Choice just celebrated its forty-fifth anniversary, having launched in March 1964 thanks to a generous grant from the Council on Library Resources.  In its first year, Choice published 3,397 book reviews (“In the Balance,” Choice 2, April 1965: 77), quite an accomplishment for a small venture operating without the benefits of the Internet or digital technologies.  It even exceeded the goal stated in the first issue, “to give brief, authoritative opinions on 2,500 to 3,000 titles per year” (“In the Balance,” Choice 1, March 1964: 13).

Since this auspicious beginning the number of reviews has steadily climbed, and this past year (this issue begins a new volume year) Choice reviewed a total of 7,141 books and electronic publications, more than double the number of reviews published in volume 1.  To achieve this ambitious goal, six Choice subject editors, who possess a wide range of academic library and teaching experience, examined more than 25,000 volumes as well as countless Web sites.  From this extraordinary bounty of new titles, they judiciously selected for review works they deemed most relevant and important for undergraduate academic collections and matched them with qualified teaching faculty and academic librarians from our pool of 3,000 reviewers.

Of these 7,141 titles reviewed this past volume year (v. 46), 6,715 were of monographs and 426 of electronic resources.  A further breakdown by audience levels and recommendation ratings reveals other interesting data.  Choice’s readers are particularly concerned with audience-level information, and accordingly we ask reviewers to specify the audience levels for which a title is appropriate, checking all that apply from a list of the following: general readers; lower-division/ two-year technical program students; upper-division students; graduate students; research/faculty; and practitioners/professionals.  For titles reviewed this past year, 3,543 (50 percent) were judged appropriate for lower-division/two-year program students; 5,903 (83 percent) as appropriate for some level of undergraduate student; and 1,238 (17 percent) as appropriate for only graduate students, faculty, or practitioners.  In addition, reviewers checked 3,374 titles (47 percent) as suitable for general readers, underscoring Choice’s value for public library collections.

Evaluative information is also critical to Choice readers, and to highlight this information editors assign one of five recommendation levels at the end of each review based on the reviewer’s overall assessment: Essential, Highly Recommended, Recommended, Optional, and Not Recommended (definitions of these levels are found at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/choice/about.cfm).  Of the 7,141 titles reviewed this year, 466 (7 percent) were rated Essential; 2,420 (34 percent) Highly Recommended; 3,816 (53 percent) Recommended; 295 (4 percent) Optional; and 144 (2 percent) Not Recommended.  We editors work hard to hone our selection skills and identify the best titles to bring to the attention of our readers.  We are gratified that our selections result in an abundance of favorably reviewed publications and a paucity of not recommended titles.

Statistics do not make for exciting reading, but we track such data closely at Choice as a way to review and improve our own performance.  After forty-five years of publication, Choice is still going strong, and as we celebrate this anniversary we take this occasion to affirm our continuing commitment to Choice’s important mission of assisting librarians and the wider academic community in building undergraduate academic collections by reviewing new scholarly publications.—FG