Academic Books
Good researchers combine the big picture (context) with more focused details. One way to do this is to consult both books and articles. To have a good research experience, keep these points in mind :
- You are not expected to read entire academic books as part of academic research! You are looking for a useful chapter or section of a chapter. Use the table of contents links or the "search within" tool in ebooks to save time!
- Academic articles can be highly specialized. They are responses to larger debates that have progressed through many articles written by many different experts. These experts are responding to each other and already know a lot about the topic!
- Books frequently give more context and summary of these debates: they can be a good entry point when you are learning about a topic.
- For historical research, books can be an additional source of primary materials like letters and memoirs.
