Revisit the first unit of this program for help in identifying authoritative, scholarly and relevant sources.
What type of sources should you use? Primary, secondary or tertiary ? Remember, sources may serve different purposes in the research process but be sure to trace a quote or concept to the original source.
Skim read sources to determine main ideas and to get an overall impression of the content.
Scan or selectively read sources with a question in mind and disregard unrelated information.
Read critically identified scholarly sources and decide to what extent you accept the authors’ arguments and approaches to your research topic and questions.
Your readers expect you to do more than just mound up and report data; they expect you to report it in a way that continues the ongoing conversation between writers and readers that creates a community of researchers. To do that, you must select from all the data you find just those data that support an answer to a question that solves a problem your readers think needs solving.
Booth, Wayne C, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 2011. The Craft of Research. 40. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
The following pages have been extracted from the University of North Alabama's Center for Writing Excellence
"Comparing the Annotated Bibliography to the Literature Review." UNA Center for Writing Excellence. U of North Alabama, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.
Sources selected for an annotated bibliography represent or cover arguments and approaches relevant to the research topic. Sources are described according to the agreed documentation style (MLA), arranged in alphabetical order and include a summary and evaluation.
In annotating a source, you may do the following:
Writing a Literature Review.” ELS: Effective Learning Service. Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, n.d. Web. 10 Oct.
2014. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/els/docs/Writing%20a%20Literature%20Review.PDF
Hart, Chris. “The Literature Review in Research.” Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research
Imagination. Sage, 1999.1-25. PDF File.
Scholarship is like a conversation where ideas are created, debated, and weighed against one another over time. Information users and creators come together to discuss meaning, with the effective researcher adding his or her voice to the conversation.