ENGL B1A: Educational Barriers : Evaluating Books

When looking for information on authors, Consider the following:

What is his/her education level?

What is his/her career?

Has he/she published other works?

Has he/she won any awards (especially for writing about or in relation to the topic)?

What is his/her point of view?

Where to find the information online

To find an author using Google, type the author’s name in quotes in the search box. Look for results from book publisher websites or college or university websites.  These tend to have the best information about the author. You may sometimes find authors have created their own personal websites with information about their credentials. 

Another possible electronic resource is Amazon. Search the book in Amazon and look at the “Publisher’s Description” section of the entry for the book.  This will often include brief information about the author.   

You can also try finding author information on the following databases:

This video shows you how to look up the credentials of the author of a book. 

Books are published by publishers, such as Random House or Penguin, or a university press such as the University of California Press.