#TreatYourShelf this Holiday Season!

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Making your ‘To Be Read’ list? Checking it twice? #TreatYourShelf (or others) this holiday season with titles from RUSA’s award lists selected and reviewed by our expert librarians.

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. the previous year. A longlist comprised of no more than 50 titles is released in September. Six finalists (shortlist), three fiction and three nonfiction, are announced in October, pictured above.

Notable Books List selected by the Notable Books Council, is a list of 25 very good, very readable and at times, very important fiction, nonfiction and poetry books for adult readers.

The Reading List  seeks to highlight outstanding genre fiction from each of the current eight different categories including adrenaline, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and women’s fiction.

The Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration, seeks to highlight outstanding audiobook titles that merit special attention and includes twelve titles including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays.

The Sophie Brody Award is given to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. In the context of this award, Jewish literature is defined as fiction, nonfiction or poetry that has as its central purpose the exploration of the Jewish experience.

 

 

 

 

 

Shortlist for 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

shortlist for 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Shortlist

Nonfiction

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice,” by Patricia Bell-Scott, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House LLC.
Bell-Scott meticulously chronicles the boundary-breaking friendship of Pauli Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt, telling each remarkable woman’s story within the context of the crises of the times, from ongoing racial violence to WWII and the vicious battle over school integration.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” by Matthew Desmond, published by Crown, Penguin Random House LLC.
Desmond shares harrowing stories of eight families who find themselves facing home evictions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shining a light on how eviction sets people up to fail.

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America,” by Patrick Phillips, published by W. W. Norton.
Phillips presents a precise and disquieting account of long underreported tyranny and violence against African Americans in a farming community in Forsyth Country, Georgia, in 1912, which resulted in nothing less than racial cleansing.

Fiction

Moonglow,” by Michael Chabon, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins.
A young writer listens in breath-held astonishment as his ailing grandfather, whose lifelong reticence has been vanquished by strong painkillers, tells the hidden stories of his hardscrabble boyhood, WWII military service, obsession with moon missions, and love for a French Holocaust survivor.

Swing Time,” by Zadie Smith, published by Penguin Press, Penguin Random House LLC.
Two “brown girls” growing up in London public housing share a passion for dance, but follow divergent paths which lead to adventures in America and Africa, and raise complex questions about family, friendship, race, creativity, and celebrity.

The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead, published by Doubleday, Penguin Random House LLC.
Whitehead reimagines the Underground Railroad in this powerful tale about smart and resilient Cora, a young third-generation slave who escapes the brutality of a Georgia cotton plantation and seeks sanctuary throughout the terrorized South.

The awards, established in 2012, recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year and serve as a guide to help adults select quality reading material. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by the American Library Association and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals who work closely with adult readers.

Annotations and more information on the finalists and the awards can be found at http://www.ala.org/carnegieadult. Also, book cover artwork is available for download at http://tinyurl.com/Carnegieshortlist.

Call for nominations: RUSA achievement awards and grants

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Call for Nominations

Beginning September 1, 2016, RUSA will open the nomination period for its annual series of achievement awards and grants. Nominations and supporting materials for most awards must be submitted by December 9, 2016**.

RUSA encourages members to nominate their colleagues whose work has influenced their thinking and performance and whose outstanding contributions merit recognition by the profession. RUSA has, and will continue to, nominate, select and honor the very best in the field of reference and user services with the continued support of industry sponsors.

Achievement awards for individuals and groups:

Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award, RUSA’s highest honor, recognizes an individual who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of reference librarianship. $5,000* and a citation. Sponsored by Credo.

ReferenceUSA Award for Excellence in Reference and Adult Library Services is given to a library or library system for developing an imaginative and unique resource to meet patrons’ reference needs. $1,500* and a citation. Sponsored by ReferenceUSA.

NoveList’s Margaret E. Monroe Library Adult Services Award recognizes a librarian who has made significant contributions to library adult services. $1,250* and a citation. Sponsored by NoveList.

John Sessions Memorial Award recognizes a library or library system that has made a significant effort to work with the labor community and by doing so has brought recognition to the history and contribution of the labor movement to the development of the United States. The winner receives a plaque. Sponsored by the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO,

Reference Service Press Award recognizes the most outstanding article published in Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ), RUSA’s research journal, during the preceding two-volume year. $2,500* and a plaque. Sponsored by Reference Service Press.

BRASS Mergent Excellence in Business Librarianship Award is presented to an individual who has made a significant contribution to business librarianship. $4,000* and a citation. Sponsored by Mergent.

Louis Shores Award recognizes an individual reviewer, group, editor, review medium or organization for excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The winner receives a citation.

Zora Neale Hurston Award honors an individual ALA member who has demonstrated leadership in promoting African-American literature. The winner receives $1,250* supporting travel to the ALA Annual Conference, a beautiful plaque, two tickets to the United for Libraries author events: The Gala Author Tea and The Laugh’s On Us, and two complete sets of Zora Neale Hurston’s books and audiobooks. Sponsored by HarperCollins Publishers.

ETS Achievement Recognition Award is a citation presented annually in recognition of excellence in service to the Emerging Technologies Section of RUSA. The winner receives a citation.

Genealogy/History Achievement Award is presented to a librarian, library or publisher who recognizes professional achievement in historical reference and research librarianship. $1,500* and a citation. Sponsored by ProQuest.

Online History Award
The Online History Award is offered every other year beginning in 2005. Awarded to a publisher of reference materials in the field of history, the award recognizes the accomplishments of a person or a group of people producing (1) a freely available online historical collection, or (2) an online tool tailored for the purpose of finding historical materials, or (3) an online teaching aid stimulating creative historical scholarship. A monetary prize* and citation are presented.

RSS Service Achievement Award is presented annually to a member of the Reference Services Section (RSS) of RUSA in recognition of exceptional contributions to the section. The winner receives a citation.

Virginia Boucher/OCLC Distinguished ILL Librarian Award is given to an individual for his or her outstanding professional achievement, leadership, and contributions to interlibrary loan and document delivery. $2,000* and a citation. Sponsored by OCLC.

Travel awards to ALA Annual Conference in Chicago :

BRASS SimplyMap Student Travel Award presents funds to a student enrolled in an ALA accredited master’s degree program to fund travel the ALA Annual Conference. $1,250* and a citation. Sponsored by SimplyMap. **This award’s nomination deadline is Jan. 29, 2017.

BRASS Global Financial Data Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award is presented to a new librarian in the field of academic business librarianship in order to support attendance to the ALA Annual Conference. $1,250* and a citation. Sponsored by Global Financial Data.

Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award offers funds to a public librarian who has performed outstanding business reference service and who requires financial assistance to attend the ALA Annual Conference. $1,250* and a citation. Sponsored by Morningstar, Inc.

STARS Atlas Systems Mentoring Award offers ALA Annual Conference travel assistance funds to two library practitioners who are new to the field of interlibrary loan/document delivery or electronic reserves, and who has involvement in the areas of borrowing, lending, document delivery, electronic reserves, material delivery or resource sharing. $1,250* and a citation for each winner. Sponsored by Atlas Systems.

Research grants:

Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award is granted to an MLS degreed librarian from an ALA accredited school to facilitate and further research relating to history and history librarianship. $2,500* and a citation. Sponsored by Gale Cengage Learning.

BRASS Emerald Research Grant Award, is presented to an individual or group seeking support to conduct research in business librarianship. $5,000* and a citation. Sponsored by Emerald Group Publishing.

*Monetary award amounts are subject to change without notice and are contingent upon donor funding supplied at the time the award is presented.

Questions about these awards should be directed to Leighann Wood, Sr. Program Officer, lwood@ala.org.

More information about these awards, including nominating instructions, can be found on RUSA’s awards webpage.

If you liked the Carnegie shortlist, you may also like these other recommended reads!

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If you liked the shortlist, you may also like…

TheSympathizer_NguyenFict_Shepard_BookOfAron_medalFict_Yanagihara_ALittleLife_medalHoldStill_MannNonFict_Macdonald_HIsForHawk_medalNonFict_Wulf_InventionofNature_medal

The 2016 shortlist read alikes were selected by the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Notable Books Council, which is comprised of expert readers’ advisors and librarians that work closely with adult readers.

Fiction read alikes:

If you liked The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press), you may also like…
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Four Books by Lianke Yan

If you liked The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard (Alfred A. Knopf), you may also like…
A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz by Goran Rosenberg
No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel
The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank by Ellen Feldman
Jacob the Liar by Jurek Becker

If you liked A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday), you may also like…
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
After the Parade by Lori Ostlund
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
I Refuse by Per Peterson
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Nonfiction read alikes:

If you liked H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Grove Press), you may also like…
The Goshawk by T.H. White
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
After visiting friends: A Son’s Story by Michael Hainey
This is How You Say Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir by Victoria Loustalot

If you liked Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann (Little, Brown and Company), you may also
like…
Liar’s Club by Mary Carr
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Stitches by David Small
The End of the World as We Know It by Robert Goolrick

If you liked The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf (Alfred A. Knopf),
you may also like…
Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World
by Gerard Helferich
Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science by Richard Dawkins
Humankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity by Alexander Harcourt
Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson
The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science by Armand Marie Leroi

View the .pdf to print out for your library or to hand out at your next book club!

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction are co-sponsored by Booklist and the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. The awards were established to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published within the last year with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

To learn more about the awards, books and authors, visit ala.org/carnegieadult.