LibGuides: Book & Film Reviews: Book Reviews

Things to keep in mind

Reviews come out when a book is first published.
It's fairly easy to find reviews of current books using an online database or the internet.
It's not so easy to find reviews of books published before 1980, and the older the book, the more places you may have to look.
Knowing the year a book was published will make your work easier, especially if you're looking for reviews of older books.

Use Google

You can use Google to locate book reviews. There are many reviewers who blog about books they have read or post their reviews online. Search for the title of the book and book reviews.

Another good source of reviews written by "citizen reviewers" is Amazon.com

Finding Published Book Reviews (Print sources)

If you don't find reviews in the databases, use an index* that covers the date your film first appeared:

Book Review Digest, 1905-present (4th floor) Z1219 .B6
Book Review Index, 1965-present. (4th floor) Z1219 .B62
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, 1890-present. AI3.R4 (6th floor).
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Humanities Journals, 1802-1974 (6th floor) AI3 .C6521.
Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals. 1886-1974 (6th floor) Z1035 .A1 C64.
Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities V.1-30, 1960-1989 (4th floor) AI3 .I49.

*You'll find a citation to the review, not the review itself. Use the OSU Libraries Catalog to see if we have the magazine or newspaper with the review.