Anthropology: Finding Book Reviews

Below are a few methods for finding academic book reviews. Before going into specifics, here are a few things to consider:

• Academic book reviews are much more detailed than the typical "Amazon" review. They are typically written by scholars who have expertise in an appropriate field of study, and they are typically written for academic journals that publish scholarship related to the book's content.
• If a book was written within the last few years, it may be more difficult to find reviews. Consider that a scholar needs to receive a book (once it is published) and then needs to read it and write up a review. Then the review needs to be submitted to an academic journal for publication, and after the review is published a librarian needs to point to that review in a particular database. This process takes time. You may be able to search specific relevant journals for reviews that have been published BEFORE a librarian points to the review in other databases.
• In most research databases (including Google!) you can narrow your search to exact phrases using quotation marks. "James and the Giant Peach" will find the phrase "James and the Giant Peach." Without the quotes, it will simply look for any place where the words "Peach," "Giant," and "James" may occur -- whether or not those words are in the correct order. So, when looking for your book review, search for the title of the book in quotation marks, e.g., "Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies" or "Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narratives."

This is your first place to check. You can access the catalog from the library main page (www.vanguard.edu/academics/library). On that page, you can enter the title (using quotes), and the author's name (outside of the quotes). By default, you are searching just the resources that are available in the library. Here are some examples of search phrases:

"my freshman year" rebekah nathan

"fresh fruit, broken bodies" seth holmes

"the spirit catches you and you fall down" anne fadimann

Using the searches above, you will likely find the record for the book, but you will also find multiple "articles." Here is a record for a book:

Note that the record has "Print Book" under the title and author information.

Below is a record for a review article:

In that record, note that under the title and author information, the record has the word "Article". Note also that there is a link to "View full text."

If you are on campus, you will be able to access the article immediately if there is a "View full text" button available. Just click the button. If you are off campus, you will need to log into the proxy server using your Vanguard username and password.

If you do not find a satisfactory number of book reviews with this method, the next step would be to widen your search. By default, the library catalog searches only items that are available to the Vanguard community, but you can broaden your search to include items in other libraries as well. On the left side menu of the library catalog results page, select "Libraries Worldwide" under "Held by Library."

It will also be helpful to check off the box "Article, Chapter" under "Format." If a result listed does not have the "View full text" button available, then you can request the review through Interlibrary Loan.

Academic Search Ultimate is a multidisciplinary collection of full-text articles and book reviews. You can use Academic Search Ultimate to look for book reviews that may have not shown up in the library catalog.

• From the main library webpage (www.vanguard.edu/academics/library), click the link to Academic Search Ultimate (under "Databases A-Z").
• In the main search box, enter search phrases similar to the ones you used in the library catalog, but insert AND between the title and the author. Click the SEARCH button:

  • "my freshman year" AND rebekah nathan

  • "fresh fruit, broken bodies" AND seth holmes

  • "the spirit catches you and you fall down" AND anne fadimann

• If you get too many hits, you can narrow your search by selecting "Reviews" under "Source Types" in the left side menu.

• You can also broaden your search to include other databases on EBSCOhost.

  • At the top of the page, click the "Choose Databases" link:
    
     

  • Then check off "Select / deselect all" and click the "OK" button:
    
     

ProQuest Central is a multidisciplinary aggregation of multiple databases. You can use ProQuest Central to look for book reviews that may have not shown up in the library catalog.

• From the main library webpage (www.vanguard.edu/academics/library), click the link to ProQuest Central (under "Databases A-Z").
• In the main search box, enter search phrases similar to the ones you used in the library catalog. Click the SEARCH button:

  • "my freshman year" rebekah nathan

  • "fresh fruit, broken bodies" seth holmes

  • "the spirit catches you and you fall down" anne fadimann

• If you get too many hits, you can narrow your search by selecting "Review" under "Document type" in the left side menu. You can also narrow your search to "Scholarly journals" under "Source type".

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