How To Find Book Reviews

Welcome to Tisch Talks, Tisch Library’s ongoing audio magazine series. Today I’ll be giving you some advice about how to find book, play, and movie reviews using Tisch resources.

I’ll start by showing you how to find book and play reviews in the Tufts Catalog. If you want to follow along, please go to http://library.tufts.edu/. Pause this recording while you go there.

To find reviews in the Tufts catalog, you’ll search the title as a subject so I’m going to change the search mode from title (the default) to subject and type I know why the caged bird sings. I find that we have a book called Maya Angelou's I know why the caged bird sings: a casebook. To find movie or play reviews, you can use the same method. So, typing raging bull, I find that we have two books about that movie. If you prefer to find reviews of the entirety of an author or director’s work, you can search the person as a subject. So, a search for Faulkner William shows over 50 books with the subheading criticism and interpretation. Those will be great resources! Remember when you want to search a person as a subject to type the person’s last name first.

Moving to other resources, we’ll look at how to get your hands on reviews in journals, magazines and newspapers using the wide variety of databases we have. For a more complete listing of sources than will be covered today, stop at the reference desk for a copy of the book review handout or go to http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/pdf/Bkrev.pdf.

We’ll start by looking for reviews in some general sources, specifically Academic Onefile, a great all-purpose database that is very current, with the majority of articles it indexes being available in full text from the computer. If you’d like to follow along by searching with me, from the Tisch Library homepage, go to Databases and Articles, then to the top link AOF) on the right side of the screen. Pause this recording while you take a minute to go the AOF homepage.

At the AOF homepage, I’m going to search Flags of our Fathers. On the results page, I see a couple hundred listings, divided by tabs, which are marked academic journals,
Magazines, books, news, etc. Because the accompanying numbers in the tabs are so large, I’ll show you how to easily hone in on reviews and critiques. Click on the magazines tab. On the left side of the screen, a list of document types will appear. Unfortunately, the academic journals tab doesn’t offer this feature. If you wish, you can redo your search, but this time search (flags of our fathers and (criticism or reviews). Your results will be fewer but will be more specific to articles that are critiques or reviews.

Let’s move to LexisNexis now. Go back to the Databases and Articles page, then to the 2nd link LN) on the right side of the screen. Pause this recording while you take a minute to go the NexisNexis homepage. On the LN homepage there is a horizontal red line that includes buttons called general, news, legal, etc. Click on the news button. In the top box, I’ll type saving private ryan. Before I click the search button, I’ll go to the select sources drop down box and select book,movie, music, play and video reviews. I’ll also change the date range to All available dates. After making those choices, I’ll click search. Several hundred results are listed. The left column lets me choose resources so if I only want to read reviews from newspapers, I will open the newspapers link and click an individual newspaper’s name, and suddenly I have access to numerous reviews.

The final example I’ll show is a search from a subject database. Let’s say I’d like to find some reviews of the book Blessed Are the Peacemakers, written by Jonathan Bass, about Martin Luther King. I’m going to start at the familiar (by now, I hope!) Databases and Articles page. This time, though, I’m going to search for the database I want to use, America History and Life, which does an excellent job of indexing book reviews on pertinent topics. In the search box on the top of the databases and articles page, I’m going to type America History and Life. I’ll select it and log in. Please pause this recording if you would like to go to America History and Life and follow along with me. On the AHL homepage, I’m going to type Blessed Are the Peacemakers in the keyword box. I’m also going to limit by search to book reviews by clicking the appropriate box. Several reviews are listed, and even better, most of them look to be available full text from the database.

For more sources to use to find reviews that haven’t been covered, take a look at the Tisch handout called How to Find Book Reviews (which covers more than just book reviews). It’s at http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/pdf/Bkrev.pdf.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of Tisch Talks. We invite your questions at any time. Don’t hesitate to be in touch!

Now at Tisch

Check out the podcast series, Tisch Talks!

Did you know that Tisch Library has an audio magazine, Tisch Talks? Featured topics include interviews with visiting authors, using the library catalog, and finding book reviews. Check out this series, or better yet, set your RSS reader to subscribe to new editions automatically.

Featured Resource

Eighteenth-Century Collections Online

ECCO aims to deliver every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the Eighteenth Century...

Did You Know?