History Research Guide: Find Books and E-Books

                                               Scholarly Books                                                Non-Scholarly Books

Adapted from University of Toronto Libraries 

These clues will go a long way towards assisting you in differentiating between books intended for the scholar and therefore, preferred when writing research papers, from trade publications or mass market publications that are intended for a general audience.

Publisher: A good clue to a scholarly resource is its publisher. 

Books from publishers specializing in the field will tend to be of better quality textually then those that don’t.

• Look for “About” and a “Mission Statement”
•  Consider how long they’ve been in business?
• Do they provide services to academia?
• Books published by a university press will tend to be more academically sound than those published by trade publishers, especially if the institution has a good reputation in the field covered by the work. 

Cited References and Bibliography – Even more than a useful tool for evaluating the reliability of an author, cited references are an excellent indication of the scholarship of a work. 

• Look for cited references or at least a bibliography in the work itself.  Most books intended for the scholar contain citations and a bibliography, whereas books intended for a general audience do not.
•  Also, consider who is being cited; how frequently are the references cited elsewhere; has any one cited the work being evaluated and is this perhaps the primary source?
• For works in the humanities, a good clue that you’ve found the primary source is when you keep getting referred to the same source over and over again.  
• Works in the sciences will report on original research.

Content – examine these aspects of the work to assist in ascertaining the scholarship of a work:

• Accuracy:  how does the information compare to that of other works on the subject?
•  Biases:  all authors are biased, but scholarly works tend to reflect the results of research in the field and not propagandize.
• Preface, Introduction, Table of Contents, Conclusion and Index:  most scholarly works will have several, if not all, of these components. Consider also how well the author lives up to his/her claims indicated in the preface, introduction and conclusion.
• Audience appropriate: a scholarly work will be written to those with some knowledge of or ability to understand the topic under discussion.

Graphics, Charts, Illustrations, etc.:  many scholarly works will have graphs, charts, illustrations, etc.

© Janet Tillman/The Master’s University, 2008-2014, permission is granted for non-profit educational use; any reproduction or modification should include this statement.