Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

In addition to the analog periodical and book review indexes listed in the "Bibliographies" section of this subject guide, Duke students and faculty can find book reviews on Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies by conducting an advanced search in the digital indexes listed below.  These databases are particularly useful in identifying book reviews from scholarly, academic resources.  For other types of sources, please consult the Finding Book Reviews research guide prepared for Duke University Libraries by Kelly Lawton; or the one prepared for the Harvard College Library by Fred Burchsted.

• American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES) (1990-present)
Includes citations for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies originally published in North America. Provides geographic coverage of East-Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia and the former Soviet Union/Commonwealth of Independent States. The emphasis is on the humanities and social sciences. For coverage back to 1956, see the analog edition of the American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies in the Perkins Reference print index area). To locate a book review in the electronic version, select "Book Review" as the Document Type in the Refine Search tab of the Advanced Search option.

• Book Review Index (1965 to present)
Book Review Index gathers reviews from over 500 periodicals and indexes book reviews published in newspapers, journals, and general interest publications. Excellent source for scholarly reviews of books. Also available in print version, which provides author and title indexes, but does not offer excerpts or ratings of the reviews. 

• East View Universal Database of Social Science and Humanities Journals (1991 to present; full-text)
This cross-searchable database is comprised of all journals of the Russian Academy of Sciences ranging from archeology to linguistics, as well as popular literary editions, and independent scholarly publications. Particularly good for Russian-language book reviews.  Conduct a search by combining a specific search term with the truncated word for book review (“реценз*”) or bibliography ("библиограф*") and the appropriate Boolean operator (AND or NEAR).  

• Historical Abstracts (1954 – present)
Indexes historical book reviews published worldwide about all aspects of world history (including in Russia and Eastern Europe) from 1450 to the present.  Currently, there is no way to limit your results solely to book reviews, as there is in America: History and Life, the American and Canadian history version of this database.  However, if you enter “review article” or “book review” in Keywords, your search will bring back items with these terms.

• H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (1993 to  present)
H-Net Reviews is an online scholarly review journal that publishes not only book reviews but also reviews of film, software, museum exhibits, and World Wide Web sites.   You can search by keyword or browse by year or review publication. 

• Infotrac OneFile (1980 to present, some full text)
Indexes thousands of periodicals, some of which are full text. The best way to search for reviews is by using a combination of the book title and the word "review!" in the keyword mode. The exclamation point is a wildcard and allows for the retrieval of both review and reviews. You can also identify reviews by searching for the author of the book as a subject. 

• International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (1981 to present)
Indexes book reviews in the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology from more than 100 countries (including Russia, Poland, and Ukraine). More than 70 languages are represented, with 30% percent of records published in languages other than English.

• LexisNexis Academic (date coverage varies depending on  individual titles, majority indexed date from the early 1990s)
Lexis/Nexis provides access to articles from hundreds of newspapers and journals, the majority of which are full text. To access book reviews, select the Arts & Sports News, and then as Step Two, select Book, movie, music, & play reviews.  The date range can be changed either through the pull-down menu or a date range can be inputted. For additional tips on finding book reviews in this database, consult a reference librarian.  For additional tips on searching, consult Search Tips for Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.

• New York Review of Books (1963 to present)
Displays current issue of the New York Review of Books. Archives from 1963 to the present can be searched or browsed by following the "Archives" link near the top left.

• Periodicals Index Online (date coverage varies depending on  individual titles; coverage ranges from the latter part of the 18th century to the latter part of the 20th century)
Indexes thousands of scholarly journals in the humanities and the social sciences from their first issues to 1995. To access book reviews, type keywords from the book title into the article title keyword field and then under search options, select book reviews under the "search in" option.

• ProQuest (1971 to present, some full text)
Proquest indexes book reviews from hundreds of journals and newspapers, some of which are available in full text. In the advanced search mode, you can limit your search to "book review."   

• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (050 G984, Perkins  Reference Index Area, 1900 to date. Also, 050 R286, Lilly  Periodicals Room 113, 1900-1992 and 1998)
Produced by the same publisher, H.W. Wilson, which publishes Book Review Digest. Citations to book reviews, therefore, were generally omitted until March 1976 (vol. 36). Beginning with that volume, citations to book reviews are listed in a separate section at the end of each volume. It is an author/editor index with title access only if the publication has no author/editor.

• Sociological Abstracts (1963 to present):
This database indexes over 2,000 journals, books, and dissertations in the field of sociology and related disciplines.  To limit to reviews only, select publication type from the pull-down menu and type "review" into the corresponding search box.

• TLS Archive (1994 to 6 months ago) and TLS Centenary Archive (1902 to 1990)
The Times Literary Supplement is a seminal literature journal with in-depth book reviews and articles covering the latest and most important publications in every subject, fiction and non-fiction. It also covers current theater, opera and film. Each issue features several essays, about two dozen detailed book reviews and lists of recently published books of note, several new poems, and occasional short stories. The TLS Archive covers October 1994 to six months ago. The Archive provides articles in HTML, not facsimiles of actual pages. Current articles (the last 6 months) are only available in print in the Current Periodicals section of Perkins Library.  Use of the TLS Archive requires a username and password. Please note them when you log in with your NetID, then connect to the TLS Archive. (Choose TLS Subscriber Archive from the sidebar, perform your search, choose an article to view, then login with username and password below).

• Web of Science (1978 to present)
The Web of Science, which indexes over 8000 academic journals, is comprised of the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.  To access citations to book reviews, select the Cited Ref Search option from the main screen.  From the cited reference search page, enter the name of the cited author (the book author) and the cited work (book title is limited to an abbreviated 20 characters).  An author's entire name is not indexed. Usually, only the author's last name and first initial are indexed, though in some instances the middle initial is also included. The asterisk (truncation) after the first letter of the author's first name allows for broader search, picking up the author's middle initial if it is ever used.  Once you get results from your search, you can further limit the results to book reviews only.