Funding for anthropological research /

Cantrell and Wallen offer 704 sketches of foundations, corporations, federal government agencies, associations, and professional societies that will fund anthropological research. The word ``anthropological'' in the title is somewhat misleading, since this directory has index entries for most of the social science disciplines, as well as for country names, and for the various levels of the ``student process'' (e.g., exchanges, fellowships, predoctoral support, field research, travel grants, postdoctoral support, doctoral support). This publication is one of several titles from Oryx Press this past year, all of them growing from the initial title, Directory of Research Grants (1975-) which is searchable as Dialog file 85, ``Grants.'' While a number of high-quality giant directories are available that are heavily used by the scholarly community, such as Foundation Directory (CH, Jan '75), Foundation Grants to Individuals (CH, Jan '73), and Annual Register of Grant Support (CH, May '74), this one is focused on the social sciences. Entries include name, address, contact person, program description, applicant eligibility/limitations, and deadline information. There is a subject index. Names and addresses of organizations profiled are listed at the back. This source will be welcomed by grants librarians and faculty and graduate students. Recommended for every academic library reference collection where the institution expects its social science faculty to seek grants to support research and projects.-A. Haigh, Michigan State University

Libraries with a clientele interested in seeking grants and other sources of funding have undoubtedly purchased at least some of the numerous directories in the field that have been published recently. Funding for Anthropological Research, like most of the others, includes some grant programs that are easily found in other sources and some that are not. The immediate thought of many librarians may be that this work is another spin-off from the same publisher's Grants database and its print product, the Directory of Research Grants (reviewed in RBB, July 1986). However, it is not at all related and was separately compiled by an anthropologist and a university grants officer. Although the DRG is more than five times the size of the new work (4,000 entries versus 700), at least half of the grant programs included in the new anthropology volume are not in the larger directory. This new work is set up similarly to the Directory of Grants in the Humanities, the Grants database spin-off reviewed in this issue, with each entry containing full descriptions of programs, eligibility or limitations, plus fiscal, application, and deadline information and subject terms. However, the name of a contact person isn't given. The subject index as well as the sponsor-type index is reasonably detailed and complete. The book concludes with a list of the funding agencies and a bibliography. The compilers have viewed anthropology quite broadly (inherent, perhaps, in the nature of the discipline) and have included grants in a wide variety of fields that might relate such as sociology, education, history, and, most noticeably, foreign area studies. Even art history, mathematics, and medicine are covered. Thus, this directory could be useful in other disciplines. One caveat with this directory is that the publisher does not indicate whether the work will be updated. Since a directory like this quickly becomes out-of-date, the absence of that assurance of updating and the high price (the same as the much larger DRG) will cause librarians to think seriously before buying it. University libraries with graduate programs in anthropology may need to purchase Funding for Anthropological Research; other libraries may prefer to depend on the DRG and some of the other titles mentioned in the review of the Directory of Grants in the Humanities above.