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Book Reviews: Home

A guide to finding book reviews using databases and print resources at the OSU Library

General Information About Book Reviews

Book reviews are an important means of evaluating book sources. They are brief articles in periodicals (newspapers, magazines, or journals), often written by experts, that give the writers' opinions about the overall strengths and weaknesses of a book. There are reviews for popular books (fiction, bestsellers, etc.) and for scholarly books, though you have to pick the right database or print index to find reviews of a specific book. To locate reviews, you use library databases, general search tools such as BOSS or Google Scholar, or even  print indexes.

Databases to Find Reviews

General databases with book reviews:

  • Library Search search box.  Go to Advanced Search and enter book author's name and title along with review as a keyword anywhere:

Example of Library Search Advanced Search Options

Newspaper databases with book reviews (popular and some scholarly books)

Subject databases with book reviews (mostly scholarly books):

You can also find book reviews in various subject databases. Find the appropriate subject guide in the Guides/Subject Lists page and look for databases or article databases; many of them will include book reviews.

When you find an article that you want to read, make sure that you print out or write down all the information that you'll need to locate it. Include: article author, article title, journal title, journal volume, journal issue number, article pages, journal date, and index name. You can use Article Linker ("Get Article" button) to see if OSU has a full-text subscription to a journal or a paper subscription, or to request a PDF copy of the article from Interlibrary Services.

Print Sources to Locate Book Reviews

These print sources can be used to locate book reviews in periodicals (magazines and journals). Find out the year in which the book was published, and start with the volume of the index for that year. Contact a reference librarian for help using these sources.