Professor & Reference/Instruction Librarian
Diane Duesterhoeft
she/her
Contact:
Louis J. Blume Library, Room 201
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
USA
dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
USA
dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu
210-436-3346
Literary Criticism vs. Book Reviews
Book reviews tend to be written and published shortly after the book under review is published. Reviews tend to be written during a time contemporary to the work analyzed. They might appear in magazines, newspapers, scholarly journal articles, on a blog or a dedicated book review website. Book reviews are usually not the same as literary criticism, although they may be used in some literary approaches, e.g. reader-response, or when a work has not yet received much scholarly attention.
Book Review Sites
- Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new windowUnlike reviews on book-sale sites and the open web, many of the reviews in Book Review Digest Plus are from citable journals, making it an invaluable resource for literary and biographical research.
Subject indexing, summaries, annotations, and grade-level designations make this a useful tool for reader's advisory, collection development, and curriculum support.
Content Includes:
600,000 full-text book reviews
2,400,000 review citations
5,000 indexed journals with citations to every book review
50,000 new reviews are added each year
Coverage Dates: 1983 - present - Choice Reviews This link opens in a new windowSince its founding in 1964, Choice has led the industry in high-quality evaluations of nonfiction academic writing. Choice Reviews and its print companion, Choice magazine, are invaluable sources of bibliographic reference and recommendation for both collection development and individual research. Choice Reviews and Choice publish 4,200 new reviews annually, contain over 200,000 reviews of academic monographs, and serve 2,400 institutions worldwide.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowA great place to find book reviews that appear in newspapers and magazines. It is not a good source for reviews published in scholarly journals.
- Historical Newspapers: New York Times with Index This link opens in a new windowThis historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers, and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the time's politics, society, and events.
The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-1993) provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
Coverage: 1851 - 2019
Subject coverage - Historical local, regional, national and international news
Literature Background
- Gale eBooks: General Reference Collection This link opens in a new windowAn award-winning, hassle-free eBook experience—anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Gale’s eBook platform provides comprehensive support from many of today’s top publishers.
Collections include titles on:
Arts, Biography, Business, Education, Environment, General Reference, History, Information and Publishing, Law, LCO, Literature, Medicine, Multicultural Studies, Nation and World, Religion, SATA, Science, Social Science, Technology - Literary Reference Center This link opens in a new windowLiterary Reference Center features an expansive collection of classic and contemporary full-text poems, short stories, and novels.
Other content includes:
More than 36,000 plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews
More than 213,000 author biographies
More than 11,000 author interviews
More than 360 full-text literary journals
More than 1.1 million book reviews - Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new windowGale Literature Resource Center makes it easy to search biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information on authors from around the world and throughout different time periods. This database provides critical analysis, primary sources, and detailed work overviews, along with in-depth biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information. There are more than 165,000 complete entries from popular literature series, including two award-winning series, Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors and Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography.
- Magill's Literary Annual This link opens in a new windowFull text of Magill's Literary Annual from 1977-2014.
This annual publication critically evaluates 200 major examples of serious literature, both fiction and nonfiction, published during the previous year as well as curated free content from Salem Press & Grey House Publishing to Explore Current Events through a Historical Lens.
