Yesterday I taught a class on finding book reviews. The professor had specifically asked for this topic, and I was happy to comply, but I was a little at a loss to figure out what I could do other than pointing out the “document type” limiters in different databases, and show the differences between book reviews published in scholarly journals as opposed to trade publications and newspapers. Luckily, one of my colleagues has thought more about this than I have and taught several classes on book reviews, so I shamelessly cribbed her materials and even mooched some of her examples. And although I can take very little credit, the class we built together seemed to go over very well with the students and this faculty member.
Warning: Extreme examples of my inexperience as a librarian and researcher are about to be revealed. Read on at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible for injuries to eyes that have rolled too far back into your head and can no longer be retrieved, or for bruises to heads that have been beaten against computers. Nor can I be held responsible for damage to hardware or software of said computers.
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I learned a whole heck of a lot teaching this class. First of all, I’d never taught for American Studies before, so I spent quite a bit of time simply familiarizing myself with the publications in that field and where their journals get indexed (Academic Search Premier and ProQuest each index the major American Studies journals, in case you’re interested). But the real breakthrough for me came when my colleague and I were working to answer the question: so what? Why would you spend time looking for book reviews given the fact that the vast majority are positive, a good percentage are neutral, and only a tiny fraction are negative? What use could writing governed by such a ritualized style and publication process be other than to give a summary of the work?
Well, it turns, book reviews can be extraordinarily useful. So useful, in fact, that I will be incorporating them into as many classes as possible in the future.
- These short essays can give clues about where a particular book fits into the field and niches of that field because it’s one of the reviewer’s tasks to say how well or poorly the book works for people in that field.
- Reviews can also provide clues about the major players in that field. It’s not uncommon for reviewers to compare the author or book to other authors or books in the field or having similar theoretical perspectives. You can find valuable primary and secondary sources this way. You can also look for other things written by the reviewer, since he or she might also be a player in the field.
- Reviews may highlight was evidence counts as good evidence in the field. Does the reviewer wish so-and-so had consulted census data? Bingo, you know that statistical information holds cache with this group of scholars. Does the reviewer applaud the use of images, or hint that the author should have explored the intersections between this topic and, say, cinematic history? That’s more information for you to consider as you think about your own topic.
- And you can also find out what disciplines might be interested in a topic by seeing where reviews for the book appear. Mary C Waters’ book Black Identities was reviewed in the year 2000 by Black Issues Book Review (Vickerman 2000) and by the Journal of Economic Literature (McKinnish 2000), just as an example.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. Book reviews are chock full of the important buzz words in the field. In my class yesterday we looked at reviews for Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. We found one from the Journal of American Culture (Kay 1999), one from Publisher’s Weekly (“Forecasts” 1998), and one from Entertainment Weekly (Jacobs 1998). Reading from those reviews, we not only came up with lists of disciplines, related topics, and related concepts, but we also came up with a substantial list of search terms which yield really beautiful results about the social history of the beauty culture in America. What fun!
