Research Guides: Literary and Cultural Studies: Evaluating the Scholarship & Finding Book Reviews

Annual Reviews

Sometimes the amount of scholarship on a certain author, text, or topic is so vast that you will want an efficient way to determine the "best" or most "significant" research. The Annual Reviews, listed below, and Book Review sources, left, can assist you with this task.

Annual Reviews attempt to summarize and critically evaluate, on a yearly basis, the most significant published research in a given subject area.

American Literary Scholarship
Call Number: McKeldin Periodical Stacks Z1005.A4, 1963-2007; 1998-present ONLINE
An annual collection of bibliographic essays about studies of major American authors, periods, and genres. Issues from 1998 to present are available online.
Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
Call Number: ONLINE 1996 - present
A companion to Year's Work in English Studies. An annual, selective survey of studies in critical theory from a broad international perspective.
Year's Work in English Studies
Call Number: ONLINE 1996 - present.
Annual, selective critical survey of studies in English and American language and literature.

Year's Work in Modern Language Studies

Call Number: McKeldin Periodical Stacks PB1.Y45 (1929-2006) AND Online through JSTOR from volume 1 to present with 4 year embargo.

Book Reviews: Databases

Book reviews provide detailed critical evaluations of works and can help a researcher determine how a scholar's work has been judged by his/her peers. For more book review sources, consult the Book Reviews Guide.

ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature)
ABELL lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays, and doctoral dissertations published anywhere in the world. ABELL is compiled under the auspices of the Modern Humanities Research Association by an international team of editors, contributors, and academic advisers. The database contains more than 960,000 records, from 1892 through to today with regular monthly updates of newly indexed material.
NOTE: ABELL is bundled with LION (Literature Online) and can be searched as part of the entire LION database or as a separate database.
Academic Search Ultimate
Multi-disciplinary database providing information for nearly every area of academic study. Includes an enormous collection of the most valuable peer-reviewed full text journals, as well as additional journals, magazines, newspapers and books. Multidisciplinary subjects including: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language & linguistics, arts & literature, medicine, ethnic studies. 1965- present.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
PART OF WEB OF KNOWLEDGE DATABASE. Provides access to current and retrospective bibliographic information and cited references found in nearly 1,130 of the world's leading arts & humanities journals. Includes book reviews published in these journals.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar will retrieve book reviews published in scholarly journals. HINT: Go to Settings In the Library Links tab, search for University of Maryland Libraries and put a check mark in the University of Maryland Find@UMD button. Click Save button at the bottom right of the page. Now when you find an article in Google Scholar use the Find@UMD link to retrieve the full-text of the article.
JSTOR
Electronic archive of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Includes complete runs of journals with full-text of all articles published from volume 1, issue 1. Please note, most journals have a “moving wall” (time lag) of three to five years between the most current issue published and content available on JSTOR. Coverage spans the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
Periodicals Archive Online
An online archive of digitized, full-image journal articles, Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) provides access to hundreds of scholarly journals. Coverage includes U.S. and international scholarly journal literature in the arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines with date coverage ranging from 1802 to 2000. NOTE: Current journal issues are not included in PAO but may be covered in other journal collections (use Find It).
Project Muse
Full text of recent issues of over 240 journals from 40 scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literary studies, history, the visual & performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many other arts and humanities and social science disciplines. Covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many other arts and humanities and social science disciplines. Time span: Varies by journal. Some back to 1993, the majority from 1997 to the present.

Finding book reviews in Worldcat

You can often find book reviews in Worldcat. Type the full title of the book in quotes into Worldcat. Use the facets on the left to limit your retrieval to articles. The result should include reviews of your book.