literature review
DESCRIPTION
Shows how to start your literature review on unfamiliar topics.TRANSCRIPT
Koichi InoueSubject Librarian
LITERATURE REVIEW
“I should’ve started earlier.”
• Searching, gathering and organising information takes a long time and much effort.• Includes finding relevant literature, getting hold of it, evaluating and writing, and managing the citation.
Literature review cycle
“Can I answer my question?”
• You will need a decent amount of literature to answer your research question.• Briefly search on your topic. • Refine your topic or come up with another topic if you find few or no literature on your topic.
Google Scholar: Advance search
Google Scholar: Advanced features
• Need to have a Google account and sign in.• Save articles and citation to your “My library”.• Create alert.
Google Scholar: Pros & Cons
Pros:• Searches through millions of journal articles and books across all disciplines and databases.• Great tool to find “gray literature” (e.g. Dissertations, theses, conference papers).• Also great at finding open source journal articles.
Cons:• Returns a huge number of hits, but it is difficult to narrow down the results.• The full text may not be available to you.
3 min exercise
• Do preliminary searches on your topic.
“Know your tools”
• Full text searching
Searches the entire document. E.g. JSTOR.• Metadata searching
Only searches data attached to the item. E.g. Library Catalogue.• Hybrid searching
Searches metadata; and the full text when available.
E.g. Academic Search Premier, Google services.
10 min exercise
• Use one of each types of search tools (full text, metadata, hybrid) and find two books and two journal articles that are relevant to your topic.• Keep open at least one full text journal article or an ebook (you are going to need it for the next exercise).
“Do you know what you are looking for?”• Known item search
You already have information about the item you are looking for. E.g. You have the title of the book/the article and/or the author/editor names.
You often do this type of searching because your supervisor suggest you should consult something or you are tracking down something you found in a bibliography.
Recommended tools: Te Waharoa, Library Catalogue, Journal Finder.
• Unknown item search
You are just exploring what is available on your topic.
Recommended tools: Google Books, Google Scholar, databases.
Te Waharoa
5 min exercise
• Examine the bibliography section of an article/an ebook you found in the previous exercise. Select an item you want to consult and check if you can get the full text through the Library.• Search Google Scholar/Books. Select an item you want to consult and check if you can get the full text through the Library.
“You guys don’t have it.”
• If the Library doesn’t hold the item you want (books, book chapters, articles), please make an interloan request.