College and Research Libraries 572 College & Research Libraries storage, processing, retrieval, and trans- mission. Other prominent themes are the information economy (information as a new resource replacing capital and labor), the dangers of information con- trol, and the commercialization of infor- mation. These claims and cautions have a very real basis in fact. But the worried, harried, and even apocalyptic undercur- rents in these articles seem out of propor- tion. Perhaps we have unwittingly come to take our own vantage point at the center of the information whirlwind for the center of the world itself. A generic typology of articles emerges from the collection. First, there are straightforward historical surveys, such as A. J. Meadows's solid chronicle of in- formation science theory. Then there are short- or long-term forecasts which at- tempt to extend the historical survey into the future. A good example is F. Wilfrid Lancaster's 1978 article, "Whither Librar- ies or, Wither Libraries" which predicted paperless information exchange. Many of the pieces, like Anne W. Branscombe's "Who Owns Creativity? Property Rights in the Information Age," are concerned with problem definition. Of those that express the author's opinions or values, most are critical of the consequences of the information revolution. The overall impression, almost certainly unin- tended, is that humanistic values and technology are in conflict. Only the arti- cles on ethics are both personal and posi- tive in tone. Many of the articles adopt either the dualistic or the therapeutic approach. The dualistic approach presents a topic in terms of opposing interests (freedom of infor-mation versus privacy, intellec- tual property versus dissemination, etc.) which must somehow be adjudicated. The therapeutic approach sees social phenomena (inequality in access to in- formation, information overload, job loss through automation) as problems, for which cures must be found. Both ap- proaches leave the reader with a list of conflicts, implying that solutions are im- - minent. Scholarship that looks toward the future in this way dates rather quickly. November1992 Although this collection is far from per- fect, library school faculty may wish to use it as a text, or as a starting point for course readings of their own design. Every aca- demic librarian ought to be familiar with the issues covered in this book, but they might be better off compiling their own "ideal" anthology.-Jean Alexander, North- western University, Evanston, Illinois. Knowledge, Power, and the Congress. Ed. by William H. Robinson, and Clay H. Wellborn. Washington, D.C.: Congres- sional Quarterly, 1991. GSBN 0-87187-632- 9); paper (ISBN 0-87187-631-0). Nothing is so commonplace among librarians and information professionals as the belief that we live in an informa- tion age. Nor is anything so unchal- lenged among many of us as the claim that knowledge is power. Yet we seldom test our assertions. We rarely pit them against the stubborn realities beyond the walls of academia. In this book, Knowl- edge, Power, and the Congress, a collection of papers presented at a symposium sponsored by the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, we have an op- portunity to examine some of the profes- sion's shibboleths. This book explores the interplay between understanding and the manipulation of resources and considers the practical worth of our era's proliferation of data. The testing ground for these asser- tions about information and knowledge is the United States Congress. Repre- senting a variety of disciplines and a host of perspectives, the authors of these papers allow us to see firsthand how Congress-arguably the most powerful legislative body in the world-attempts to make decisions with what are argu- ably the most extensive sources of infor- mation in the world. The editors of the collection, William H. Robinson, deputy director of Congressional Research Ser- vice, and Clay H. Wellborn, also with the Service as a policy research manager, draw together an impressive array of special- ists-historians and sociologists, econo- mists and political theorists, journalists and work-a-day politicians-to partici- pate in a spirited debate. The contribu- tors comment, speculate, and quarrel about a range of topics, including the man- agement of vast amounts of information, the limits and potentials of social research in informing public policy, and the differ- ence between information and knowl- edge. The results are enlightening. Mancur Olson, a professor of econom- ics at the University of Maryland, argues persuasively, in a paper typical of the -volume as a whole, that ideology rather than any reasoned evidence from the so- cial sciences determines the thinking of most voters and politicians. Both Left and Right, he charges, rarely have any evidence for their policies: they merely labor under what he terms a "rational ignorance." In a response to Olson's re- marks, Newt Gingrich, the ubiquitous representative from Georgia, counters that people (and by implication Con- gress) are not rationally ignorant, as Olson maintains, but are rationally in- formed . Members of Congress learn what they need - not all they could. They recognize that they must make the best decisions possible under the con- straints of limited time and knowledge. "Life is sloppy, hard, and complicated," Gingrich reminds us, "and too often our academic and intellectual elites have withdrawn from the fundamental reali- ties of life." According to Gingrich, Olson's academic blinders prevent him from comprehending the realities bey- ond the economist's graph. In a less combative and more scholarly vein, Ernest May, a professor of history at Harvard, in a penetrating article en- titled "Knowledge, Power and National Security," offers a parallel caveat to Gingrich's insistence that we should take all of life into our analysis. May argues that we must never confuse infor- mation and knowledge. To illustrate his point, May compares the French and German intelligence corps prior to the Second World War. He offers an example in which the Germans' superior knowl- edge of the character and thinking of their enemy enabled them to act deci- sively even with very limited informa- tion, while the Allies' access to superb intelligence and an enormous amount of Book Reviews 573 detailed information, by contrast, was virtually worthless without a correspond- ing knowledge. May's analysis has merit for us today. In an age enamored with the potential uses of information and a Congress awed by its burgeoning quantity and availabil- ity, we would do well to consider the sig- nificant ways in which knowledge and information differ. Knowledge, Power and the Congress confines its focus to the insti- tutional life and political realities of Con- gress. '!he volume isn't aimed at or written by academic librarians, although James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, con- tributes a brief foreword to the volume. Even so, this title holds relevance for aca- demic librarianship. While the book will not likely alter any collection develop- ment policies or suggest improvements in the day-to-day realities of the aca- demic library, it offers its readers an op- portunity to examine afresh the interplay between information and life-between data and understanding. It raises the kind of questions that we librarians and infor- mation professionals need to explore- questions about the nature of power, the significance of knowledge, and the meaning of the information revolution. Scholarly, thought-provoking, and sur- prisingly relevant, the book exemplifies the best in Congressional Quarterly's publishing tradition.-Steve McKinzie, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Science at Harvard University: Historical Perspectives. Ed. by Clark A. Elliott and Margaret W. Rossiter. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1992 (distribu- tor, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, N.J.). 380p. alk. paper, $35 (ISBN 0-934223-12-2.). LC 89-64067. For most of its history, Harvard Uni- versity has been home to a considerable share of the science done in North Amer- ica. Thus, when the university was pre- paring to celebrate its 350th anniversary in 1986, a volume commemorating Har- vard's contribution to the organization and cognitive development of science in the United States made eminent sense. It also made sense that Clark A. Elliott and Margaret W. Rossiter would