Book Reviews

This guide will enable you to locate reviews of books, which are generally found in newspapers, journals and magazines.

Starting Points

Many journals publish book reviews. Some journals are devoted only to reviewing books, like Booklist, Choice and The New York Times Book Review. However, longer and more critical reviews are often included in subject specific journals. For example, each volume of The Journal of American Studies contains reviews of books written about American studies. To locate these book reviews, use the indexes below. For help, ask at the reference desk.

Book Review Digest

Monthly review that "provides citations to and excerpts of reviews of current juvenile and adult fiction and nonfiction in the English language." Entries are listed in alphabetical order by primary author name. Subject and Title indexes located at the end of each volume.

Book Review Index

"Provides access to reviews of thousands of books, periodicals and books-on-tape. Represents a wide range of popular, academic, and professional interests." Entries arranged alphabetically by the primary author name or by book title if there is no primary author.

Children's book review index

"Provides access to reviews of thousands of children's books, periodicals and books-on-tape." Entries arranged alphabetically by the primary author name or by book title if there is no primary author.

Articles & eResources

When searching for book reviews, perform a SUBJECT search using the term "book reviews" for a general listing of all reviews. When looking for a specific title, refer to the Search tips listed below for each individual database.

EBSCOHost

Search tips: Select appropriate databases such as Academic Search Premier, MasterFILE Premier and Newspaper Source. All of these databases include many book reviews, and most will be in full text. To limit your search to book reviews, use the Advanced Search options to select the Document Type "book reviews" When searching a book title, entering it with quotation marks will ensure the database is searching the phrase and not just the words anywhere. In addition to Academic Search Premier, MasterFILE Premier and Newspaper Source, EbscoHost provides several other databases that will also include review in specific subjects.

America: History & Life

Search tips: Find book reviews using the following search formats: * If you have the title of the book: us the Title search box and type in the title of the book. * Partial title words: Keyword search and in the Document Type search field enter Book Review * Book reviews for a specific author: in the Author search field enter the author name (first name last name format) and in the Document Type search field enter Book Review.

Historical Abstracts

ERIC (via EbscoHost)

Search tips: Choose the Advanced Search option and search by the title of the book using a Title search. For reviews on a topic or genre, Keyword search using this format: book reviews AND science fiction.

MLA International Bibliography

Search tips: Add "review-article" in the search box combined with a topic, author or genre. The format would appear like this: review-article and science fiction.

ChoiceReviews.online

Choice reviews significant current books and electronic resources of interest to those in higher education. Each year Choice publishes more than 6,500 reviews by subject experts. The online version dates back to 1988. The library also has Choice in the bound periodicals back to 1964.

LexisNexis Academic

Search tips: Full text of book reviews published in newspapers, magazines and journals are available. Choose the "News" option, then the "Book, Movie, Music, Play and Video Reviews " option under "Select sources ". In the Keyword: box type in the title of the book and in the next box type in book review. LexisNexis includes full text (since June 1980) of the New York Times Book Review, to search just this title choose the "Sources" tab and type "New York Times" in the search box.

New York Times Archive

Provides the full text of the New York Times from 1855 excluding the latest 3 years. The Book Review section has page numbers that start with BR.

Readers' Guide Retrospective

1890-1982

Books & Library Materials

Another book review source:

Magill's Literary Annual

Essay-reviews of 200 outstanding books published in the United States each year.

Journals

Booklist

New York times book review

Websites

AcqWeb's Directory of Book Reviews on the Web

Links to all book reviews on all genre and in all formats.

Amazon.com

Provides customer reviews and excerpts from published reviews.

Barnes & Noble

Provides customer reviews and excerpts from published reviews.

LibraryThing

Allows you to catalog your favorite books and share comments.

Facebook Visual Bookshelf

Facebook application that allows you to share comments with friends noting books you want to read, are reading or have read.

Goodreads

Goodreads is privately run "social cataloging" website where you can keep track of what you've read, what your friends are reading, and organize your books into virtual bookshelves. There are also many reviews of books.

Bookmarks Magazine

Bookmarks Magazine has reviews, expert picks, reader recommendations, book group selections, and "critical summaries". The reviews are culled and presented so that they do not reveal endings and important plot details.

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Book Reviews

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