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CHAPTER 18: This chapter explains how book reviews are helpful and describes some important book review indexes.
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Book reviews rarely summarize books. Instead they describe the book's main themes, the questions the author is attempting to answer, and the reviewer’s opinion of the ultimate value of the book. For this reason, reading a review is never an adequate substitute for reading the book, even though the review may give a good idea of the book's quality. Tens of thousands of book reviews are published every year, and popular and/or important books may be reviewed in several different periodicals. For these reasons, book review indexes are essential when you wish to locate reviews of a particular book. Two particularly important print guides to book reviews are the BOOK REVIEW INDEX, which lists reviews from over 400 magazines and scholarly journals; and the BOOK REVIEW DIGEST, which not only lists reviews, but also provides brief excerpts from many reviews. A book review will include the name of the reviewer and the abbreviated title of the magazine or journal in which the review appears. To find the full title of an abbreviated journal check the beginning of the volume to find the list of abbreviated titles used in that publication. There is now an Internet version of BOOK REVIEW DIGEST with the same title that contains reviews of over half a million books. It is accessible from the Library’s website through the Article Indexes and Databases link. Two important Internet sources of book reviews are Academic OneFile, BOOKS IN PRINT, and National Newspapers. Both can be accessed from the Library’s website through the Article Indexes and Databases path. To find reviews, type the phrase: book reviews and keywords connected by the Boolean operator and. For example: book reviews and McCarthy and Horses. For reviews of scholarly books published before 1985, see the book review sections of
ART INDEX, SOCIAL SCIENCE INDEX, GENERAL SCIENCE INDEX, HUMANITIES INDEX, BUSINESS PERIODICALS INDEX, BIOLOGICAL & AGRICULTURAL INDEX, and the
APPLIED SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY INDEX. All are located in the
Reference Index area. Click on link to go to the
Assignments page and print Assignment EIGHTEEN |
Book Reviews: A book review is a relatively brief description of the contents of a book along with an
evaluation of the book's quality. A book review also may include some information about the author. Usually book reviews are published in periodicals, especially newspapers and scholarly journals. Some periodicals, for example
The New York Review of Books, in fact contain nothing but book reviews. The major purpose of a book review is to tell potential readers what a book is about and whether it might be worth reading. These are the reasons reviews usually appear when a book is first published.