Resource of the Week #26: On Writing Literature Reviews for Dissertations

Hello again. Last week some PhD students from Mexico visited our university. While here, they wanted guidance on preparing literature review sections of dissertations. The  talks they saw and heard on this topic are now our Resource of the Week.

First, the visitors saw a video of a talk on literature reviews. This talk, by a speaker from our writing center, contains many pieces of good advice. Among topics in the talk are organizing the literature review, integrating what others have said, and connecting ideas.

Later, the visitors received a talk from me on preparing literature reviews. The main subjects were

• reasons for doctoral students to review the literature,
• purposes of the literature review section of a dissertation, and
• advice for preparing the literature review section.

A version of this talk now appears in the AuthorAID Resource Library.

One message of my talk was the following: The literature review isn't just a barrier to overcome to get a PhD. Rather, both the process and the product are foundations to build on in one’s career.

As one attendee said, a good literature review is a good investment.

I hope these resources are helpful to many of you. Until the next post— Barbara