Most of the books in our library's collection are scholarly resources. However, we have some popular level materials, as well as historical materials which may have information that has been updated or superseded by later works. Use some of the same methods you use with journal articles to ascertain the academic quality of a book:
Is it written by authors with scholarly credentials?
Is it published by an academic press or a high quality general publisher?
Is the material substantially documented through the use of a good bibliography, footnotes/endnotes, and the like?
Are there any book reviews which give additional insight into its quality?
Is the book frequently cited by other authors?
Note that many recent books in our library catalog will have linked book reviews. Those in Choice are particularly useful for academic readers.
When using the Quick Search option, by default you are doing a keyword search; all of the terms must appear in the result. Therefore keep searches normally to just two or three keyword; too many keywords give zero results, as you searching just titles and a few extra fields of data and not the full text. You may find it useful, when lots of results are retrieved, to add words like ethical, moral, or religious to your search, or perhaps a particular religious tradition: holocaust ethical genetics christianity genocide islam Use the catalog truncation symbol * after the root of a word to search for any of its forms: When you find a useful book, check the subject headings in the record and click on any of them that look good to find further items under that subject.violence women religio*