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Scholarly Sources: A Sequenced Tutorial

Explore the various types of scholarly sources, as well as how to search for them at Kresge Library.

Scholarly Books and Book Chapters

Scholarly Books and Book Chapters

What makes a book or a book chapter scholarly?

Scholarly books, whether written by one author or contributed to by many authors, share some common traits.  They are written by experts-- researchers, professionals, professors, and other scholars-- to present research, analyze trends, and otherwise communicate with their peers in the same field.  

They are most often published by an academic press, including university or college presses as well as others: 

logos of various university presses, positioned near each other in two rows

The author or authors’ credentials might be listed and are relevant to the topic of the book:

screenshot of title page of sample article, with author information indicated in red

From Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Processing by Xingfeng Li

The author cites their sources within the text (with footnotes, like below, or with the author’s name and the date of the publication) and lists them at the end of the book, or sometimes at the end of each chapter (in the case of a book with chapters by different authors):

screenshot of two sample article reference pages, positioned side by side
From Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Processing by Xingfeng Li; and Technically Alive: Shakespeare’s Sonnets by John Archer