Feb. 4, 2014
Contact: Rachel Reed, (734) 615-6456, rachreed@umich.edu
Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism Wins Dartmouth Medal for Most Outstanding Reference Work
ANN ARBOR – The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, co-authored by University of Michigan
Professor Donald Lopez, has been awarded the prestigious Dartmouth Medal for 2015, which honors the
most outstanding reference work of the past year according to the American Library Association (ALA).
“If you can apply the word ‘elegant’ to a reference work, this would be the book,” said the ALA in their
award announcement.
The dictionary, co-authored with Robert E. Buswell of UCLA, features more than 5,000 entries totaling
more than a million words on Buddhism and is the most comprehensive book of its kind in English. It
draws from a burgeoning body of scholarship on the religion around the world, as well as centuries of
Buddhist literature.
The selection committee praised The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism for its accessibility to novices as
well as its suitability for experts and academics, and for its extensive coverage of the religion, which was
born on the Indian subcontinent more than two and a half millennia ago.