Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, formerly Outstanding Academic Books, is a booklist curated by editors working with

Choice Reviews Choice is a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). It includes the magazine ''Choice'' as well as other products including the ''Choice Reviews'' database. The magazine was established in 1964. It is cons ...

, a publishing unit of the

Association of College and Research Libraries The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. It is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academi ...

(ACRL). According to the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...

, the Outstanding Academic Titles list "reflects the best in scholarly titles... and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community." The list is published every December and covers around 10 percent of the roughly 5,000 books reviewed annually. According to the ACRL, ''Choice'' reaches 22,000

librarians A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time, ...

and an estimated 13,000 higher education faculty in almost every undergraduate college and university library in the United States, along with many larger public libraries, and special and governmental libraries. In 2014, ''Choice'' partnered with

EBSCOhost EBSCO Information Services, headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a private company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. EBSCO provides products and services to libraries of very many types around the ...

to highlight the academic books selected as Outstanding Academic Titles available on EBSCO, allowing "librarians to easily identify and acquire the titles that have been designated as excellent in presentation and scholarship, bringing exceptional support to the research of their students and faculty and increasing the value of their overall library collection. Although the list is commonly used, some researchers warn librarians against using curated lists such as this to populate their libraries.

History

Until 2000, the list was referred to as Outstanding Academic Books; however, editors at ''Choice'' opted for a name change due to the increasing use of electronic products.

Criteria

Reviews are published monthly in ''Choice'' magazine and Choice Reviews online. ''Choice'' publishes approximately 7,000 reviews per year in 50 subdisciplines spanning the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

, and the

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and behavioral sciences. Selections for Outstanding Academic Titles are determined by scholars who act as experts in their respective fields of study and who do not receive payment for their reviews. ''Choice'' editors base their selections on the reviewer’s evaluation of the work, the editor’s knowledge of the field, and the reviewer’s record. Books selected for the list must have been published within the 12 months prior to the list's release. When selecting books for the list, editors consider the following: * "overall excellence in presentation and scholarship" * "importance relative to other literature in the field" * "distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form" * "originality or uniqueness of treatment" * "value to undergraduate students" * "importance in building undergraduate library collections"

References

{{Reflist Year of establishment missing American Library Association Annual publications