For my Thesis research I have to read lots of books and articles on the topic of feminism, production structure and female position within this structure, as well as analyse top animation movies on the amount of women working on these films and if it has female main characters.
Literature reviews are, then, important in:
- supporting the identification of a research topic, question or hypothesis;
- Identifying the literature to which the research will make a contribution, andcontextualising the research within that literature;
- building an understanding of theoretical concepts and terminology;
- facilitating the building of a bibliography or list of the sources that have been consulted;
- suggesting research methods that might be useful; and in,
- analyzing and interpreting results.
Literature searching and locating information sources
There are a number of different tools to assist in the identification and location of documents in each of the categories discussed above. These include:
- library catalogues – good for locating books held by a library, and journals towhich they subscribe;
- search engines – good for locating web pages, with simple keyword basedsearches; and,
- on-line databases or abstracting and indexing services, which provide accessto journal articles, papers in conference proceedings, reports, dissertations and other documents.
Guidelines:
•Use headings and topic sentences to inform readers what the subject is and what point the material is contributing to the discussion.
•Do not just point to the existence of literature on the topic; compose about methods or results in the studies you discuss.
•Test sentences for relevance to the main point.
•Put citations where they don’t distract from the line of thought you are presenting.
•Utilize active verbs that are strong and rich in content.
•Make use of transition words.