1 November 2016
Catie Sahadath, Social Sciences Data Librarian
http://bit.ly/fglitreview
Learn how to effectively search for resources for the purpose of writing a literature review
Learn best practices in structuring and writing a literature review
Source: Grix, J. & G. Watkins (2010)
Part of a larger work
Selective
Stand alone
Comprehensive
Article
Thesis
Course assignment
Review
article
Source: NCSU Libraries
Examples:
Use resources such as:
You can narrow by:
Examples of narrow topics:
Your topic:
Representations of women in country music
Representations of women in country music
Key Concepts:
Women:
women
female
girl
Country music:
country music
country and western
folk
Group synonyms together using parentheses and OR
(woman OR female OR girl)
(country music OR country and western OR folk music)
Use quotation marks to search for exact expressions
(woman OR female OR girl)
("country music" OR "country and western" OR "folk music")
Use asterisks to truncate
(wom*n OR female* OR girl*)
("country music" OR "country*western" OR "folk music")
Use AND to tell the database that you want to search both concepts together:
(wom*n OR female* OR girl*)
AND
("country music" OR "country*western" OR "folk music")
Use NOT to exclude terms that are out of scope
(wom*n OR female* OR girl*)
AND
("country music" OR "country*western" OR "folk music")
NOT
medieval
String it all together:
(wom*n OR female* OR girl*) AND ("country music" OR "country*western" OR "folk music") NOT medieval
Find databases on:
•Type of article (empirical, review, theoretical)
•Title, abstract, first paragraphs and one before methods
•Publication date
•Scope and purpose
•Intended audience
•Impact factor or other rankings
Identify gaps in the literature
Describe methodological quality of research
Identify classic or landmark studies as such
For multidisciplinary topics, review studies from each topic separately
Use subheadings in long reviews
How literature leads to or justifies your research question
APA? MLA? Chicago?
Zotero demonstration
Creating citations from the catalogue
Catie Sahadath
Social Sciences Data Librarian
University of Ottawa
Catelynne.Sahadath@uOttawa.ca