Choice Publications and Services

Founded in 1963 with a grant from the Council on Library Resources, Choice is the Middletown, Connecticut–based publishing unit of ACRL. Choice is the publisher of Choice magazine, the premier U.S. academic review journal; Choice Reviews, a continuously updated database of our reviews; and other publications, described below.

Long the flagship of the Choice imprint, Choice magazine has been in continuous publication since 1964. In addition to its reviews, Choice’s highly esteemed Outstanding Academic Titles list, representing the “best of the best” new titles reviewed during the preceding year, is published each year in January and is widely regarded as comprising the essential titles for purchase by undergraduate libraries. Choice reviews are also available under license in a number of other widely used products and services.

Released in the fall of 2006, Resources for College Libraries is the digital successor to Books for College Libraries, 3rd edition. The product of a collaborative effort between Choice and ProQuest, RCL is published under the direction of more than 70 subject-area experts, who update the work on an annual basis, and lists some 92,000 works across 125 curriculum-driven subjects. With the publication of its companion product, Career Resources, in 2009, RCL now includes over 4,600 core works for vocational-technical subjects as well.

Eleven times a year Choice publishes a lengthy bibliographic essay on a topic of interest to students and teachers. Written by subject area experts, these comprehensive essays typically run to some 7,500 words and contain discussion and annotation on hundreds of titles. Essays have treated such diverse topics as museum studies in the 21st century, the history of human-animal relations, and evolutionary responses to climate change. Essays from recent years are available on the LibGuides platform, where they can be browsed by year or subject.

The popular Choice-ACRL sponsored webinar program has attracted over 70,000 attendees over the past five years and are a valuable source of information on library trends, issues, and best practices. Underwritten and presented by industry experts, these webinars explore topics in nine major areas: Collection Development and Management; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility (DEIA); Ebooks and Digital Resources; Library Instruction; Library Leadership and Management; Library Technology and IT; Open Access and Open Educational Resources; Primary Sources and Special Collections; and Scholarly Communication and Research. A library of some 350 webcasts is available on the Choice Media Channel on YouTube.

In the summer of 2017 Choice launched a sponsored podcast featuring conversations about the lifecycle of scholarly communication. The Authority File offers weekly episodes with a rotating cast of librarians, technologists, authors, and other academic library luminaries as they chat about the ways in which scholarly content is created, preserved, and distributed. Winner of the Best B2B Podcast at the 2023 Publisher Podcast Awards, the podcast currently boasts more than 400 episodes. The Authority File is available on Choice’s website and directly via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.