The Alberta Fact Book

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Apart from an obvious Southern Alberta bias, there appear to be no
criteria for selection of facts in this book. The author indicates that
communities “were selected on the basis of what [the] information
contributed to the sense of who Albertans are, how they live now, or
have lived in the past.” However, he doesn’t tell us what kind of
contribution merited inclusion. For example, in the languages section,
he tells us that German speakers outnumber both French speakers and
Ukranian speakers; however, while this book does not include an entry
for German-Albertans, it does contain long descriptions of
Franco-Albertans and Ukranian-Albertans.

The Alberta Fact Book is more an encyclopedia than a fact book. There
are about 175 alphabetically organized entries ranging in length from a
paragraph to three or four pages. Some entries are detailed, while
others are inexplicably brief. For example, the Leaf-cutter bee and all
of Alberta’s birds are accorded about the same amount of space.
“Rough fescu” (a grass) receives a half-page treatment, while
Alberta’s wild rose, the provincial flower, does not appear to be
mentioned at all; if it were mentioned, one would encounter it only by
reading the book from start to finish (there is no index).

Because it is not comprehensive and lacks an index, this book is not
recommended as a reference tool for libraries.