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A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment (sometimes in the form of an annotated bibliography, but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research paper, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing,the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries.
Besides enlarging your knowledge about the topic, writing a literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas:
Consider the following process when conducting and writing a literature review:
Select a Topic: When selecting a topic make sure that your topic is not too broad. Your instructor may limit the number of sources that you need to do your assignment. Make sure that the number of sources are sufficient to cover your topic. Check with your instructor if you have questions about your topic.
Search the literature to locate relevant research articles: Grace Library subscribes to 50+ journal databases, covering a wide range of subjects. You can search the databases to access research articles in scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. When searching the databases, you want to use keywords. Look at your topic and note the main ideas or keywords. If your topic is the following:
“An assessment of the quality of care in nursing homes”
the keywords would be
To locate relevant articles, use the Library Search box on Grace Library’s website. This allows you to search all of the library’s resources at one time. You can then limit your search results to just scholarly or peer reviewed articles. As an alternative you can also search specific subject databases by clicking on the A-Z journal list and choosing your databases.
Read and Analyze the Articles: Now that you have selected articles, you need to read and take notes. You may want to begin by reading the abstracts for your articles to get a general idea of what the article is about. You then need to read each of the articles more carefully. As you read, you may notice themes or issues which help you to organize your articles. You may also determine that some articles do not fit or are not relevant to your topic. Take notes for each of your articles regarding the main points, the type of study, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Organize the review: After reading and analyzing the articles, you are ready to organize the articles in preparation to write the review. Consider your purpose in writing the review. Think about what are the most important topics and subtopics and how you should present them. Decide how you would like to organize your articles, whether by trends, by topic, or methodologically. You might want to create an outline to help you organize your argument and your topics.
At this point it might also be helpful to look at some actual literature reviews to get an idea of how to organize your review. You can search the library’s databases to get copies of literature reviews. Go to the Grace Library web page (www.carlow.edu/library) and enter the keyword “literature review” in the library search box. Once you receive the search results you can then further limit the results to “Academic journals” and/or “peer reviewed” by putting a check in either or both of those boxes.
To retrieve literature reviews in a specific subject area, combine “literature review” with a subject term, e.g.
Literature review and education
Literature review and social work
Literature review and nursing
The above searches will retrieve articles on literature reviews in education, in social work, and in nursing respectively.
Writing the review: Once you have organized your articles you can begin to write the literature review. When you write your review be sure to present the research topic or question that you are going to address. In your review you want to summarize your sources and back up any claims that you make with evidence, just as if you were writing a research paper. Be sure to include your findings, any gaps in the literature, any limitations and implications for further research.
