Booklist Review

The Complete Scholarship Book arranges more than 5,000 entries alphabetically by award name. Entries include dollar amount, deadline, field/major, a brief description, and address information. No telephone numbers are provided. Most people will skip the unnecessary icons used to flag entries by broad discipline and start with the more comprehensive subject indexes, which list all entry numbers associated with more specialized fields. For instance, the index lists entries for Library Science, Art History, Journalism, etc., under the icon symbolizing the Humanities major/career objective. A separate special-criteria index lists entries for such categories as disabled, GPA 3.5 , heritage (e.g., African, Italian), athletics (e.g., football, tennis), and more. An index by institution allows the reader to find scholarships from the University of Maine, for example. It would be nice if the next edition had a single comprehensive index, rather than separate indexes broken into sub-categories. The publisher of this book also maintains the FastWEB scholarship database (http://www.fastweb.com/), which is free to individuals and available by institutional subscription. Scholarships, Grants, Fellowships, & Endowments arranges entries in two sections: a listing by state with scholarships by college/university, and a separate alphabetical listing by foundation. Introductory matter claims that more than 100,000 "free money opportunities" are listed, which could be true if awards with multiple recipients (general college scholarships and loans) are totaled. Page sampling indicates approximately 3,200 entries in all, each of which provides an address, a telephone number, and a brief description. There are indexes by college/university name and by foundation, but librarian-author Johnson does not provide a subject index to the awards. In fact, she states that "the book has not been cross-referenced in an attempt to encourage the readers to read the entire book" ! Both of these resources include funding opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study from institutions of higher education and from various foundations and associations. Both contain advice about college planning and applying for money. However, potential applicants will quickly realize that indexing in books on scholarships and grants can make their quest easy or difficult. Neither of these titles comes up to par on indexing, although The Complete Scholarship Book does merit consideration. Libraries that own Gale's comprehensive, well-indexed Scholarships, Fellowships, and Loans may have sufficient coverage.