Reference Awards
Posted by: Barbara Bibel
Each year librarians gather at the ALA Midwinter Conference to choose the best resources in a number of areas. Reference works are honored by the Outstanding Reference Sources Committee and the Dartmouth Medal Committee. The members of these committees spend lots of time looking at the submitted works before the conference. At the meeting, they discuss the works that made it onto the short list and choose the winners. These discussions are stimulating. Everyone has favorites and every work will have some flaw, usually minor. These are food for thought and discussion as the members deliberate. This was a good year for reference publishing, so there were lots of good works to examine. It is interesting to see whether the highly publicized new blockbuster sources will win. Sometimes they really do live up to the hype. Other times, a quiet but wonderful work that fills a need in an area with little coverage prevails. You can find the winners on the ALA Web site . You can be sure that the committee members worked hard to choose them.
