LernerMedia book awarded 2009 RUSA

We are proud to announce that Climate Change: In Context, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, K. Lee Lerner, eds. (created for Gale, a division of Cengage Learning), received a prestigious American Library Association RUSA award as  one of the ten outstanding reference sources for 2009.

In the wake of the  2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, Climate Change: In Context was one of the first reference books designed to explain the complexities of those reports–and  the scientifically well-established perils of climate change driven by human (anthropogenic) activity–to high school and early undergraduate  students.  Working mainly from Paris, we interviewed IPCC scientists and relied on both IPCC and National Academies reports to provide a comprehensive overview of  the issues related to global warming and climate change. As editors, Brenda and I are grateful to the global group of scholars, researchers, and writers who contributed to Climate Change: In Context. Dr. Wallace S. Broecker and Thomas Hayden (Journalist and Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability at Stanford University) deserve special recognition for their compelling and eloquent introductions.

Dr. Larry Gilman also deserves special recognition.  Dr. Gilman, a respected author, wrote or contributed to almost half the entries. His skill helped make the science accessible to the audience, and his advice often helped us recognize and steer clear of the siren call of false balance.

Adding to their fabulous work on Infectious Disease, we again wish to thank copyeditors Christine Jeryan, Kate Kretchmann, and Alicia Cafferty Lerner, whose keen eyes and sound judgments greatly enhanced the quality and readability of the text.

We offer deep and sincere thanks to the talented editors and specialists at Gale who commissioned and assisted in the preparation of Climate  Change.  For privacy reasons,  we are not supposed to list you here –  but be assured that we are deeply appreciative of your skill, grace under pressure, and COURAGE to allow us to write a book on a politically controversial topic with content driven by science.

RUSA (Reference & User Services Association), a division of American Libraries Association, annually publishes its  list of  outstanding reference works in the May issue of American Libraries. The list is also included in Reference & User Services Quarterly and published on the RUSA Web site.

The RUSA Outstanding Reference Sources for 2009 were:

• Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Bonnie G. Smith, ed. 4 vols. Oxford University Press, 2008. (9780195148909).
• Encyclopedia of Taoism. Fabrizio Pregadio, ed. 2 vols. Routledge, 2008. (9780700712007),
• Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social and Military History. Spencer C. Tucker, ed. 4 vols. ABC-CLIO, 2008. (9781851098415).
• Climate Change: In Context. Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner, eds. 2 vols. Gale Cengage, 2008. (9781414436142).
• Books and Beyond: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading. Kenneth Womack, ed. 4 vols. Greenwood, 2008. (9780313337383).
• Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Donald Haase, ed. 3 vols. Greenwood, 2008. (9780313334412).
• Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. John R. Vile, David L. Hudson Jr. and David Schultz, eds. 2 vols. CQ Press, 2009. (9780872893115).
• African American National Biography. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, eds. 8 vols. Oxford University Press, 2008. (9780195160192).
• Encyclopedia of Education Law. Charles J. Russo, ed. 2 vols. Sage, 2008. (9781412940795).
• Gale Encyclopedia of Diets: A Guide to Health and Nutrition. Jacqueline L. Longe, ed. Gale Cengage, 2008. (9781414429915).
• Encyclopedia of Orchids: 1500 Species in Cultivation. Isobyl la Croix. Timber Press, 2008. (9780881928761).