198 College & Research Libraries March 2012

Eric J. Forte, Cassandra J. Hartnett, and 
Andrea L. Sevetson. Fundamentals of 
Government Information: Mining, Find-
ing, Evaluating, and Using Government 
Resources. New York: Neal-Schuman 
Publishers, Inc., 2011. 396p. $80 (ISBN 
9781555707378). LC 2011-009275.

Today, the concept of government infor-
mation brings to mind more than just law 
and politics. Governmental entities, for 
example, are responsible for developing 
and setting standards on basic needs like 
the air we breathe and water we drink. In 
this book, the authors state that their “…
ardent belief is that greater knowledge of 
government resources can strengthen the 
skills of any librarian.” The authors also 
note that this book is “…the first govern-
ment information text to be conceived, 
written, and published in the twenty-first 
century.” As such, the importance and 
uniqueness of this resource makes it an 
essential part of any library’s reference 
collection. Readers will find that this is 
an expertly compiled guide on how to 
find and use various resources to search 
for government information.

This book is comprehensive and well-
organized, consisting of 15 chapters 
divided into two parts. Part 1 includes 
chapters 1 to 6 and covers such topics as 
the history of government information, 
reference interview and research strate-
gies, electronic and print tools, legislative 
publications, guides and indexes, legal 
resources, and presidential documents. 
Part 2 includes chapters 7 to 15 and cov-
ers government publications, statistical 
information and resources, health and 
educational information, scientific and 
technical information, environment and 
energy information, government finance, 
consumer and census information, and 
historical and archival information.

Chapter 9, which discusses health 
information, is particularly interesting 
and provides a brief history and back-
ground of the United States Department 
of Health and Human Services, National 
Institutes of Health, and the National Li-
brary of Medicine. It mentions PubMed, 

MEDLINE and MeSH, as well as different 
types of health information and statistics 
including vital statistics, survey data, and 
research and clinical trial data. There is 
also a section on federal resources and 
organizations, agencies, and a mention 
of print resources such as the MMWR, 
National Center for Health Statistics of 
the CDC, and the Healthy People series.

Each chapter has an introduction and 
conclusion, a set of exercises, a list of 
sources mentioned in the chapter, and 
a reference section complete with cita-
tions and Web links. There is also a list of 
figures provided and an index. Over 50 
challenging exercises are included, and 
they require one to have the knowledge 
to determine which databases to use and 
how to search them regarding various 
possible scenarios. One small sugges-
tion would have been for the authors 
to include examples of a few possible 
answers to the exercises, so readers can 
assess whether they responded correctly.

This book would be useful to academic 
and public librarians who, for example, 
get reference questions about health in-
formation and statistical data. It would 
also be useful to library school students to 
develop their knowledge and skills in the 
subject of government information.—Judy 
P. Bolstad, University of California, Berkeley.

George W. Crandell. Arthur Miller: A 
Descriptive Bibliography. New Castle, 
Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2011. 244p. alk. 
paper + 1 CD-ROM. $195.00 (ISBN 
9781584562887). LC 2011-024543.

George W. Crandell is Associate Dean of 
the Graduate School at Auburn Univer-
sity and a professor of English. This is 
his second book-length bibliography, the 
first also devoted to the work of another 
important 20th-century American dra-
matist: Tennessee Williams: A Descriptive 
Bibliography [Pittsburgh: University of 
Pittsburg Press, 1995]. Besides the intro-
ductory matter, which includes a careful 
discussion of the book’s scope, methodol-
ogy, and vocabulary, the present book is 
arranged in nine sections and followed by