donald Hanover and Kathleen Maiolatesi. Mark will win a $250 prize at the Awards Night ceremony.

BUILD is an acronym for Better Use of Information and Library Databases and the competition is a way to encourage and support student research using legitimate library resources.

"The BUILD competition provides both recognition and reward to HCC's high achieving students. The winners over the past three years have all demonstrated abundant academic skills. These students have taken full advantage of all the resources that HCC provides and we, in the Library, are pleased to have been part of their experience," says Interim Library Director Kathleen McDonough. "We want students to do more than just a Google search."

Six students submitted entries, McDonough said, noting that all were qualified entries. However, Mark Humphrey's work stood out for its strong writing, creativity and myriad resources used that included library books, audio-visual material, research journals and valid website data.

"It was clear he was passionate about his topic," McDonough said.

The competition, which began in the 2006-2007 academic year, rewards students who show exceptional skill and creativity in the application of library resources to a research project. It is designed to complement the Information Literacy Program at HCC. Students submit material from coursework in which they have already done the research, reporting and writing. They also submit an essay of 500 words or less explaining the process they used in completing the work; why they chose the research materials they did; what they learned during the research process, and what they would do differently.

McDonough said the judges were looking to see if students took advantage of HCC's library resources as a participating member of the C/W MARS (Central/Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing network), and other legitimate sources for their work. As a member of the C/W Mars network, HCC's Library offers on-line access to the collections of over 140 academic and public libraries, and 60,000 journals.

Photo above: BUILD winner Mark Humphrey outside the HCC Library
Original source: Office of Marketing & Public Relations