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University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

UGS 302: Translating the Bible / Keddie

Find books (are they scholarly?)

Just books search (catalog)

How to evaluate books

Unfortunately, it can be tough to determine if a book is considered scholarly. This is not a checklist. You need to weigh these criteria when deciding.

To determine if a book is considered scholarly or refereed, ask the following:

  • Who is the author and what expertise do they have related to this topic?
    • In most cases, that means they teach in academia.
    • They may be involved in education policy in the government.
  • Who is the publisher?
    • Many publishers of scholarly material are affiliated with universities
    • Some publishers are not, but you can learn more about the publisher's purpose by investigating what else they are publishing
  • Who is the audience?
    • Is this written for experts in the field, or a general audience?
      • If something is written for an expert audience, it will include citations to research in academic journals, other scholarly books as well as data and statistics from authoritative sources.

Search for ebooks

Not all of our books are available online as ebooks. Here is how to limit your search to only books available online.

These screenshots (you can open them in a new tab to enlarge) lead you from www.lib.utexas.edu

Step 1:

Use the Books and Media link under the search bar on www.lib.utexas.edu

 

Step 2:

On the next screen, enter your search terms.

 

Step 3:

oN the left side, you can limit to items available online

 

Step 4:

Under each result, there is a link Available Online. Click that.

Step 5:

every publisher link is differently named once you are in the full record

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.