Choosing a Book to Review
Criteria to Consider:
- Books that are relatively current
- Books that match the assignment criteria (nonfiction, academic)
- Books that are widely available
- Is it available on Amazon or other publishers?
- Is it widely held by libraries? (See WorldCat to check this - link below).
Google around: Are there book lists published on educator blogs that you can use? Professional organizations will often publish various lists as well.
Search the library catalog to see what books are out there that might work well for a book review. You can search broad categories, such transgender youth AND education, Educational reform and second language learners, etc...)
- Library Catalog
This link opens in a new window
Find print and electronic books available from USU Libraries, as well as videos and other materials.
- WorldCatWorldCat is the world's largest network of library content with more than 2 billion records for books, CD, DVD, audio books, some articles, documents, photographs, digital collections, etc.
Finding a Journal to Publish in
Your instructor suggested a few journal titles in your field that publish book reviews (see below for instructions on how to filter for book reviews):
- Comparative Education ReviewAccess: 08/01/1993 to 1 year ago via Education Source
- Multicultural PerspectivesAccess: 01/01/1999 to present via Taylor & Francis
- Pedagogy, Culture & SocietyAccess: 01/01/1999 to present via Taylor & Francis
- Theory & Research in Social EducationAccess: 1997 to present via Taylor & Francis
Other Strategies:
- Search Journal Websites: If there's a journal you know of that you'd like to consider, go to it's journal website and see what author's guidelines they have that might give you insight into the types of book reviews they publish.
- Query the Journal: If you have a journal in mind, email the editors and ask them if they'd be interested in the book you have in mind or what sorts of books they are currently interested in publishing book reviews on.
- You can also search broad areas or specific journals on our Journal Title search from the library homepage to see examples of book reviews and to double-check that the journal you have in mind regularly publishes book reviews. See instructions below for this process:
- Then select the access that makes the most sense for your needs from the options (in this example, I chose Education Source because it has current access and I don't need access to book reviews from a long time ago).
- Then, you can run a search for book reviews in that journal to see examples of what they write about. Choose "Search within publication"
- Use the Document Type filter on the search page (bottom, left) and scroll to select "Book Review" - you should see thousands of reviews to browse. You can add a search term at the top to narrow down the book reviews if desired.
