It’s January, and once again we find ourselves in a time of transition, celebrating the arrival of another new year, while the old year recedes into memory.  And once again, there is a whiff of change in the air, except that “whiff” may not be quite the right word for January 2009.  Tsunami is more like it.

This January, it’s safe to say, we find ourselves in unusually interesting times.  It is, of course, the start of a new year, but there’s more.  We have a new president, one elected on a promise of “change.”  The US economy is in a state of disarray that is increasingly being compared to 1929, and the global economy is following suit.  The US auto industry is threatened with wholesale bankruptcy, unemployment is soaring, and the word “deflation” is being bandied about with increasing frequency.  Banks are refusing to loan money to all but a handful of customers.  Employers are cutting jobs, consumers are tightening their belts, and the overall economic outlook is one of increasing gloom.  And did I mention, by the way, that we’re facing a crisis in scholarly communication brought on, in part, by that disruptive technology, the Internet, not to mention shrinking library budgets?

None of this would be surprising, I suspect, to Joseph Schumpeter, the economist who gave us the memorable phrase “creative destruction” as a shorthand description for capitalism’s distinctive modus operandi.  All well and good, I say, but let’s lay off on the destruction for a while and focus on the creative part.  Surely we would all sleep better as a result.

And here at Choice, we’re prepared to do our bit.  If creativity is what you’re hankering for, you need look no further than this year’s Outstanding Academic Titles feature.  Consider, for example, Experimental Phenomena of Consciousness: A Brief Dictionary (Oxford, 2007), about which the Choice reviewer wrote, “Only rarely is a reference work unflaggingly entertaining, instructive, and worth reading through from beginning to end; this is such a work.  Bachmann, Breitmeyer, and Ögmen present a collection of about 125 psychological effects that involve sensory consciousness.  Each one is intriguing, and some are spectacular.”

Or, if electronic resources are your thing, how about Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works from Alexander Street Press?  In the words of the Choice reviewer, “This is a great resource; even though it pulls together in one place literature that may already be in many research libraries, it also includes unique primary literature not easily accessed.”

So maybe the weather outside is frightful, the economic forecast is gloomy, and we are all in need of a little good news.  Well folks, that’s exactly what this year’s OAT list is, good news, and the two examples above only scratch the surface.  I’m confident that the more time you spend with this list of 679 outstanding new works, the more you’ll be impressed by the range and breadth of the creative effort it represents.  Dear reader, is this perhaps a proposition on which we can all agree?  You know the answer I’m hoping for.  Yes, we can.–IER