A book review is an article that is published in a newspaper, magazine, or scholarly work that describes and evaluates a book. Keep in mind while searching for reviews of a book that many books are published each year, only a small fraction of them are reviewed. Reviews are written for different purposes and they will vary in terms of content and depth of evaluation. Since reviews are printed in many different kinds of publications, you may need to search several sources.
Reviews are produced after the publication of a book, so knowing the initial publication date will help refine your search (knowing the exact title and author's name is also necessary). Discovery Search will usually list the publication date of books in our collection. Use WorldCat from OCLC to find publication dates for books not found in Discovery Search. Finding reviews for older books may require using print indexes in addition to recommended databases.
Many sources (online or in print) will only give a citation for the review. Use that citation to track down the complete text of the review.
Reviews differ from literary critiques of books. Critiques explore the style and themes used by an author or genre.
See also the list of newspaper and magazine databases.
Many subject-specific databases will include book reviews. Use the Subject guides or Ask a Librarian for recommendations of relevant resources. Many will include the ability to limit search results to book reviews (check the help links if it is not immediately obvious if this is possible).
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