Reviews.indd 196 College & Research Libraries such as the American Booksellers Associa- tion, university faculty and administra- tors, and professional associations. But not the American Library Association. The Wiegands learned what they could about the lives of the principals in the case, even tracking down their descendants to find out about their later lives. I particularly enjoyed the portraits of the brilliant strategist Bob Wood, the party loyalist Alan Shaw, the irrepress- ible would-be novelist Ira Jaffe, and their wives Ina, Nena Beth, and Wilma. An FBI informant reported on them this way: “Robert and Ina Wood are the real lead- ers and the party whips, experienced and well traveled and slick as ice.” Alan and Eli were “mere babes in arms” next to Bob Wood, “who keeps them going through flattery and bombast.” The Wiegands are unsympathetic toward the prosecution side, implying that their motives were political, but the pugnacious Assistant County Attorney John Eberle does emerge as an individual. Readers are given ample evidence with which to make up their minds about the rights and wrongs of the case, with a few exceptions. The Wiegands off er litt le back- ground on right-wing groups in Oklahoma such as the American Legion, and they tend to underestimate (in my opinion) grassroots support of racism and nativism. While they acknowledge that the American Communist Party was mouthing the party line from Moscow, they nevertheless view the Communists in the case as basically good-hearted and nonideological. More information on treatment of the American Nazi Party would have provided a useful context for comparison. The authors occasionally hint at their story’s relevance to events today, as when they comment that “another part of Oklahoma’s conservative elite made clear its priorities on civil liberties in periods of national crisis.” They speak their minds more openly in an epilogue, referring to periodic episodes of “paranoid politics” in American history, the antiterrorism bill passed under Clinton, and the USA March 2008 PATRIOT Act. They are heartened that the strength of public opinion can restore the balance. Puzzlingly, they remark that the nation must have emerged from the Oklahoma affair with a “good dose of cynicism.” Perhaps. The performance of the press and the legal system struck me as better then than now. My fi nal impres- sion is one of sad irony, knowing that the temporary victories for freedom of thought and expression recorded in this book were reversed almost as soon as the war was over.—Jean M. Alexander, Carnegie Mellon University. Caribbean Libraries in the 21st Century: Changes, Challenges, and Choices. Ed. Cheryl Peltier-Davis and Shamin Renwick, Medford, N.J.: Informa- tion Today, 2007. 387p. $49.50 (ISBN: 1573873012). LC 2007-9440. This is a current compilation of specially written chapters on a wide-ranging set of topics by knowledgeable people with Ca- ribbean experience. The title is overbroad, however, as there is nearly no att ention to the non–English-speaking islands of the insular Caribbean, countries like Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Haiti. The editors and most of the 40 con- tributing authors have a connection with one of the campuses of the University of the West Indies, supplemented by others working in the Bahamas and the Dutch- speaking countries. Two of the contribu- tors are currently working in the region, and the other two have had considerable experience with IFLA. The subtitle accurately reflects the va- riety of chapters. These include surveys of two countries; institutional histories of large and small academic libraries; examination of services to several spe- cial populations, including people living in rural areas, users of school libraries, blind and print disabled users; and chap- ters, including collection management, a classification scheme for Caribbean legal materials, and special information services to the agricultural sector. Impact and appropriate integration of informa- Book Reviews 197 tion technology are well discussed in contributions on technical services, Inter- net management in public libraries, and digitization efforts. For a region with many information needs and a widely dispersed popula- tion (and a relatively large population of interested people living abroad), there are special problems in resource shar- ing. A major part of the book deals with cooperative efforts among the countries of the region and institutions abroad, par- ticularly virtual libraries of information easily moved “from where it is to where it is needed” in digital form. Two sections focus on additional top- ics including training of library users of academic libraries and establishing and maintaining librarian-lecturer (that is, fac- ulty) partnerships. Attention is also given to the need for librarians who are able to manage change in their institutions and to participate in scholarly publication activities required in universities. A final section deals with a set of prob- lems that, while not unique to the Carib- bean, are of special importance in the region. How can training in the informa- tion professions be cost-eff ectively made available to students who are physically remote from the places where librarians have been traditionally prepared for professional service, typically either at the University of the West Indies (Mona), Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, or the United States? One attempt is a carefully analyzed joint effort between Canadian instructors and the “home” institution at Mona in two courses (graduate, i.e., “post-graduate” in “Managing Elec- tronic Records,” and an undergraduate course in records management principles and practice) through a hybrid method using a variety of Web-based protocols and technologies and occasional visits by faculty to Jamaica. The lengthy “Lessons Learned” section evaluating the experi- ences will be familiar to those elsewhere who have attempted such courses, forthrightly describing the shortcom- ings while looking forward toward the promised improvements. Each individual contribution has an information abstract and is provided with extensive footnotes. There are a few historical photographs and a map of the region. There are also a helpful list of ab- breviations and an extensive index. The book is well-made, with a couple of inex- plicable composition flaws in the Table of Contents noticed. Information Today is to be congratulated for its policy of giving verso of the title-page credit to the creator of the detailed index. For those interested in what is happen- ing in the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean, this is a current, wide-rang- ing, and accessible source of informa- tion.—Charles Wm. Conaway, Florida State University. In Memoriam: Donald E. Riggs Donald E. Riggs, editor of C&RL from 1996 to 2002, died on February 19, 2008. He had recently retired as vice president for information services and univer- sity librarian at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. He had also headed the libraries at the University of Michigan and Arizona State University as well as the Auraria Library in Denver. A native of West Virginia, he earned his masters in library science at the University of Pittsburgh and an Ed.D. from the University of Colorado. He was active in many ALA divisions, including ACRL and LAMA, edited several journals and books and published many articles on a wide range of topics, usually dealing with the management of academic libraries. At Nova Southeastern, he was instrumental in the funding, design and construc- tion of the Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center, a joint use facility shared with the Broward County Public Library.