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Book Reviews

This guide provides information about how to find books and book reviews in the library databases, library catalog, and online.

Finding Book Reviews in Databases

There are two ways to start your search for book reviews in a library database:

  1. Using database limiters for source type, content type, or document type.
  2. Finding a specific publication (such as The New York Times) and searching for book reviews within that publication.

EBSCO

Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) is likely your best bet for finding book reviews, though some may appear in other EBSCO databases as well.

To find book reviews from any publications:

  1. Search for the title of the book (use "quotation marks" around titles with multiple words). You may also want to include the author's name or words such as "book", especially if the title isn't unique.
  2. Choose "Reviews" for the Source Type (in Advanced Search, or in the left column on the results page)

From EBSCO search results page: list titled "Source Types" with checkboxes for each type

Once you have found one review for your book, you can also use the record page for that review (by clicking on the title) to find a link under "Reviews & Products". This will show you all sources in the database that are marked as a review of that book.

Entry on database record titled "reviews & products"

Gale Literature Resource Center

Gale Literature Resource Center divides your search results into categories.

To find book reviews, select the "Reviews & News" category.

Gale search results options

You can also use the filtering options to filter by "Document Type".

Gale search results filtering options

ProQuest

ProQuest includes options to limit your search results by document type.

To find book reviews from any publications:

  1. Search for the title of the book (use "quotation marks" around titles with multiple words). You may also want to include the author's name or words such as "book", especially if the title isn't unique.
  2. Choose "Review" for the Document Type (in Advanced Search, or in the left column on the results page)

Document type options in ProQuest search results

You may also try searching in a specific publication available through ProQuest, such as newspapers that publish book reviews. Use the same strategy for your search, but follow database links for a specific publication: