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A Literature Review is NOT a research paper, nor is it an annotated bibliography. This tutorial will help you understand what a Literature Review is.
A Literature Review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research (scholarship) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.
The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University presents an overview of how to organize and write a literature review. This site presents the parts of a literature review, how to organize a literature review, as well as some strategies and tips to use while writing a literature review.
In less than ten minutes this tutorial introduces students to what literature reviews and strategies for researching and writing a literature review. From North Carolina State University.
In four modules this tutorial defines the nature of a literature review, compares review and research articles, suggests how to finding these resources and recommends strategies for developing the literature review. While some parts of Module 3 are specific to Adelphi, most of the information is general to all literature reviews. The entire tutorial takes less than one hour to complete.
