(SAVANNAH)--Out of more than 23,000 titles submitted for review to CHOICE Magazine, one of the library industry’s leading journals, editors of the publication have selected ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE by Aberjhani and Sandra L. West as one of its Outstanding Academic Titles for 2004.  Announcement of the award was made in the magazine’s newly-released January 2005 issue.

Listing of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles Awards is an annual event that has drawn comparisons to the National Book Awards. Of the more than 23,000 titles submitted to CHOICE for review within a given year, approximately 6,600 are actually featured in the publication. The annual listing of outstanding titles represents roughly 10 percent, or 660, of those reviewed. The titles are selected based on such criteria as: “overall excellence in presentation and scholarship“; and, “originality or uniqueness of treatment.” Among its other distinctions, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE was the first encyclopedia published on the famous cultural and political movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

“This is much more than just an exceptional honor for me and Professor West,” said the author Aberjhani. “This is really a triumph for the men and women of the Harlem Renaissance who lived such sensitive, profound, and risky lives to give the world their many creative, political, and spiritual gifts.  We are really just now learning the magnitude of those gifts and how much of what they achieved in the last century forms the substance of what we call both American and African-American culture today. Even more important are the lessons we can still learn from them and their marvelous ability to transform the pain and injustices of the world into empowering art and corrective spiritual vision.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (Facts On File) recently went into its second printing and has been added to the publisher’s database for history and literature.