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Reviewing the Literature Room

Reviewing the literature is a major part of any research process. It is important for many reasons, including finding the basis for your research, checking the current knowledge and thinking in your subject area and demonstrating that you can find, read and synthesise a range of literature in your subject domain. As you create your literature review, you will also be building your skills in literature sourcing, retrieval and management. These include effective reading, synthesis, rationale-building, organisation and writing. As you study the constellations in this room, keep referring to the think map on the left. This will help you to see the relevance of a particular constellation to the overall picture.
Reviewing the literature > Sourcing the literature > Search strategy checklist

Search strategy checklist

The checklist below covers important stages involved in sourcing literature. You might apply these pointers to your own search, or use them as a source of ideas to generate your own checklist.

Planning

  1. Define your topic
  2. Identify the key concepts
  3. Choose your keywords
  4. Prepare your search strategy
  5. Prepare a time schedule

Conducting the search

  1. Which sources of literature will you use and how will you access them?
  2. Combine your keywords using Boolean operators
  3. Use truncation and wildcards
  4. Keep records of search

Evaluate and refine your search

  1. Evaluate your results for relevance and coverage
  2. Refine your search strategy if necessary
  3. Refine your time schedule if necessary
  4. Conduct your altered search.

This checklist is also available to save or print out. You could also use it as a template to create your own customised checklist.

Comments:

Zoe (17/11/2008 17:33:11)
I think this is highly appropriate for us at the moment- especially with the sysytematic review looming. In fact, most of the pages within "reviewing the literature> sourcing the literature" are very useful!
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