The American Association of Geographers International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology serves as the authoritative reference for libraries, geographers, GIScientists and students around the globe. Five authors with UVM ties contributed to the first edition for the encyclopedia, which will be updated annually. Recently, the collection received a prestigious CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 award from the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Authors with UVM ties to the encyclopedia include Meghan Cope, UVM professor of geography, and Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, professor of geography and geography department chair. Two former UVM faculty members who contributed to the book include Padraig Carmody (now associate professor and department head of geography at Trinity College in Dublin) and Matt Hannah (now the chair of cultural geography in the faculty of biology, chemistry & earth sciences at the Universitat Bayreuth in Germany). Another contributor is Richard Kujawa, professor of geography at St. Michael's College and an adjunct professor of geography at UVM.
The Encyclopedia’s Editor-in-Chief Douglas Richardson noted, “this six-year encyclopedia project also resulted in building a collaborative international community of leading geography scholars and researchers who served as editors and authors, and with the international geographical societies and associations with whom the AAG interacted throughout the creation of The International Encyclopedia of Geography.”
The landmark work is written for a graduate student audience, but also in a style to be accessible to undergraduates and the educated public.
Reviewed by CHOICE in October 2017, the Encyclopedia also received a “Summing Up” award of “Highly Recommended” for community college and undergraduate students through professionals/practitioners as well as for general readers. The selective CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title awards are determined by the importance of the work within the field, the value of the work for undergraduate students and in building an undergraduate library, originality, and overall excellence in presentation and scholarship.
"The UVM geography department has, and continues to be, internationally recognized for the breadth and depth of its interdisciplinary scholarship," said Dupigny-Giroux. "We are delighted that our scholar-teachers are able to closely connect to current research across the field, and pave the way for new generations of students to benefit from our work."
A description of the encylopedia and some sample chapters are online.
