What are books and why use them?

Books can provide comprehensive overviews or extra background and introductory information that is not covered in journal articles. If you are looking for historical information or theory, books are a great place to start.

Difference between articles and books

Books are much more comprehensive than articles and aim to tell you everything about a topic. They can be quite long! Journal articles are much shorter and cover a very specific aspect of a topic.

Sometimes you can tell from the title if an item is a journal article or a book. Article titles are much more detailed while book titles can be more general.

Parts of a scholarly book

The anatomy of a scholarly book is consistent, whether it is a print book that you find on a library shelf or an ebook that you find online in Sofia. It should have a title page, a copyright page, a table of contents and in many cases, but not all, an index.

What's the difference between an author and an editor?

Books can be written by one person (or a team of people) or they can be assembled by an editor, with each chapter written by a different person. The chapters in an edited book are thematically linked with each individual chapter covering a very specific part of that larger theme.

Example

<Previous

1. 1
2. 2

>Next

This book was organized and put together by Duane M. Rumbaugh. However, each chapter is written by somebody different.

For example, Chapter 3 is written by Richard K. Davenport. Each chapter is related to the larger theme of language learning in primates. When you use a chapter from an edited book, you must remember to cite the chapter information (author and title) and the book information (editors and title).