Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
a Literature Review
NCSU Libraries
Expectations of graduate students
Grad students have different backgrounds
◦ Not every grad student has done research
◦ Not everyone has experience reading the
literature
No problem.
You are learning to ask questions
Do so! No one expects you to know
everything.Your job is to learn to seek out
answers
Knowing that information is out there can be
empowering!
Talking about the literature…
What it IS:
◦ Scholarly communication
◦ A published record of
research
◦ Challenging to read and
digest
◦ Indexed, searchable with
research databases
X
Talking about the
literature…
What it IS NOT:
◦ Common knowledge
X
i.e., handily summarized in Wikipedia
◦ Easy to find
If you just Googled it, you
overlooked something.
◦ Available freely online (mostly)
This distinction can be transparent
on campus: the “free” internet vs.
library subscriptions
Talking about the literature…
Illustrate
and describe previous research, including
gaps and flaws
Hey, did you notice that the bullets here are checkboxes?
Functions of Literature Reviews
Understand the structure of the problem
Synthesize
previous perspectives and develop your
own perspective
C
A
Digging Into the Literature
= Major works
= Studies that rely on major works
C
A
Digging Into the Literature
= Major works = Something new!
= Studies that rely on major works
C
A
New!
Digging Into the Literature – How?
Aspect How?
Major works •Literature databases
•Colleague recommendations
•Cited work
Related works Citation searching:
•Web of Science
•Google Scholar
New information •Articles alerts/RSS feeds
•Tables of Contents
Writing RefWorks
and
revision
Work with Articles
and Brain
Overview of the Process
Topic
Search databases
Find, evaluate, and select articles
Overview of the Process
RefWorks
Refine topic?
Use your citation
manager to stay
Work with Articles
organized
and Brain
Overview of the Process
Writing RefWorks
and
revision
Work with Articles
and Brain
Proceeding…(use worksheet handout)
Develop draft topic
Discuss with advisor, colleagues