The American Library Association’s (ALA) Library History Roundtable (LHRT) Justin Winsor Award Committee is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s essay award. The recipient of this year’s award is Jonathan Victor Baldoza for the essay “A Suitable Place: Empire and the Philippine Library, 1910–1916.”

A graduate student in history at Princeton University, Baldoza studies the history of maritime Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines in the late 19th and 20th century. His dissertation explores how colonial agencies collected and analyzed a variety of materials to construct a history of the Philippines and its people.