While international development is an interdisciplinary field, most databases of journal articles are not; instead, they collect articles from a single discipline such as economics or sociology. 

Books and journal articles are used  to access scholarly research in your field.  Books take a long time to research, write, and publish. Journal articles are more current, shorter and are usually published faster than books. Consider books when you want coverage of a topic often tapping a wide range of scholarship.

Look for these key features:

• An introduction which gives you context for the book and overview of the topic; here the author should tell you why she is writing the book and her position on the topic. Note the acknowledgements, this will give you some idea of the credibility of the author.
• Although many journal articles have a literature review, a book should have extensive literature review which will focus on issues in the field and key scholars
• The body of the work should expand on the author's thesis and arguments,  be detailed, but arranged so the reader can understand the logical breaks in chapters
• Read over the summary or conclusion. Did the author do what she set out to do?
• Extensive bibliography