How to Find Book Reviews
Print Indexes & Abstracts | Newspapers | Electronic Sources
Searching time for a review of a specific book will be shortened if you have the name of the author, the title of the book, and the earliest date of publication. Check at least five years beyond the publication date of the book. NOT ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED ARE REVIEWED.
Print Indexes and Abstracts
Look in the indexes beginning with the volume which corresponds to the earliest publication date of the book. Check at least five years beyond the publication date of the book.
Book Review Digest New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1905+
A digest and index of selected book reviews in about 75 English and American periodicals. Arranged alphabetically by author of book reviewed with subject and title indexes. To be included, a book must have been published or distributed in the United States. A work of non-fiction must have received two or more reviews and one of fiction four or more reviews. For each book there is a brief descriptive note followed by quotations from selected reviews, with exact reference to the periodical in which the review appeared, plus references to other reviews. Length of reviews are indicated in number of words.
Payson (Index Area) 1905-1983
Online database 1983+
Book Review Index Detroit, Gale Research Co.
An author listing with abbreviated citations to reviews. Indexes reviews appearing in approximately 450 publications. Includes books in the fields of general fiction and nonfiction, humanities, social sciences.
Payson (Index Area) 1965-1995
An Index to book reviews in the humanities. Williamston, Mich.: P. Thomson,
Payson (Index Area) 1960-90.
Index to book reviews in religion. Chicago, Ill. : American Theological Library Association, Payson (Index Area) 1949-59,1986-95.
The following specialized indexes include book review sections at the back with entry under the author of the book reviewed. Choose the sources which correspond to the subject matter of your book.
Art Index
Payson (Index Area) 1951/52,1955/57-1997
Online database, Art Index Full-Text, begins coverage in 1997.
Payson (Index Area) 1959/61-2000/01
Online database, Education Full-Text, begins indexing coverage in June 1983; full-text begins in Jan. 1996.
General Science Index
Payson (Index Area) 1978/79-1995/96
Readers Guide to Periodical Literature
Payson (Index Area) 1890/99-1968
Readers Guide Retrospective
Online database 1890-1982
Newspapers
Book reviews can be located in newspapers by using the appropriate index, such as:
New York Times Index.
Reviews are listed under Book Reviews alphabetically by title; reviews can also be found under the author of the book reviewed.
Payson (Index Area) 1851-1906,1911-1999
Current indexing/issues of the New York Times are available in the Lexis Nexis Academic database; the New York Times (Historic) database contains every issue from 1851-2003.
Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles Times online database contains indexing/issues from 1985 to the present; the Los Angeles Times (Historic) database contains every issue from 1881-1985.
Wall Street Journal.
Reviews are listed under Books-Authors and Books-Titles; earlier volumes have listing under Book reviews.
Payson (Index Area) 1960-1999
Washington Post.
Reviews are listed under Books-Authors and Books-Titles; earlier volumes have listing under Book reviews.
Payson (Index Area) 1972/75-1999
The Washington Post is available in the Lexis Nexis Academic database from 1977 to the present.
For reviews of academic books, search the electronic journal collections including Sage Journals Online, Wiley InterScience, ScienceDirect, Cambridge Journals, Oxford Journals, PsychARTICLES, SpringerLink or Emerald.
Electronic Sources of Information
ATLAS Full Text Plus [ Search ATLAS Full Text Plus ]
Includes citations to book reviews of interest to faculty and majors in the field of religion.
Business Source Premier [Search Business Source Premier ]
This index to business topics, such as accounting, finance and management, includes citations to and sometimes the full-text of book reviews from scholarly journals, trade publications and magazines. To limit your search to book reviews, enter "BOOKS -- Reviews" as a subject and then enter the author or title of the book.
JSTOR [ Search JSTOR ]
Contains the full text of back issues for a variety of scholarly disciplines To search for book reviews, choose the Advanced Search option, check the Review box and search by title, author or keywords.
LexisNexis Academic [ Search LexisNexis Academic ]
Full-text documents from thousands of general-interest wire services, newspapers and magazines from around the world... Search in News, selecting either Book, Movie, Music, Play, and Video Reviews as Sources; be sure to change the Date to All available dates or a range appropriate to your book. Enter the author's name or main words of the title as the first Search Term and book review as Anywhere in the document.
A searchable database of book reviews in psychology that replaces the print journal Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books. More than 36,000 reviews are included, dating back to 1956.
Research Library [ Search Research Library ]
Access to scholarly journals in business, health, the social sciences, humanities, education, and general science; citations and abstracts for over 2,300 journals from 1971 forward. Full-text and/or full-image is available for over 1400 journals from 1986 forward.
Search by author, ex., Person(Angelou, Maya), or title. Select book review as the Document type.
SPORTDiscus [ Search SPORTDiscus ]
Includes citations and abstracts from the world's literature in sports, recreation, sports medicine, and exercise-related nutrition sciences. To locate book reviews, under Limit your results, select Book Review as the 'Publication type' and search for significant words in the book title.
R.R. Bowker's BookWire
(http://www.bookwire.com)
Advertises itself as "the book industry's most comprehensive and thorough online information source."
Arts & Letters Daily (http://aldaily.com)
A service of The Chronicle of Higher Education; sifts through "the most intellectually stimulating sites on the Internet", updating daily.
Librarians Internet Index (http://lii.org/)
Internet sites selected and annotated by librarians. From the main page, locate Literature and Books under the heading Arts & Humanities and then select the subheading Book Reviews.
Compiled By: Elizabeth Parang
Last Updated: June 2009
