The UVA Wise Library assignment support focuses on providing "sample"/"example" content and access to essential resources, while encouraging students to reach out to their professors for more specific questions.
"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. 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."
Taylor, D. The literature review: A few tips on conducting it. University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.
Steps in the Literature Review Process:
1) Define the research question
You may need to some exploratory searching of the literature to get a sense of scope, to determine whether you need to narrow or broaden your focus
Identify databases that provide the most relevant sources, and identify relevant terms (controlled vocabularies) to add to your search strategy
Finalize your research question
2) Determine inclusion/exclusion criteria
Think about relevant dates, geographies (and languages), methods, and conflicting points of view
3) Choose databases and conduct the search
Conduct searches in the published literature via the identified databases
Check to see if this topic has been covered in other discipline's databases
Examine the citations of on-point articles for keywords, authors, and previous research (via references) and cited reference searching.
4) Review your results
Save your search results in a citation management tool (such as Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote)
De-duplicate your search results
Make sure that you've found the seminal pieces -- they have been cited many times, and their work is considered foundational
Check with your professor or a librarian to make sure your search has been comprehensive
5) Synthesize the information gathered
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of individual sources and evaluate for bias, methodologies, and thoroughness
Group your results in to an organizational structure that will support why your research needs to be done, or that provides the answer to your research question
Develop your conclusions
6) Analyze the information gathered
Are there gaps in the literature?
Where has significant research taken place, and who has done it?
Is there consensus or debate on this topic?
Which methodological approaches work best?
7) Write the literature review
Pick an organizational structure, i.e., themes, approaches, concepts, methodologies.
For example: Background, Current Practices, Critics and Proponents, Where/How this study will fit in
Organize your citations and focus on your research question and pertinent studies
Compile your bibliography
Note: The first four steps are the best points at which to contact a librarian.
Your Liaison Librarian can help you determine the best databases to use for your topic, assess scope, and formulate a search strategy.
Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students
This 9 minute video from North Carolina State University provides an overview of what a literature review is, defines the term 'literature' and outlines the steps of writing a literature review.
This video is published under Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license.
Writing an Annotated Bibliography: Tips
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources (books, articles, websites, etc.) with a short descriptive paragraph about each source. It is sometimes a useful step before writing a research paper or it can stand alone as an overview of the research available on a topic. Each source in the annotated bibliography starts with a citation - the information necessary for finding the original source, in APA format. Annotations are usually 4- 6 sentences long and roughly 150 words.
Annotations Include:
The main focus or purpose of the cited work
Usefulness or relevance to your research topic.
Background and credibility of the author
Possible shortcomings or bias in the work
Intended audience for the work
Any significant special features of the work (eg. glossary, appendices, index)
Conclusions or observations reached by the author
Your own brief impression of the work including your own conclusions and observations
Process for Preparing an Annotated Bibliography:
First, locate and record citations to books, periodicals, and documents that may contain useful information and ideas on your topic.
Briefly examine and review the actual items. Then choose works that provide a variety of perspectives on your topic.
Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate style.
Write a concise annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the work and include the information listed above.
Annotations versus Abstracts:
Many scholarly articles start with an abstract, which is the author's summary of the article to help you decide whether you should read the entire article. This abstract is not the same thing as an annotation. The annotation needs to be in your own words, to explain the relevance of the source to your particular assignment or research question.