2025 Essays

Undergraduate Library Research Award Essay: "The Faith of a Nation: The Catholic Church, Irish Nationalism, and Family Welfare During the Dublin Lockout and Beyond, 1913-1918"

Boisture Jr., Michael

First-place winning essay in the Capstone Project or Senior Thesis category of the Undergraduate Library Research Award, presented by the Science, Engineering, and Social Sciences Libraries (SESSL).

Throughout the yearlong process of brainstorming a topic, conducting research, and writing my thesis on the Catholic Church's involvement in the 1913 Dublin Lockout, Columbia University Libraries provided numerous resources that made it possible. I consulted with Columbia's librarians to narrow down my topic and find archival resources, both digitally and in Dublin, to prepare for my research trip to Ireland. The library's extensive collections, along with the Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan programs, made it possible for me to check out dozens of secondary sources as well as some primary sources over the course of the year. Other miscellaneous resources, including Zotero workshops and equipment I could use to scan books, streamlined my research and writing process. In short, my thesis could not have been written without the help of Columbia's libraries and librarians.