How do I know if a book is scholarly?
Answer
Some tips to consider if a book is scholarly:
- Look up the author's credentials on Google. Do they work at a university? Are they a professional in their field?
- See what else the author has written- do they write about this topic frequently? Have they written articles in academic journals? You can look them up in the Library Catalog by author to find out.
- Look at the book publisher- Is it a university press? From a professional organization?
- Has this book been cited by others? If you paste the title of the book in Google Scholar there may be a result. Under the result look for "Cited by #" If there are a lot of citations that can be a good sign. You can also click there to see the summaries of other articles/books that have cited this work
- Although there may not be references in the back of the book, they may be sprinkled throughout the book in footnotes. Also, many academic books are a compilation of chapters written by various authors whose references may be listed at the end of the chapter.
- Do university libraries tend to carry this more than public libraries? You can find out by looking up the book in the Library catalog. Then click the title of the book to open the record. Towards the bottom of the record there is a space to put an address to find the library closest to you that has the library. The default will have the CIIS address. Are the libraries listed underneath more academic or public libraries?
