Chapter 6: Literature Review
Susan Vernon Gerstenfeld
Now That the Project Team Has Found Material, What Do They Do With It?
Critical to conducting a worthwhile literature review is an openness about material. Ask how the material obtained is related to the topic. Students should be willing to collect material that is not immediately relevant but has potential, and they must be willing to eliminate material that they first thought would be helpful but has not proven to be so.
A problem for most researchers is keeping citations within the body of the review accurate during revisions. It is very helpful to make copies of pertinent articles along with the cover page of the journal from which that article was taken. Record the volume number, an often forgotten detail, if it is not on the cover page. Later, when developing the bibliography, the project team will be grateful to have an organized and readily available source for all of the information they need. Hand copying the information often leads to abbreviating, which leads to errors later because abbreviations can often be taken to mean two different things.
When the students are ready to start writing their review, they will be faced with a set of questions:
The first question is, "What realms of knowledge do we need to know in order to reasonably develop our research questions." The literature review is the students opportunity to educate themselves and their advisor in addition to outside readers regarding the background for developing or for supporting their choice of a research question. Some of what is first put into the review may end up as an appendix later.
The second is, "Who are our readers?" Answering this question will tell the students much about the structure and style they should use for the literature review. The report will be housed in Gordon Library' Therefore, readers may not be familiar with the topic. A most helpful first section of one or two paragraphs should be a guide to the literature review. Tell the reader what material the review will be covering and why. Then, dividing the material into logical sections, the headings of which can serve as an outline for what is to come, will help the lay reader to capture the logic of the presentation. If the review will contain many technical terms, it should include a section at the back called "Glossary of Technical Terms."
Citations should appear embedded in the text, whenever one can ask "Who says?" or "What's the evidence?"
Writing is hard work. Expect to do many revisions of each section. It is important to constantly ask how the point being made is related to the discussion and to the overall presentation of material. One should not regurgitate other authors' opinions or conclusions as fact but refer to their material with qualifiers such as, "As one expert points out.." or "Earlier studies indicate ..." and "One perspective is...," for example. Reviewers should be critical without indicating their own opinion, which is not relevant in a review of literature. Certainly, it is appropriate to talk about what is left out of the arguments or discussions, however.
The reviewer should constantly ask, "How is this point related to the discussion of the problem?" If it is not relevant, leave it should be left out. Remember, more will be read than will be discussed. The project will need a "references" section at the back which is alphabetized. The references must be completely in order and in standard form.
After completely finishing with the writing and the multiple revisions that are necessary, revise again.
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