Books are excellent resources to use for research! There are many different types of books that can help you in your research. When using a book source in research, you do not need to read the entire book. Oftentimes, book sources will be generally about a topic, and only certain chapters of the book will be relevant for your research.
Scholarly books are written by scholars, for other scholars to read. Like journal articles, scholarly books can go through the peer-review process.
Some scholarly books are written by a single author or a group of authors. Other scholarly books have an editor, and each chapter is written by different authors, who have submitted proposals for their chapters to be included in the book.
Taylor, T. N., Taylor, E. L., & Krings, M. (2009). Paleobotany : the biology and evolution of fossil plants (2nd ed.). Academic Press.
Reference books are helpful when you are looking for background information about a topic. While you would not use a reference book as one of your cited sources, reference books give overviews about different topics and new terms you might come across in your research.
