For our research paper our professor asked us to choose a book which is related to our topic. I went to the library, and I tried to find a book linked to my topic. I chose the book called Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures Define Drugs written by Jordan Goodman, Paul E. LoveJoy, and Andrew Sherratt.
The evaluation of the book was a little bit hard. In fact, we were confronted to too much information, so we had to narrow down the information and chose only the important materiel. First, we start by giving the references of the book like the name of the author or publisher’s name. Secondly, we had to evaluate the authority. I mean by that accessing if the author is qualified to write about this subject, and if he has written other books during his career. In addition, we had to determinate the currency of our book; for example, when it was published, or if we are going to use it for current information or historical context. Moreover, we had to extract the main purpose of the book and see if it’s related to our topic. Finally, we had to evaluate the sources where the author got his information, if he is referring to primary or secondary materiel.
The article How to read a book is very useful, in fact it helped me evaluate if the book I chose is related to my subject. Also, the first workshop we had about using the resources provided by the library helped a lot to find a book. Actually, when I looked the first time I did not find a book related to my book, so I went to a see librarian, and he helped to find a book. However, I think that the articles that I found in the library database contains more information that are going to help me write my paper.
