To be indexed in Book Review Digest, a book must have been published or distributed in the United States or Canada. A work of nonfiction must have received reviews in two or more of the periodicals on the Book Review Digest selection list. A work of fiction must have received reviews is at least three of the periodicals. An exception is made for books reviewed in the Reference Books Bulletin section of Booklist. For these books one review is sufficient. Reviews must have appeared within 18 months after a book was published, and at least one review must be from a periodical published in the United States or Canada. Reviews of textbooks, government publications, and technical books in the law and sciences are excluded.

Generally, not more than three review excerpts for fiction or four for nonfiction are included. An exception is made for books of unusual importance or of a controversial nature, where additional excerpts are included to reflect differing points of view. There is no limit on the number of review citations included.

Fields
Document Types List
Physical Description List
Journal List
Using Limit Fields
Sample Searches
Stopwords

Highlighted fields are limit fields.

* This field is for display only; you cannot search in this field.
The Citation (CITN) consists of the TI, AU, CA, RE, SO, PB, AB, DE, BK, and LN fields.

The AB field contains either the book summary or the book review excerpt. The book summary also includes the intended age or grade level of children's books. The book review excerpt includes the approximate number of words in the complete review. You can search for any word or phrase in this field.

The AN field contains a unique 12-digit number that identifies the document.

The AU field identifies the person(s) responsible for the intellectual content of the book being reviewed. Author's names can be searched with or without hyphens. When searching without hyphens, type last name followed by first name or first name followed by last name. The order of the words does not matter. Do not type a comma.

When searching an author's name with hyphens, type the last name first and hyphenate all names and initials. Use truncation (*) if you are not sure about spelling.

You can search author names by last name, using the AUT Author Name Index in Browse (Index).

AUT Author Name
(a limit field)

The AUT field identifies the author of a book or a review. Use Browse to search for the person by last name in this Author Name index. The AUT field is for searching only; it does not display in the record.

The Reviewed Book field contains the name of the author(s), the title, the publisher, the publication year, and the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for the book being reviewed. This field is for display only; you cannot search in this field.

The CA field identifies the association, institution, organization, conference or government agency that created the book being reviewed. You can search any word or phrase in this field.

CL Children's Literature
(a limit field)

The Children's Literature field contains a Y to indicate that the book being reviewed is a work of children's literature or an N to indicate that the book being reviewed is not a work of children's literature.

CN Call Numbers
(a limit field)

The Call Numbers field indicates the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classification numbers for the book being reviewed.

The DE field lists the controlled vocabulary terms that describe the subject of the book being reviewed. This field can include personal names, uniform titles, topical terms, organization names, and geographic names.

Use hyphens to focus your search. Use without hyphens to enlarge your search. In the example above, youth in de retrieves records containing any descriptor with the word youth, such as youth attitudes or youth united states. The search youth-attitudes in de retrieves just that specific descriptor.

You can search for Descriptors using the SU Subject index in Browse (Index).

DT Document Type
(a limit field)

The Document Type field characterizes the material described in the record as either a book or a book review. Most records in this database are book reviews. Use hyphens to search for multiword document types.

The following is a list of the document types appearing in this database:

Autobiography
Biographical-material
Biography
Book-Review
Books
Collective-biography

FI Fiction Indicator
(a limit field)

The Fiction Indicator field contains Nonfiction if the book being reviewed is a work of nonfiction or Fiction for a work of fiction.

IB ISBN

The IB field lists the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for the book being reviewed. Omit hyphens when searching for an ISBN.

IS ISSN
(a limit field)

The IS field lists the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for the periodical containing a book review. Include hyphens when searching for an ISSN.

JI Journal Issue
(a limit field)

The JI Journal Issue field lists the issues of journals included in the database. You can search for a specific issue of a journal using the JI Index in the Browse (Index).

JN Journal Name
(a limit field)

The JN Journal Name field lists the names of the journals included in the database. You can search for a specific journal using the JN Index in the Browse (Index).

LA Language of Work
(a limit field)

The Language of Work field lists the language of the book being reviewed. When searching, use the full language name. All books cited in this database are in English or in both English and another language. Because this database does not identify the language of a book review, the LA field for all reviews contains the word "Undetermined."

LN Additional Information
(a limit field)

The 8-digit link number is derived from the accession number of book entries and related book review entries, and links them together. The LN field lets you retrieve all related records for the book being reviewed.

The Notes field contains additional information about the book being reviewed, such as the edition or the name of the publisher's series.

The OT field contains a variant form of the title of the book being reviewed. You can search any word or phrase in this field.

The PB field contains the name of the publisher, the publication year, and the paging of the book being reviewed. You can search for any word or phrase in this field.

PD Physical Description
(a limit field)

The PD field contains details about illustrative or graphic material that appears in the book being reviewed. The PD field contains one or more codes that describe the illustrative material. The following is a list of codes and the physical description each represents:

PY Publication Year
(a limit field)

The PY field lists the year in which the book review or the book described in the record was published.

The Reviewer field contains the name of the individual(s) responsible for writing the book review. Reviewers' names can be searched with or without hyphens. When searching without hyphens, type last name followed by first name or first name followed by last name. The order of the words does not matter.

When searching a reviewer's name with hyphens, type the last name first and hyphenate all names and initials. Use truncation (*) if your are not sure about spelling.

You can search reviewer names by last name, using the AUT Author Name Index in Browse (Index).

The Series Title field lists the information about a series of which the book being reviewed is a part. You can search for any word or phrase in this field.

The Source field lists the bibliographic source of the book review including the journal name, volume number, publication date, and page number. You can search for any word or phrase in this field.

If a search operator (OR, AND, NOT, IN, WITH, or NEAR) appears in the title for which you are searching, enclose it within quotes, as shown in the example.

SU Subject
(a limit field)

The SU field lists the controlled vocabulary terms that describe the document. The field can include personal names, topical names, organization names, geographic names, and uniform titles. This field is for browsing subject headings (descriptors) using the SU Subject index in Browse (Index). The SU field does not display in the record. Subject headings display in the DE Descriptor field.

The TI field contains the full title of the book being reviewed. You can search for any word or phrase in the title.

UD Update Code
(a limit field)

The UD field indicates the year, month, and day in which the record was added to the database in the format yyyymmdd. You can search for a single date using in or =, as shown above. In addition, you can search for a range of dates using the following operators:

< less than,
such as ud<19940802

> greater than,
such as ud>19940802

<= less than or equal to,
such as ud<=19940802

>= greater than or equal to,
such as ud>=19940802

- within a range,
such as ud=19990801-19990901

The Uniform Title field contains the standardized title for a work that has appeared under varying titles or in various versions.

The ZA field lets you search in the Author(s) AU and Corporate Author CA fields simultaneously.

The ZS field lets you search for the Source SO and Publisher PB fields simultaneously.

The ZT field lets you search for the Title TI, Other Titles OT, and Uniform Title UT fields simultaneously.

The Citation (CITN) consists of the TI, AU, CA, RE, SO, PB, AB, DE, BK, and LN fields.

The Document Type (DT) field contains keywords that characterize the material described in the record as either a book or a book review. Document types include:

Autobiography
Biographical-material
Biography
Book-Review
Books
Collective-biography

The Physical Description (PD) field contains details about illustrative or graphic material that appears in the book being reviewed. The PD field contains one or more codes that describe the illustrative material. The following is a list of codes and the physical description each represents:

View the most current Journal List.

Limit fields, when combined with other search terms, are particularly useful for focusing or limiting a search. To search a limit field, use the in or = operators with the field abbreviation, such as fiction in fi or fi=fiction. Omitting the field label retrieves information from free text (non-limit) fields only.

For limit fields containing numeric data, you can also use other special operators:

< less than,
such as py<1993

> greater than,
such as py>1991

<= less than or equal to,
such as py<=1990

>= greater than or equal to,
such as py>=1988

- indicates a range,
such as py=1988-1990

Below are several examples of the types of searches you can use to retrieve information from this database.

Authors' names appear in the Author(s) (AU) field. Names of reviewers appear in the Reviewer (RE) field.

To see all authors or reviewers with the same last name or to see variations of an author's name, use the Browse (Index). You can search for authors' names using the AUT Author Name index in Browse (Index). For example, to look for articles by Richard N. Chapman:

1. Go to Browse (Index).
2. Select the AUT Author Name index.
3.Type chapman.

Searching Using Descriptors

The Descriptors (DE) field lists the controlled vocabulary terms that describe the book being reviewed. This field can include personal names, uniform titles, topical terms, organization names, and geographic names.

You can search in the DE field with or without hyphens. Searching a single term (for example, pollution in de) retrieves records containing any descriptor with the word pollution, such as air pollution, marine pollution, or pollution statistics. The search air-pollution-juvenile-literature in de retrieves just that specific descriptor.

With hyphens, the terms must be an exact match in the Descriptor. Search for pollution- if you want only those records indexed with the single descriptor pollution.

You can search for Descriptors using the SU Subject index in Browse (Index).

Searching with truncation lets you retrieve records containing variations of your term. For example, let's search for reviews of biographies with political content.

1. First conduct a search for the term biography in de.

2. Next, search for and politic*. Beginning the search request with the operator AND automatically combines it with the previous search. The asterisk (truncation symbol) searches for all terms beginning with the root politic, such as political, politician, and so on.

3. Conduct a search for and book-review in dt. This request limits the search to records that are book reviews.

Certain words of little intrinsic meaning appear too frequently to be useful in searching text. Information systems call these "stopwords"; you will not be able to search for the following words alone in the database. They can be included within a phrase, but they will be ignored.

an
and
are
for
from
in
of
or
that
the
was
were
which
with