Awards for Milestone Documents in American History
Happy 2009, everyone. I’m pleased to start the new year with another awards announcement for Milestone Documents in American History: our title has received an Outstanding Academic Title citation from Choice magazine. Just as with the Booklist Editor’s Choice award that I announced earlier, this new award will be highlighted in the magazine’s January issue.
The Choice award is gratifying on a number of levels, but one that I’d like to mention is the academic library connection. From the outset we designed our book to appeal to both high school students and lower undergraduate students. Negotiating two divergent audiences can be tricky, because you run the danger of failing to hit the sweet spot for either audience. In our case, though, our strategy has been validated, as we’ve received rave reviews and strong sales in both high school and academic library markets. High school librarians recognize and appreciate the book’s accessible tone, uniform structure, study questions, and teachers’ activity guides tied to the National History Standards. Meanwhile, academic librarians welcome the scholarly analysis, comprehensive approach, and high editorial standards. In addition, we’ve been fortunate to see healthy sales to community college libraries, which further reinforces the usefulness of our content to a wide array of history students.
January will bring a flurry of activity, and I’ll blog it all: a new Milestone Documents newsletter, the formal publicity launch for Milestone Documents of American Leaders, new content related to Barack Obama’s speeches (including his inaugural address), the ALA Midwinter convention and the possibility of more awards for MDAH, special promotions for Black History Month, and more. Stay tuned!