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Information Skills Tutorial: What is a Literature Search?

What is a literature search?

A literature search involves searching books, journals, reports and more for information on a particular topic.

You need to be very systematic when looking for information, otherwise you’ll waste time and may miss relevant references.

Move from background information, through to basic texts (such as books on your reading lists) then to journal articles or papers.  You’ll probably use a number of electronic resources such as databases and web sites.

Where should your information come from?

It is important to use a range of information sources to support your arguments. 

When writing at University, you are encouraged to focus on academic literature, such as scholarly textbooks and journals.

However sometimes it may be useful to include other types of information sources, such as practitioner journals, newspapers, blogs and other social media. See the Finding the Information You Need tab above.

Being aware of the 'Information Timeline' can be a helpful way of deciding what type of information to use, and when.

 

If you really must Google, use Scholar!

To make the best use of Google, we recommend the Scholar search. This limits results to higher quality resources. 

Want to check if the Library can provide full text? Click Settings and Library links. Search for University of Ulster and save your preferences.  That way you will see links to full-text within our e-journal collection in your search results.

Top tip:  login to the Portal first - that will help with full text access off campus. 

Google Scholar Search

Recommended books for research skills

Books available both as print and electronic  format unless otherwise stated.