Literature Reviews and Annotated Bibliographies

Writing a literature review will take time to gather and analyze the research relevant to your topic, so it is best to start early and give yourself enough time to gather and analyze your sources.  The process of writing a literature review usually covers the following steps:

1. Define your Research question
2. Plan your approach to your research 
3. Search the literature
4. Analyze the material 
5. Manage the results of your research
6. Write your review

The first step in a literature review is to develop a clear research question. You might already have a topic in mind, but a topic is not the same as a question. 

To shape your question, you’ll need to do some early, exploratory searching. This means looking through databases or other academic sources to see what has already been written about your topic. These early searches can help you:

• Learn the language scholars use when writing about your topic.

• See what types of questions others have asked.

• Identify common themes or debates.

• Notice gaps—areas that haven’t been explored much.

These early steps will help you turn a broad topic into a focused, searchable question.

Some things to consider:

• What is my central question or issue that the literature can help define?
• What is already known about the topic?
• Is the scope of the literature being reviewed wide or narrow enough?
• Is there a conflict or debate in the literature?
• What connections can be made between the texts being reviewed?
• What sort of literature should be reviewed? Historical? Theoretical? Methodological? Quantitative? Qualitative?
• What criteria should be used to evaluate the literature being reviewed?
• How will reviewing the literature justify the topic I plan to investigate?