312 Reviews

including the Vital and Health Statistics Series more popularly known as the “Rainbow Series,” from the colored covers used to distinguish each series.

The index (pp. 279-306) includes publication titles, database names, subjects, and federal agencies. There are two appendices, “Appendix 1: Publications” and “Appendix 2: Addresses” of major agencies, bureaus, and vendors. In both appendices the author makes note of other sources.

The only comparable reference source to this bibliography is MEDOC: Index to Government Publications in the Medical and Health Sciences. MEDOC is produced at the Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah. MEDOC indexes include title, author, report number, and subject. According to the author of this bibliography, MEDOC at first “was based on the local depository collection. The editors try to identify and collect many non-depository items” (p. 8). However, MEDOC is not an easy index to use and only a few annotations are included. Most health science libraries do not have depository collections. Therefore, the problem of quickly obtaining documents cited in HAVOC remains. Recently, a commercial vendor, Readex, announced a subscription service to all items cited in MEDOC, “U.S. Medical Documents on Microfiche.” This service will help fill yet another gap for medical and health science libraries.

The author summarizes this work very adeptly when she states: “I used to think that there were certain secrets that would reveal the mysteries of the Federal Register and other government publications. I learned in time that dogged perseverance, telephone calls, and considerable luck were more likely to work. Putting together this bibliography involved solving many bibliographic puzzles. . . . I tried to put the pieces together completely and correctly but with varying success” (p. xiv). However, it is the opinion of this reviewer that the book does a very good job of meeting its intended scope of being a selection tool/finding aid to U.S. government publications in the medical, health sciences and related fields.

LISA RAINS RUSSELL Chief Medical Librarian

The University of Alabama Health Sciences Library

Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0378 USA

Freedom at Risk: Secrecy, Censorship, and Repression in the 1980s. Edited by Richard 0. Curry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. 423~. ISBN: O-87722-543-5. LC: 87-30348. $29.95.

Curry, Professor of American History at the University of Connecticut, has collected 25 essays that serve as an indictment of what is seen to be the Reagan Administration’s belief that “individual liberties are secondary to the requirements of national security.” Of the book’s 25 contributed essays four in particular strike this reviewer as focusing specifically on issues of U.S. government information policy: “Federal Restrictions on the Free Flow of Academic Info~ation and Ideas” by John Shattuck, “The Reagan Administration and the Freedom of Info~ation Act” by Diana M. T. K. Autin, “A Proposal to Limit Government-Imposed Secrecy” by Stephen H. Unger, and Donna A. Demac’s “Office of Management and Budget: The Hidden Power.”

Shattuck, vice president of Harvard University for Government, Community, and Public Affairs, in his contribution focuses on the Reagan Administration’s preoccupation with security classification, as embodied in Executive Order 12356. The fear expressed is that “academic research not born classified may, under this order die classified.” Shattuck goes on to review the implications to academe of various adminis~ation initiatives in the areas of restrictions on foreign scholars, atomic energy research, export controls, intensification of security classification, government sponsored research, and prepublication review of grants and contract restraints.

Autin, formerly executive director of the Fund for Open Information and Accountability and now the deputy general counsel of the New York City Bureau of Labor Statistics, sees the administration’s reasons for implementing increased secrecy often centering around the professed needs of national security, “despite its inability to present concrete evidence that a need for increased secrecy exists.” Of particular concern to Autin is the lack of government accountability in meeting the spirit, if not the letter, of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Targeted as of particular concern are the five criteria for waiving fees in obtaining information that were issued by the Justice Department in a 1983 memorandum: 1) That material sought must already be the subject of “genuine public interest”; 2) It must “meaningfully contribute to the public development or understanding of the subject”; 3) The requester must have the qualifications to understand and evaluate the

Reviews 313

materials and the ability to interpret and disseminate the information to the public; 4) The agency must make “an assessment, based upon information provided by the requester, as well as information independently available to the agency, of any personal interest of the requester”; and, 5) If the requested information is already “in the public domain,” such as in the agency’s reading room in Washington, DC, there will be no fee waiver granted. The implementation of these policies is seen as being used to deny legitimate requests for information, or at least to make it more difficult to obtain information under FOIA.

Stephen Unger is a professor of computer science at Columbia University, and from 1981 to 1984 was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, for which he chaired the subcommittee on National Security and Scientific Communication. The crux of this issue, as Unger sees it, is that there is no way to stem the flow of technical information to the Soviet Union without also adversely affecting the information environment in the United States. The situation is complicated and the effects of Reagan Administration efforts are rendered negligible by the fact that other western nations do not follow the same restrictive policies. Indeed, Unger sees the concern for controlling information seriously hampering decision-making processes; likewise, the absence of certain technical information makes intelligent discussion of issues less effective. Unger’s view is that the control of scientific information is more harmful to the U.S. than the occasional piece of information that proves to be of value to many. Proposed remedies are suggested that put the burden of proof for classification need on the advocate of secrecy instead of vice versa; it is suggested that there be congressional oversight of secrecy regulations.

The role of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and its assumptions of power in matters of information policy under the guise of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 is explored and couched in an overt Orwellian context by Donna Demac. Demac is an attorney and educator who specializes in issues of copyright law, information regulation, and media, and will be known to readers of GPR as having previously published in this journal. Her analysis of the OMB is based on what is perceived to be OMB’s overstepping of its legitimate authority to the extent that it routinely has supplanted agency decisions; because of its budget authority its tenacles extended into all levels of government, eliminating by 1985 one-fourth of the government publications that had existed four years earlier. Demac’s concern that OMB’s preoccupation with the cost of information collection too often overlooking matters of content and thereby creating information gaps is astute. Demac also briefly discusses Reagan Administration efforts to privatize various government titles, but under the rubric of the privatization of government information oddly neglects to mention proposals to privatize the National Technical Information Service. The codification of the administration’s efforts to manage (or regulate) information in the form of OMB circular A-130 is glossed over with the comment that the circular’s main problem was that it made sweeping changes while complicated issues were still being discussed. Indeed, Demac argues that OMB was not the agency that should establish guidelines for government information policy. While this may or may not be true, it is unfortunate that Demac chooses not to place the issue in the all important larger context of the struggle between the executive and legislative branches of government for the power inherent in the control of government information.

The other essays in the volume are perhaps less focused on the central issues of government information that fall squarely within the scope of this journal. However, they are all interesting and provocative, and all, as is the case with the four essays previously discussed, are of a liberal bent. Topics run the gamut from the issues of censorship and secrecy, the uncertain future of the First Amendment, national security, drug testing, FBI domestic surveillance, the sanctuary movement, attacks on the media, disinformation tactics, to the Reagan Administration and the courts. The volume closes with a 24-page selected bibliography, which, while useful, tends toward more popular discussions while generally eschewing the scholarly literature.

In spite of the book’s evident political bias and its consequent inability to deal with many issues in a truly balanced or objective manner, Professor Curry is to be complimented on compiling a provocative and intelligent group of essays. Freedom ofRisk will serve best as a casebook on information issues from which debate can be engaged.

BRUCE MORTON Assistant Dean for Public Services Montana State University Libraries

Bozeman, MT 597 17-0022 USA

BOOKS AND OTHER MATERIALS RECEIVED

Biographical Directory of the Council of Economic Advisers. Edited by Robert Sobel and Bernard