Literature Review

Literature review is an important step in conducting any research. Whether you are doing research for the first time (as in college, or in university) or you are a professional researcher, you need to collect information from other sources in order to take further steps of your research. Literature review is conducted to enhance your knowledge of the area in which you are conducting research. It also let you know how much work has already been done in the same area and what should have to be your directions. Literature review is usually the second chapter of the thesis or dissertation. 

What is Review of Literature:

Review of literature is an in-depth study of available literature on the area in which you are going to conduct research. A thorough study of available literature broadens the mind and opens new dimensions to the researcher. 

Advantages of Literature Review:

Some new researchers think that review of literature is just to be done because it is necessary part of the thesis and they write reviews from any book related to their topic. In reality literature review is much more than a chapter in your thesis. Literature review has many advantages that you may find after you are in the process of making the methodology and when you are implementing it.

Broaden your Knowledge:

The first and foremost benefit of reviewing literature is that it broadens your knowledge in that area. Without thorough knowledge of your area of study you my end up with research framework that is faulty and even would not be able to formulate your objectives, hypothesis and research questions in proper manner. In my opinion literature review starts with the selection of area of research because you start to study the available literature related to your area of study and get insight on how to narrow down the topic, how to develop a research topic and other important and preliminary things in the research.

Your knowledge of your area of study helps you formulate better and suitable methodology for the research. Through out the research process you will need to review literature to get more knowledge and make yourself aware of the methodologies others have used during conducting research on similar topics.

In todays electronic era millions of new researches take place daily and therefore you need to keep yourself abreast with the researches that take place with time to time. Some researchers become so busy with research process that they do not read new literature after compiling the chapter on review of literature but without reading new literature the researcher can not make herself/himself up-to-date.

Improvement in Methodology:

By reading journals and books that are related to your area of research you can get knowledge of the methodology they have used and in this way you can develop a better methodology for your research too. Methodology is one of the most important area of research. Without suitable methodology the research is useless and the findings of the research are invalid and not applicable in solving problems.

Sources of Literature Review:

Literature review can be conducted for many sources. As with the development in electronic media and in print media today there are variety of sources available to collect reviews. The most common sources of literature review are as follows.

Books:

Books are an invaluable source of information on lots of areas. For literature review you need to start reading books that are available in your nearest libraries and in book stores. First make a list of books that are of relevance to your area and after that start reading them and always write down the references with the reviews, otherwise, in the end it becomes a clutter to find references to the reviews. (Read on how to write references properly in thesis).

For getting knowledge you can read old books but while adding reviews in the thesis you need to select books that have been published in recent years. Very old books are not good source of review. As with new researches new information is available in newly published books so better take reviews from new books rather than quoting from a book that has been published some 15-20 years back.

Journals:

At times books are not available in the libraries or their is limited information about the topic in the books than you can consult journals for information. Journals are more up-to-date and have relevant information on any topics. There are variety of journals published form many publishing companies.

E-journals:

E-journals have become popular and are easy to find because today most of the researchers prefer to publish their journals on internet. E-journals can be purchased from the publishing companies or a subscription can be obtained and than you can access them.

E-books:

E-books like other printed books have similar information but they are available on internet. Some of the e-books are free to read and print while others have to be purchased. Amazon and e-bay are two prominent sources of purchasing books online.

Newspapers:

While conducting research on some political or historical topic newspaper can become a valuable source of literature review. Some old newspapers are very important because they contain information about the lifestyle patterns and the political and economical situations of the country that a book may not contain.

Personal Diaries and other Records:

Personal diaries can be valuable if the research is a descriptive one and needs some real life facts about a personality or a phenomenon or situation.

Government Published Documents:

Government publishes records of various affairs related to the country which can give you insight for later research.