Conducting a Literature Review: Found it -- Now What?

Now That You Have All Those Articles, How Do You Synthesize Them?

Unlike the annotated bibliography, the literature review does not just summarize each article or book. Instead, they synthesize. Some researchers find it helpful to develop a framework, making a column for each element that they want to compare. The elements vary depending on the research, making it easier to understand the relationships between all the articles and how they relate to your research. Here's one example:

How To Organize and Cite Your Research

Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles.  Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand! The Library offers workshops on Zotero, and Mendeley. If you are in Social Welfare, contact me for a small group workshop, or one on one help with Zotero. 

1. Zotero: A free and open source tool by academics, for academics. It works as a standalone version or as a plug in with the Firefox browser. Zotero lets you keep copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word and/or OpenOffice. It also lets you create a shared group of resources if you are working with others on a project. The library has created this handy guide to using Zotero -- including unlimited storage while a UCB student, staff or faculty --  by syncing your files Google Drive using Zot.File!
2. ​Mendeley, from Elsevier, is a freely available reference manager and academic social network with web-based, desktop, and mobile versions; You can sync your library of papers between these different versions and across different computers. The Library has created this guide to using Mendeley.

It's always good to double check the formatting -- none of the software is always perfect!