5.2 Practice Evaluating Books

Useful or Relevant

Does the book contain information about your topic? Does it have enough new information for you to learn more about your topic?

Try it!

Sometimes it is very easy to see whether the results of your catalog search are relevant. For example, if your project is about the disease AIDS, and the keyword is AIDS, your results list will include these 2 titles:

Which of these will be useful for this project?

  

Timely

Is the book current? When was it written, and when was it published? Does the book reflect what was known about the topic up to the time it was written? Has it been updated?

Try it!

OK, so what about your research on AIDS? Which of these books do you think meets the timeliness criterion?

  

Appropriate

What is the intended audience for this book? Is it general literature or scholarly?

Decide which of these two books best meets the criterion of appropriateness for a college research project. Looking at the subject headings for both will probably give you the answer in this case, but often you need to look at the book or article to see whether the level of scholarship matches the level of your research.

#1

#2

Which of these will be appropriate for a college research project?

Which of these will be appropriate for a college research project?

  

Authority

Does the author know the topic? Does the author explain the research methodology used?

Try it!

This is a little tricky to determine without taking a look at the book. Information on the author's background or experience may be included on the jacket or in the preface to the book.

Here is information about two books on rain forests, including statements about each author from the book jacket or book cover. Which is the more authoritative?

1. In the Rainforest by Catherine Caufield. "Catherine Caufield is a journalist and frequent contributor to New Scientist, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, and New Statesman."
2. Portraits of the Rainforest by Adrian Forsyth. "One of North America's leading natural-history writers, Adrian Forsyth holds a doctorate in biology from Harvard University and is an adjunct professor at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario. He is currently the Canadian representative of the environmental agency Conservation International and divides his time between Costa Rica, Indonesia and his home in eastern Ontario. Author of Tropical Nature, Mammals of the Canadian Wild, The Natural History of Sex and The Nature of Birds, Forsyth has dedicated his professional life to the study of behavioural ecology."