Tips for Finding/Using Book Reviews
Book reviews, especially scholarly or lengthy ones, can be good sources of information about the author of the book, his/her scholarly background and biases, as well as how this book compares to others in the field (or if it's unique).
Use the indexes to the scholarly literature in your field (and related fields) to find book reviews in the scholarly journals for your discipline.
Finding Book Reviews
- Book Review IndexLists reviews of scholarly, non-fiction, and fiction books. Use the "Retro" version for books published before 1983.
- H-Net ReviewsA source of scholarly reviews for books and media in all areas of the humanities and social sciences fields. Reviews and reviewed items may be in any language. Simple and advanced search as well as browse lists are the main options for identifying reviews. Advanced search allows limits (including to which list the review was published), but no limits for language.
- New York Review of BooksUse the "Opinion Archives" to access these in-depth reviews written by scholars and well-known authors.
- ProQuest historical newspapers. The New York times This link opens in a new windowNew York Times Book Reviews are known for their quality and in-depth comparisons with related works
- Times Digital Archive, 1785 - 1985Reviews fiction and non-fiction for the years covered. In the "Limit the Current Search" options check on "Book Reviews" (under Features - Arts and Entertainment).
Using OneSearch
"Doing Research" by Viewoftheworld, from Flickr
WorldCat
WorldCat is a searchable database of thousands of library catalogs from around the world.
You can search here to see if a book you can't find through OneSearch exists elsewhere.
Successful Searching
Good sources of information are well-organized. Searching in article and book databases is easier if you know about how they are organized, so here are some tips to make your search for resources more effective and less frustrating:
- Search for people using the "Last Name, First Name" format.
- When searching for rulers of countries you may need to search by the name they ruled under (Nicholas II), by their birth names, or by combining the name they ruled under with the subject term "history," or the country name ("Victoria" and "history" and "Great Britain" all as subjects).
- Note that countries have "official" names as well ("Great Britain," not "England" or "Britain" or "United Kingdom").
- Any subject is likely to have an encyclopedia, dictionary relevant to your work, so search in OneSearch’s Advanced Search change Any Term to Subject, enter the term you want and the word dictionary ("Russia dictionary"). The same is true for terms such as sources (for primary sources), bibliography, and biography (ex: d:Russia d:bibliography).
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: if you keep coming up with either nothing or too much, please email me, make an appointment with me, For help now look for the LiveChat box near the bottom of this page.
