HumaniTec Book Review Library Session

February 1, 2008

Sheila Smyth

 

Subject Librarian:
Sheila Smyth
smyths@uci.edu
(949) 824 - 7021

 

Book Review Subject Guide

 

General Book Review Sources

 

Connect from off-Campus: For Library electronic resources best to use the Software VPN.

 

Book Review Digest

Call number: Langson Ref Z 1219 B67

Indexes around 90 US and British periodicals. To be included, a work must be published in Canada or the United States. Though it does not index the amount of periodicals as Book Review Index, most citations contain informative excerpts from the cited article. This index is also good for finding reviews of fiction before 1965.
Coverage: 1905-present. (print)
Coverage: 1983-present. (online)

 

Book Review Index

Call number: Langson Ref Z 1035.1 .B66 1986 & Langson Ref Z 1035 A1 B6
Cites reviews of books and periodicals from about 500 newspapers, periodicals, and scholarly journals. Its strengths are finding reviews of fiction and nonfiction, reviews of scholarly works are hit and miss.

LION (Literature Online)

Contains book reviews for literature scholarship (esp. literature in English). To search, click on "Criticism & Reference", then change your search to "Criticism". From here type in the title of the book as a keyword search and limit to "Reviews" below.
Coverage: 1917 – present

 

Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature

Indexes general interest, English language periodicals (about 174 to date). Book reviews from 1901-1904 are indexed under the name of the author of the book; a subject entry is also given. After 1905, a listing of citations to book reviews follows the main body of each volume. Citations are listed under author reviewed.
Coverage: 1985-present

 

Reader's Guide Retrospective

Complements Reader's Guide (above) by covering early years of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States.
Coverage: 1890 -1982

 

Expanded Academic ASAP

Indexes articles from popular magazines, general interest journals, and scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and general sciences. To search, click on advanced search. In the first search box, type in the title of the book and select "Title search". In the second box, enter "review*" and use the "keyword" search.
Coverage: 1980-present

 

JSTOR

Provides searching and browsing access to the full text of back files of over 100 core scholarly publications in dozens of academic disciplines, including Literature. Note: for many journals, does not include the latest 2-5 years, but often includes back issues from several decades past.
To search: enter in the title of the work as a full text search and click on "review" in the “these types” field.

 

Web of Science

One of the best and quickest ways to obtain scholarly reviews of a book.
To obtain reviews: 1) Click on "General Search" 2) Under "Topic" enter the title of the book. 3) Leave the author field blank. 4) Underneath "Set Search Limits" look for the highlighted bar "All document types." From this list, scroll down and select "Book Review."

Coverage: 1945-present.

 

Periodicals Index Online (formerly PCI Full Text)

Indexes periodicals from the humanities and social sciences. To search, enter the title of the book in the "Article title keyword" field, and below limit to "Book Reviews only". N.B. this database stops coverage in 1995.
Coverage: 1770-1995.

 

Language Specific Book Review Sources

 

IBR - International Bibliography of Book Reviews

Call number: Langson Bound Periodicals Z 1002 I5
A good place to search to find reviews of works in languages other than English. In the advanced search, you can search by title of the work, the author of works, and the reviewer's name.
Coverage: (Print) 1971-1983; (Online) 1985-present

 

International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (IBZ)

Index of periodical literature covering research from all fields of knowledge, especially in the humanities and the social sciences. Over 11,000 periodicals are indexed by this multilingual database. International in scope, it indexes a significant proportion the periodicals published on the European continent. To search: in the title field, type in the title of the book and then search.

 

HAPI Online

Web version of the Hispanic American Periodicals Index contains citations about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the U.S.-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the U.S. Topics from many areas of the social sciences and humanities are covered. Citations are indexed from articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials dating back to 1970.'
To search: enter title of work and "reviewed."

 

 

Subject Specific Book Review Sources

 

Philosopher's index

To search only book reviews, perform an advanced search. In the first box, type "Book Review" in the search box and select "Document Type" in the dropdown menu to the right. In the search box underneath, type the title of the book and click "search" to begin.

 

ATLA Religion Database  

The ATLA Religion Database is the premier index to journal articles book reviews and collections of essays in all scholarly fields of religion Featuring articles written in 36 languages ATLA includes over 400 000 article citations from over 1 400 journals 600 of which are currently indexed It also provides bibliographic coverage of over 200 000 essay citations from 15 500 multi author works over 375 000 book reviews and features 128 000 subject headings Product fact sheet page

 

International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text  

More than 150 international scholarly and popular periodicals in Black studies.

 

Historical abstracts

Subject: Social sciences -- Abstracts -- Databases; History, Modern -- Abstracts --

 

America, history and life

Historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present Includes information abstracted from over 2 000 journals published worldwide

 

Index to Book Reviews in England, 1749-1774
Call number: Langson Reference Z 1035 A1 F67 1990
An index to reviews of 3023 works of poetry, fiction and drama. This index covers the major review journals and major magazines of the period.
Most of the journals and magazines indexed here can be found in the Microfilm Set English Literary Periodicals (S 000 136), located in the Current Periodicals Room in Langson Library

 

Index to Book Reviews in England, 1775-1800
Call number: Langson Reference Z 1035 A1 F675 1997
An index to reviews of 4,984 works of poetry, fiction and drama. This index covers the major review journals and major magazines of the period.
Most of the journals and magazines indexed here can be found in the Microfilm Set English Literary Periodicals (S 000 136), located in the Current Periodicals Room in Langson Library.

 

American Periodicals Series Online, 1740-1900

Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century.
To search: Click on advanced search. In the first box, select “article type” and then enter review. In the second box, enter the author’s last name and title of the book. Now click search.

 

Book Reviews in Newspapers

 

America's Newspapers

Indexes many newspapers across the U.S. To search: click on advanced search. In the first box, enter "review*". In the second box, enter the title of the book and the author's last name. Then press search. Tip -- start with the last results first.

 

TLS: Times Literary Supplement Centenary Archive

Fully searchable archive of the TLS in image format and full page context with the identities of contributors who were published anonymously disclosed.
Coverage: 1902-1990

 

Los Angeles Times

For 1881-1960   
For 1985- present

New York Times

For 1851-2001
For 2002-present

 

Early American Newspapers  

Early American Newspapers features cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic newspapers, providing more than one million pages as fully text-searchable facsimile images.
Coverage: 1690-1820

 

African American Newspapers: The 19th Century  

Includes Freedom’s Journal; The Colored American; The North Star; The National Era; Provincial Freeman; Frederick Douglass Paper; and The Christian Recorder.

 

Reviews of Films

 

International Index to the Performing Arts Full Text

Index to journal literature covering dance, film, performance art, opera, stagecraft, comedy, magic, puppetry, and television. Browse and search full-text periodicals like Cinema Journal, Cineaste, Black Camera, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Film Comment, Variety, and Journal of Popular Culture.
To find reviews, select Search Articles, enter keywords and under document type enter "book review," "dance review," "exhibit review," "film review," "performance review," "television review," or select from list.

 

Film Review Annual
Call number: Langson Library Reference: PN1995.F465
Begun in 1984, reprints "important" reviews in their entirety from such periodicals as Monthly Film Bulletin (until 1991), The New York Times, The New York Post, The Los Angeles Times, Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound (which absorbed Monthly Film Bulletin), Variety, and Village Voice. As with any annual print publication, there is a lag time between theatrical release of a film and the appearance of the reviews in this source. Each issue covers films released the previous year.
Coverage: 1981 –

 

The New York Times Film Reviews
Call number: Langson Library Reference: PN1995.N4
Contains film reviews appearing in The New York Times reproduced in their entirety. Has three separate indexes: title index, personal name index, and corporate (studio name) index. Arranged by date review appeared in the newspaper; important to know the year film released.
Coverage: 1913 –

 

Variety Film Reviews
Call number: Langson Library Reference: PN1995.V34
Similar to The New York Times Film Reviews. Most recent volume (24) covers reviews from 1995-1996. More recent reviews can be found in LexisNexis (from
July 19, 1993 in full text) or in Expanded Academic ASAP (from January 1, 1997, in full text; indexing only begins with January, 1980). (See above for search hints for Expanded Academic.)
Coverage: 1907 -1995/6

 

Evaluation form

 

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/eval.html