Of all the contemporary sources you could use in your academic work, books are probably the easiest type of source to evaluate. Books published by reputable publishers or writers can generally be relied upon. It is online sources, websites, videos and articles that include blog posts, tweets and personal views are much harder to evaluate for credibility.
There are famous examples of books that are less credible than others, and have been proven to be literary hoaxes, including Clifford Irving's Autobiography of Howard Hughes that tricked many on its initial publication. We can't be book critics for everything ever published but we must apply some critical analysis before citing a book, using it in academic work.
When evaluating a book, you need to establish
Books are not all the same, there are popular fiction books, trade and professional publications, scholarly publications and substantive publications. Each serves a different need and can be differentiated as follows:
| Popular Publications | Trade and Professional Publications |
Substantive Publications |
Scholarly Publications |
| Popular books are written for a general audience and might include fiction or nonfiction. Authors might include fiction writers, journalists, and scholars. But while books might be written by scholars, they generally do not include extensive references to sources used, particularly scholarly sources. Books you will see for sale as 'best sellers' in a book shop would usually be popular publications. These books are an important category of publication to introduce you to a topic but should not be relied upon for academic work. you might consult a popular book to get a first-person account of a particular event or time period. | These publications are written for practitioners in a specific field. They do not publish original peer-reviewed research or scholarship, but they will often refer to original research and scholarship from scholarly publications. Phrases like "Researchers have found..." or "in a recent study..." generally introduce the scholarship published elsewhere. As with popular publications, these types of books are acceptable to read for background information and knowledge building but should not be overly-relied upon for academic work. |
These books offer more in-depth coverage of current and historical events than popular titles and are targeted at people who have no specialized training in an area but who want more depth than a popular publication can offer. The authors can be a mix of journalists, people who work in a field, and academics. |
These books are also known as academic, refereed, or peer-reviewed and they offer in-depth research for an academic audience. Authors are researchers or scholars in the discipline. These books usually include a discussion of research methods, data, and full references to sources (footnotes or bibliography). Books are written for other researchers and scholars and often published by university presses e.g. Oxford University Press. Usually the topics covered are very specialized and very specific. These are an excellent academic source and you will find many books of this type in UL Library's collections. You would these types of books to see how scholars have conducted research on this same topic and what conclusions their research has led them to over time. |
Sometimes it can be challenging to decide exactly which category a title falls into. You may find it useful to think of the various types of publications as all having a place along a continuum, from popular to scholarly. Each of these publications has a place in doing research. For example, you might consult a popular book to get a first-person account of a particular event or time period. You would then consult a more scholarly academic book to see how scholars (college and university faculty and graduate students) have conducted research on this same topic and what conclusions their research has led them to over time.