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 



Book Reviews 199

an extensive index. The supplementary 
CD-ROM, tucked in a sleeve attached to 
the rear endpaper, contains two appen-
dices, one of color digital photographs of 
the dust jackets, covers and title pages of 
Miller’s separate publications, the other 
of photographs of the copyright pages 
of the same. 

The nine main sections of the bibli-
ography consist of the following parts: 
“Separate Publications” (books wholly or 
substantially by Miller including English 
and American first editions, arranged 
chronologically); a section of grayscale 
photographs of the dust jackets, covers, 
and title pages of the separate publica-
tions described in the previous section; 
“Collected Editions” (collections of plays 
gathered from earlier volumes, arranged 
chronologically); “First-Appearance 
Contributions to Books, Pamphlets, and 
Occasional Publications” (titles in which 
Miller writings appear for the first time 
in works written or edited by others, or 
in such occasional works such as theater 
playbills, arranged chronologically); 
“First Appearances in Magazines and 
Newspapers” (Miller writings that first 
appeared in these formats including es-
says, reviews, letters, interviews, and po-
ems, arranged chronologically); “Transla-
tions” (translations of Miller’s plays and 
prose, arranged by language and, within 
each language, arranged alphabetically 
by title); “Publications in Braille” (ar-
ranged alphabetically by title; titles subar-
ranged by date); “Music” (titles by Miller 
set to music, arranged alphabetically); 
and, finally, “Blurbs” (blurbs written by 
Miller arranged chronologically).

For each of the books described in 
“Separate Publications,” Dr. Crandell pro-
vides a title page transcription/descrip-
tion, copyright page transcription, size 
and collation, pagination, content notes, 
binding description (using G. Thomas 
Tanselle’s method for the description of 
binding cloths), description of the paper 
stocks of text and endpapers and notes 
on stained or gilt edges, publication dates 
and prices, notes regarding where and by 

whom the book was printed, collection lo-
cations of copies examined by the author, 
and special notes as deemed appropriate. 
For Miller’s plays, the date and location 
of first and/or important productions is 
provided. For original scripts for film 
and television productions (for example, 
The Misfits), there are notes regarding the 
casts and release dates. 

There is less detail regarding the physi-
cal description of the works described in 
the other sections of this bibliography. 
Indeed, most of the translated works were 
not actually seen by the author. The pho-
tographs included in both the grayscale 
illustrations printed within the book and 
the digital color images found on the 
accompanying CD-ROM are restricted 
to the works described in the “Separate 
Publications” section of the bibliography. 

It is Dr. Crandell’s carefully done bib-
liographic description of Miller’s separate 
publications and the augmenting photo-
graphic documentation of these books 
that form the principal contribution of 
his book to Miller scholarship, though the 
list of translations and of Braille editions 
also appear to fill in gaps within previ-
ous bibliographic and critical surveys of 
Miller’s work. 

Crandell states the scope of his book 
clearly in his introduction. This is not a 
survey of criticism of Miller ’s work; it 
is not a performance history of his dra-
matic works or of filmed adaptations of 
these works; it does not serve as a device 
that synopsizes plots or provides critical 
analysis of his works. 

Previous books that do fulfill some 
of those functions include Tetsumaro 
Hayashi’s Arthur Miller Criticism (1930–
1967) (Metchuan, N.J.: The Scarecrow 
Press, 1969) and Hayashi’s updated and 
expanded second edition of that work An 
Index to Arthur Miller Criticism (Metchuan, 
N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1976). The great 
bulk of Hayashi’s books are devoted to 
secondary literature about Miller and 
his works, for which he provides brief 
bibliographic citations. Similarly, John H. 
Ferres’s Arthur Miller: A Reference Guide 



200 College & Research Libraries March 2012

(Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979) is principally a 
guide to secondary literature about Miller, 
though, unlike Hayashi, he provides brief 
synopses of and quotations from the 
books, essays, and articles cited. Finally, 
and most massively, is Stefani Koorey’s 
889-page book Arthur Miller’s Life and 
Literature: An Annotated and Comprehen-
sive Guide (Lanham, Md, and London: 
The Scarecrow Press, 20000. This work 
provides brief descriptions of the primary 
printed works of Miller (though without 
the bibliographic detail provided by Cran-
dell), as well as annotated descriptions of 
secondary sources, a guide to manuscript 
locations, and descriptions of electronic 
media resources such as film adaptations, 
sound recordings, and Internet sites. For 
most students and researching critics of 
Miller’s work, Koorey’s work is probably 
the most useful of all the titles mentioned 
in this review and the most essential for 
an academic library to possess.

However, Crandell’s book is a fine 
complement to Koorey’s book, due to its 
extensive bibliographic detail—especially 
of the illustrated “Separate Works”—and 
for its list of translations. For a collector 
of Miller’s printed works, either private 
or institutional, Crandell’s book is a wise 
and useful guide.

A few small points of criticism may be 
made. Though for the most part Cran-
dell’s book is meticulous in its accuracy, a 
spot check of citations did find one error. 
In his entry for the appearance of Miller’s 
story “Bees” in an issue of the Michigan 
Quarterly Review, Crandell transcribes its 
subtitle as “Story (to be spoken)” when 
it actually is “A Story to Be Spoken.” It 
would have been helpful within the main 
entries for A View from the Bridge to note 
that later versions of text had been greatly 
revised since its initial appearance as a 
one-act play intended to be staged with 
the one act A Memory of Two Mondays. 
Likewise, in the translations section, one 
does not know which version of A View 
from the Bridge has been translated. Finally, 
though one can well understand that this 
work is not intended to be a catalogue of 

the many stage productions of Miller’s 
works, the notation of important film and 
television adaptations of works written 
for the stage would have been appreci-
ated, and quite appropriate for an artist 
with such ties to the film world.

Physically, Arthur Miller: A Descriptive 
Bibliography is a handsome production, 
with fine paper, generous margins, and 
spacious placing of type, making it much 
easier and more pleasant to read than 
many bibliographies, where cost cutting 
may overrule elegance. However, it does 
seem that, for a book costing almost 
$200.00, it might have been a better deci-
sion to have substituted printed color 
illustrations for the grayscale ones, rather 
than put them on a separate CD-ROM. 
For ease of use that would have been a 
better and less redundant solution, and 
particularly for libraries, but also for 
individual owners it would have been a 
more secure and durable choice.—Scott 
Krafft, Northwestern University. 

A Different Kind of Web: New Connec-
tions between Archives and Our Users. 
Ed. Kate Theimer. Chicago: Society of 
American Archivists, 2011. 369p. alk. 
paper, $69.95 (ISBN 1931666393). LC 
2011-027013.

Kate Theimer, editor of A Different Kind of 
Web, has assembled an outstanding col-
lection of case studies and commentaries 
that reflect on the changing roles and 
relationships of archives and archivists 
with their users in a Web 2.0 world. One 
of the rich qualities of this book is the 
wide selection of case studies (13 total) 
that represent not only a variety of ar-
chives, but also all stakeholders within 
the profession and its beneficiaries. From 
the special collections of large academic 
research institutions such as the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and 
the tens of millions of records from the 
National Archives of Australia, to the 
smaller institutions of Dickerson College 
and recently established Jewish Women’s 
Archives, this book provides a variety of 
archival flavors.