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The redesigned Berg Fashion Library site has been named Most Improved Product from The Charleston Advisor “Best and Worst” Readers’ Choice Awards.
Announced by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA): "Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, along with the online Berg Fashion Library, was selected for its extensive and outstanding multidisciplinary coverage of dress, fashion and its impact on society. The 10-volume encyclopedia is a landmark of scholarship that is complemented and updated by the database’s content, including e-books, color images, and articles.
The Encyclopedia and Berg Fashion Library were both selected as RUSA 2011 Outstanding Reference Sources. The Outstanding Reference Sources list of titles identifies the most important reference publications for small and medium-sized public and academic libraries published in a given year.
Paul Booth at DePaul University, the Chair of the PCAACA Electronic Reference Award Committee, said: "The committee chose the Berg Fashion Library as our Electronic Reference Award winner for 2013. Not only was the quality of research astoundingly well developed, but its use of web-specific dynamics, including images and links to secondary materials, provided a thorough and insightful investigation of the history of fashion. The breadth of material provided a strong sense of history and the focus on individual fashion elements helped personalize the experience. We appreciate the time, energy and work that was put into the Fashion Library!"
From The Bookseller: "Berg Fashion Library was praised for being both well-executed and having a clear business strategy behind it."
From the IPG: "[Berg Fashion Library] was hailed by the judges for its ambition and for better-than-forecast sales figures. 'This is an amazing project that has been carefully developed and beautifully executed,' they said. 'It will be used for a very long time in its market.'"
From the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers: "This ambitious project involved creating a complex fashion taxonomy and employing intuitive navigation and strong visual design to meet the needs of the fashion and artistic community."
“An absolutely absorbing resource. It contains very strong narratives which are extremely rich in background detail and context. The various sections and demarcations are logical, self explanatory and easy to locate. The advanced search screen was a dream ... I never tired of discovering many of the numerous and fascinating facts, contained within, and it was a joy!”
- Reference Reviews
"In a world of fewer new reference sources either in print or online, the hard work, will, and determination of Berg have come to fruition in an exciting new resource. Congratulations to the little company that could."
- Booklist feature
"[Of the Berg Fashion Library:] New resource incorporating the full text of The Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion. Included are 3,600+ color images, an extensive time line of fashion, and updates of the Berg fashion studies e-books. Audience high school and up."
- Booklist
"This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in fashion and dress but particularly useful for students in anthropology, art history, cultural studies, museum studies, and, or course, fashion and textiles. It is recommended for undergraduate and graduate institutions with majors in these areas plus large public libraries."
- Booklist [starred status]
"[A] must-read."
- Investors Chronicle
"Berg Fashion Library is the leading resource for students and researchers of fashion studies. Interdisciplinary in nature, with great visual and integrated content, this collection is invaluable for researchers in the areas of fashion, museum studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and more. Earning our gold star rating, it is critical for students of both historical and contemporary fashion."
- Library Journal
"The leading source of information for anyone working in, researching, or studying fashion."
- CHOICE
"Perhaps it's time for the fashionistas among us to embrace our inner nerd. This isn't your average dry as toast resource – it boasts over 2,000 images and some 700 plus articles. Its clever global organisation and near flawless presentation make it less at home in an old library and more shown off in open plan furniture. A must for the man who has everything!"
- Gay Times
"This work is arguably the new benchmark in its field ... the set is magnificent ... Essential for larger public libraries and academic institutions; appropriate for students of cultural, social, artistic, and anthropological studies."
- Library Journal [starred status]
"The true showstopper in this field is the new ten-volume Berg/Oxford Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion."
- Library Journal [starred status]
"It is hard to avoid the use of superlatives in reviewing this ambitious, erudite and authoritative series. Taking dress, fashion and (implicitly) the textiles and other materials that have adorned cross-cultural bodies throughout history as its themes, this ten-volume publication (with 6000 pages and 200 images) provides an extraordinary and rigorous contribution, not only to these, but a breadth of related disciplines."
- Textile Journal
"After more than five years of meticulous fieldwork, extensive travel, writing, and more writing, [Eicher’s] team produced a document that gives every corner of the globe equal scholarly representation. The encyclopedia is a brilliant resource … more comprehensive than any history of dress or study of fashion on the shelf. It was created to be a record – the fairest of them all."
- Worn
"Bloomsbury Fashion Central’s content is notable due to its historical through present day and international coverage of fashion that could be useful for programs such as fashion, history, humanities, drama, and art….Berg Fashion Library (BFL) stands out…. because of its international and historical coverage in the form of reference articles and photographs (from Berg print resources) which may make it easier for students to capture the historical significance in addition to the aesthetics and trends of fashion when paired with the high quality photographs."
- Council of Chief Librarians
