AAUP Best of the Best – 25 years and better than ever

CHICAGO — This year marks the 25th anniversary of the printing of the “University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries.” A popular and trusted acquisitions resource, the bibliography’s latest edition will launch with a special program, "The Best of the Best from the American University Presses," at the 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. The session will be held at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, in the Marriott Marquis San Francisco–Club Room.

Headlining the “Best of the Best” session at ALA this year are two university press authors whose titles have been given the “outstanding” rating by the 2015 selection committee:

Rose Eichenbaum, author of “The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen,” visited with 35 modern day storytellers—directors of theater, film and television—who speak with revealing clarity about the entertainment industry, the role and life of the director and how theatrical and cinematic storytelling impacts our culture and our lives.

Lee Wilson, author of “Rebel on Pointe: A Memoir of Ballet and Broadway,” shares a story for finding a passion in life and moving beyond familial pressures and societal norms. Her journey brought her to dance for European royalty, for gun-toting revolutionaries in Algeria, American aristocrats at the Metropolitan Opera and a galaxy of stars on Broadway.

Librarians from the selection committees will also present a selection of “outstanding” titles from the bibliography to encourage its use in collection planning. This year's panelists are Hilary Albert from Mahopac Public Library in Mahopac, New York; Nann Blaine Hilyard from Zion-Benton Public Library (Retired) in Zion, Illinois; and Judi Repman from Georgia Southern University (Retired) in Statesboro, Georgia. A complete list of titles to be featured on June 28 is available online.

The university press bibliography is the product of a successful collaboration between the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), and the Collection Development and Evaluation Section of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA/CODES). School and public librarians have selected, reviewed, and rated 343 books published by 66 different AAUP member presses for the 2015 edition.

The bibliography provides librarians with valuable scholarship to match interests as diverse as architecture, climate change, zombie culture, economic forecasting, theater, poetry, classic fiction, art criticism and interpretation and more. The 25th edition of this publication will also be the first to include e-book listings and book cover images with each listing. Print editions may be requested free of charge, and archived editions reaching back to 2004 are also available online. 

The American Association of School Librarians www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), empowers leaders to transform teaching and learning.

The Reference and User Services Association, www.ala.org/rusa, is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need.

The Association of American University Presses is an organization of more than 130 nonprofit scholarly publishers, dedicated to the support of creative and effective scholarly communications. Through its programs and information resources, AAUP helps its members fulfill their common commitments to scholarship, the academy, and society. Learn more at www.aaupnet.org.