It's important to know what you are looking for before starting your research. Consider the scope of your assignment first:

• What is the topic of your literature review? Try to come up with a topic that is not too narrow or too broad. If it's too narrow, there may not be enough resources on the topic to fill the requirements of your assignment. If it's too broad, there may be too much material to cover in your literature review.

• How many sources are you expected to use in your literature review? Ask your instructor for clarification if you aren't sure.

• Are your sources required to be scholarly or peer-reviewed? See this FAQ for more information.

• Are your sources expected to be recent? Some instructors will require your sources to have been published in the last few years.

Once you have an idea of what you are looking for, you can start the research process. You can begin by doing a search on our library homepage. You can also try searching one of our subject databases for a more focused search, or search Google Scholar.

You will need to evaluate the sources you find. Ask yourself who wrote the source, when it was published, if the author has the necessary qualifications for the topic, and why the source was written. This is known as the CRAAPP test. See this library Help page on the CRAAPP Test for more details.

For more help with research, see our research guide. You can also ask us for help on our chat.