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Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction Longlist Announced!

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction & Nonfiction were established by Carnegie Corporation of New York and ALA in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the U.S. the previous year. The Medals and the lists leading up to the selection of the winners serve as a guide to selecting quality reading material.

Forty-four books comprising the “longlist” for consideration for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction have been selected from the most recent Booklist Editors’ Choice and RUSA Notable Books List.

Six-title shortlist; three fiction and three nonfiction medals will be announced in late April. The two winners will be announced at ALA Annual Conference in June in Las Vegas. The longlist is available on the awards’ website.

Awards Longlist:

Start reading these 2014 longlist titles now to count down to the shortlist announcement this spring! The titles under consideration for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction are:
Fiction

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. (Knopf)

Atkinson, Kate. Life after Life. (Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur)

Barrett, Andrea. Archangel. (Norton)

Bass, Rick. All the Land to Hold Us. (Houghton)

Danticat, Edwidge. Claire of the Sea Light. (Knopf)

Eggers, Dave. The Circle. (Knopf)

Garey, Juliann. Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See. (Soho)

Gilbert, Elizabeth. The Signature of All Things. (Viking)

Harding, Paul. Enon. (Random House)

Horn, Dara. A Guide for the Perplexed. (Norton)

Hosseini, Khaled. And the Mountains Echoed. (Riverhead)

Jansma, Kristopher. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. (Viking)

Koch, Herman. The Dinner. (Hogarth)

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Lowland. (Knopf)

Marra, Anthony. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. (Hogarth)

McBride, James. The Good Lord Bird. (Riverhead)

Messud, Claire. The Woman Upstairs. (Knopf)

Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being. (Viking)

Shacochis, Bob. The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. (Atlantic Monthly)

Silber, Joan. Fools. (Norton)

Tartt, Donna. The Goldfinch. (Little, Brown)

Nonfiction

Anderson, Scott. Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. (Doubleday)

Arana, Marie. Bolivar: American Liberator. (Simon & Schuster)

Aslan, Reza. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. (Random House)

Basbanes, Nicholas. On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand Year History. (Knopf)

Beam, Cris. To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care. (Houghton)

Berg, A. Scott. Wilson. (Putnam)

Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. (Viking)

Buruma, Ian. Year Zero: A History of 1945. (Penguin)

Fink, Sheri. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. (Crown)

Fox, Margalit. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. (Ecco)

Garfield, Simon. On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks. (Gotham)

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. (Simon & Schuster)

Hilburn, Robert. Johnny Cash: The Life. (Little, Brown)

Koerner, Brendan I. The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. (Crown)

Labor, Earle. Jack London: An American Life. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Lepore, Jill. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. (Knopf)

Morell, Virginia. Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of our Fellow Creatures. (Crown)

Packer, George. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Roach, Mary. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. (Norton)

Rodriguez, Richard. Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. (Viking)

Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. (Penguin)

Solnit, Rebecca. The Faraway Nearby. (Viking)

Wright, Lawrence. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. (Knopf)

Find out more about the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.

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Register Now for “Business Reference 101,” RUSA’s online course

RUSA’s online course “Business Reference 101” beginning Feb. 3 – 28, 2014

The course runs Feb. 3 – 28, 2014. Course content is appropriate for librarians and library staff of all types who wish to acquire business reference expertise, Business Reference 101 will demystify such topics as SIC, NAICS codes, ROI and 10ks. Students will also have access to proprietary business reference databases. Course participants login throughout the week to complete assignments—there are no scheduled meeting times for this asynchronous course!

 Instructor: Celia Ross is past chair of RUSA’s Brass section, an experienced facilitator and practitioner in the business reference field, and a newly published author!

Get more information about this course: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/development/businessreference101/index.cfm

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** Register online now! (http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=oloc&Template=/Conference/ConferenceList.cfm&ConferenceTypeCode=L)

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We do welcome and encourage group registrations from a library, library system or network! Groups receive 15% savings on their registration rates.

Registration information for RUSA, including groups, can be found here: http://www.ala.org/rusa/development/onlinece

Questions about registration? Contact registration@ala.org or 1-800-545-2433, option 5.

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Please forward this message to any colleagues or distribution lists who might find it of interest.

 

 

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Librarians speak out against Harvard Publishing’s latest restrictions

As of August 1, 2013, all databases containing Harvard Business Review, a journal published by Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), became “read only” for 500 (HBR 500) of the most popular Harvard Business Review articles. Campuses may pay a premium to restore full access to link, save, and print the affected articles.  EBSCO, exclusive provider to electronic Harvard Business Review articles, notified subscribers in spring of 2013 about this change.  These new access restrictions will affect researcher’s ability to access and use these articles.

Librarians decry the erosion of full access to scholarly material. Members of the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of the Reference and User Services Association(RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) have clarified the restrictions with HBP and EBSCO, considered implications for libraries, colleges and universities, and offer suggestions for addressing this newest access restriction to an electronic journal.

Join us in urging HBP and other publishers to work with libraries to find access and pricing models that honor our shared educational and scholarly missions, and to broaden the discussion by informing their administrators, constituents, and legislators about the situation and its relevance to scholarly communications and the costs of higher education.

To access this statement,  visit: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/brass/brasspubs/publications/statement_hbr

For further information, please contact:

Ann Fiegen, Past BRASS Chair 2012-2013 and HBR Task Force Chair, afiegen@csusm.edu;
Andy Spackman, BRASS Chair 2013-2014, andy_spackman@byu.edu

The Reference and User Services Association (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. Learn more about the association at www.ala.org/rusa.

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Join ALA’s virtual town hall on ebook lending

Calling all RUSA members who offer ebooks:

If you work with Ebooks, you may be interested in the American Library Association’s Virtual Town Hall on Ebooks, an interactive online session that will take place from 11 a.m.- noon Central time, Wednesday, October 23, 2013.

ALA leaders will discuss the present state of ebooks and libraries and directions for the future. Click here to register.

For more information on e-books and Libraries, an FAQ is available from ALA’s Transforming Libraries website:
http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/frequently-asked-questions-e-books-us-libraries

Alesia McManus
RUSA Representative to the ALA Legislative Assembly