Barbara Backus McCorkle, a former librarian at Kansas University, will be the keynote speaker at the 51st annual Snyder Book Collecting Contest awards reception.

The reception will take place at 3 p.m. Friday at Oread Books in the Kansas Union.

McCorkle recently donated to the KU Libraries Department of Special Collections 125 geography texts, gazetteers and geographical dictionaries that she collected while compiling a carto-bibliography of the maps that such books contain. The gift doubled the Spencer Research Library’s holdings of geography books published in 18th-century Britain and North America. Her keynote address will focus on starting and maintaining book collections.

The public is invited to attend, but an RSVP is required. Contact Rebecca Smith at 864-1761 for more information.