Welcome to Librarians Spill the Tea, where we explore the context around scholarly drama. For each episode, you’ll find an Episode Description, Timestamps, full Transcript, followed by our Show Notes, which contain any works and other links mentioned.
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Description
In our first “Brewing Tea” episode, we focus less on the drama, and more on the nuts and bolts of the research process. We cover what a literature review is, what a literature review is not, how to write one, how to use one, and why we should even care about literature reviews.
Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
00:39 - Pin Check!
2:51 - What is a lit review?
3:24 - Lit review vs. Annotated Bibliography
4:19 - Are lit reviews different across disciplines?
8:01 - Defining related terms
8:34 - What is synthesis?
9:49 - Synthesis vs. description vs. interpretation
11:09 - Lit vs. scoping vs. systematic reviews
13:21 - Why care about a lit review?
23:29 - Making a lit review/where to start
31:57 - Organizing a lit review
32:07 - LibGuides
40:39 - Lit reviews are narrative
43:02 - How do you use a lit review?
48:21 - Library Favs segment
Transcript
Mary
(with music) Ready for some scholarly drama? Join your librarians as we spill the tea.
(music)
Welcome to Librarians Spill the Tea. I'm Mary.
Tristan
I'm Tristan.
Mary
We're going to be doing a Brewing Tea episode, which is where we talk about some of the nuts and bolts of research, and maybe what different terms mean things you should be thinking about, all that good stuff. So today we are going to be talking about literature reviews.
OK, Tristan, what pins are you wearing today?
Tristan
I am wearing an enamel pin that looks like an award ribbon, but it's made out of books and it says “library enthusiast.”
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
And then I'm also wearing a pin that Mary made. That has a turtle? Tortoise? Turtle on it?
Mary
I searched turtle to get that picture, so we're gonna go with turtle.
Tristan
OK saying “I read banned books.” It's very cute.
Mary
We have a lot of pins related to banned books. Mostly because I was really into making buttons at that point in my career, when it was banned books week.
Tristan
Amazing. Good work.
Mary
Thank you so much.
Tristan
What about you, Mary? What are you wearing?
Mary
OK, so I am wearing also a button that I made, and this one says, “tomorrow needs you” and it's a yellow background with blue text. It has like a little sun on there and then “call/text 988,” and that's one I made for Suicide Prevention Month, but it's like always on my backpack, and I'm just wearing it today.
Tristan
Yeah, that's a good one.
Mary
Also, I feel like for folks that are at Beloit, if you ever want one of the buttons we've made-- I'll link like at least the images for these maybe. Just DM us on Instagram and I will do my best to get you one. ‘cause we can always make a couple more.
Tristan
Yes, should we also highlight that celeb has button making materials and devices?
Mary
Oh, we should. Mm-hmm. So where we record our podcast, aside from when I hide in my little tiny walk in closet to fill in gaps, is the awesome CELEB podcasting studio, which has a great setup. So Beloiters, if you're listening to this, definitely come check it out if you want to start your own recordings, and come use the button makers, they have multiple.
Tristan
Multiple button makers, multiple sizes. They have sewing machines, 3D printers. I think they make stickers and do printing.
Mary
Mm-hmm. They have the T-shirt maker thing. Yeah. Definitely reach out to celeb if you're interested in trying out some making stuff.
So we're going to start today by--Tristan, could you please explain, what is a lit review?
Tristan
Alright, so a lit review is generally an overview of published literature on a specific topic or theme or idea question that analyzes and might summarize different writings, different works that are related to your research or whatever you're interested in.
How was that?
Mary
OK, that was great. That was really good.
What is then the difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography?
Tristan
Oh, great question. So an annotated bibliography generally does not have as much synthesis or evaluation. It's more on the summary side of things, so it'll typically be a list of citations and then, depending maybe on your faculty or your instructor, you might be asked to also summarize the source. You might be asked to say a sentence or two on how you would use it, but typically it will be formatted very differently than a literature review. So typically a literature review is formatted more as a paper with kind of an introduction, a middle and end.
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
Whereas an annotated bibliography typically is a list.
Mary
OK. Yeah. I like that. Are there differences in literature reviews across different fields and which ones do you know about being a little different?
Tristan
Yes, there are definitely differences between disciplines and how we approach light reviews, how how we do them, maybe even when and why we do them. So I think, for the humanities, I'll speak mostly to the humanities. That's what my background is in. That's where most of my liaison departments are. For the humanities, for lit reviews, we tend to focus more on theory, I would say, and I'm going to actually borrow something from one of our faculty here, Dr. Johnson, who teaches in the Critical Identity Studies department and the religious studies department.
So one time I visited one of her classes to talk about citations, and as part of that conversation, she brought up the idea of “research genealogy,” which I just love as a concept. I've been obsessed with it ever, ever since she brought it up. But it's basically the idea that, in the humanities especially, when you are doing your research, although I think this definitely applies to other fields as well, you are building an understanding and a discussion between the sources that have come before you. So you're building a genealogy by looking back and putting different sources together in context.
Mary
I like that way of explaining it.
Tristan
Right. And so I think that's what a lot of humanities literature reviews aim to do. You're putting together resources, you are talking about how they relate, how they are conversing with each other, but then also how they are related to the work that you yourself are doing. But what about in STEM, Mary?
Mary
Ohh my goodness, I'm so glad you asked. No. So I did talk to one of our chemistry professors and then I also talked to my sister, who is a physics professor at another small school. Just because I had some thoughts, right? But really the most of the questions we get literature reviews are tied to students that would be categorized at least somewhere between humanities and STEM, kind of like in the poli-sci, history, literature, other fields.
Tristan
Right. So and we are a liberal arts school, so it makes sense that there's a lot of crossover.
Mary
Yes, yes, but in a lot of sciences, lit reviews are less often assigned in classes for especially undergraduate level students, and they might make more of an appearance in, if you're looking for a full lit review, professionals would publish that in an academic journal to kind of provide almost like a snapshot of the state of the field at the time of writing.
Now, just because a full lit review is not generally assigned in a class doesn't mean that they're not using some of those tenants. So that might appear instead, in part of an introduction to a paper, it might appear just in a little bit of a different format than we're used to seeing in a full review like us as humanities kids would envision. Another kind of explanation for how these lit review things happen--What a weird way to say that it's okay--Or why maybe you would look at a lit review in these fields. Someone's making a claim that I either want to make or refute, and so I'm looking into if the way that they're saying it is how I wanna say it, and if it makes sense in the context of the rest of the field, we're gonna kind of come back to how you would interact with a lit review a little bit later on. So I'll put a pin in that for now.
I did also think it would be important to talk about some other key terms because we kind of throw around the term lit review a lot. So it can stand for literature review. That's probably the most common. I've also seen literacy review, which was a new one for me. In searching online, it it just means the same thing. So I couldn't tell you, but yeah, it seems to be kind of used interchangeably. There are a few other terms that I wanted to talk about.
First, do you have a good explanation of what synthesis means?
Tristan
I’ll give you one and then you can you can add one or add it as you see fit.
Mary
OK, perfect.
Tristan
I would describe synthesis, especially in the context of a literature review or academic research, as taking a look at a source, thinking about what that source is saying. What argument it's making and then it taking that idea, that knowledge you have of that source and thinking about how it relates to or contextualizes your research.
Mary
Sure. No, I think that's a good one. I honestly struggle with defining this term. So that's part of the reason why I asked you.
Tristan
Oh, thanks, Mary.
Mary
You're welcome, but I did kind of come up with a very mini definition of my own, so I like to think of synthesis as more reorganization. So you're taking these topics that you're learning from a specific source, and then you're fitting them together with others. Or another way I’ve seen it explained is you're bringing it all together. So you're explaining what was happening in each of these sources, and then you're kind of sticking them together and explaining how they all fit. You're kind of becoming the glue that holds us all together.
Tristan
Yeah, I like that.
Mary
Thank you. And then I wanted to compare synthesis to description and interpretation. How do you--do you feel comfortable with those distinctions or do you? Want me to ad-lib a little bit?
Tristan
I mean, I can give you my, like initial thoughts and then we can go from there. If we're working with this definition of synthesis as bringing things together, contextualizing, description to me would be more along the lines of I'm trying to think of how to talk about it without using “describe” in the definition.
Mary
Yeah.
Tristan
Description to me seems more along the lines of summary or it doesn't necessarily have that evaluation piece. And then I forgot what the other word was.
Mary
The second was interpretation.
Tristan
Ah. Which would then maybe bring in more of that evaluation, thinking critically about what your source is saying side of things.
Mary
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's good. Description is more like explaining what's happening in the source. Interpretation is explaining the meaning of what's happening in the source.
Tristan
MHM.
Mary
And then synthesis is taking all of those pieces and sticking it together and attaching it to other sources. OK, does that make sense?
Tristan
Yes. Amazing.
Mary
Perfect. Those were kind of the key terms I wanted to hit. And then there's two other kinds of reviews that especially come up in STEM fields that I also wanted to highlight because they are different, but can sometimes be used in the same breath as lit review. So a scoping review. Have you heard of that?
Tristan
Ohh no.
Mary
So a scoping review is a review—OK--that shows the size and scope of currently available research, but it doesn't, to my understanding, do that interpretation and synthesis piece.
Tristan
So it's more maybe perhaps more related to an annotated bib in that it's looking at citations and summarizing more than...OK.
Mary
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's kind of. It's still doing that piece that a lot of light reviews do and like positioning where we are in the state of the literature, but it's really more focused on getting as big of a picture as you can of what's current, what the field currently looks like. OK, and that is just like really demonstrating like the size and like the breadth and scope of the research. But it's less focused on the, like, why's and how's it's just like this is.
Tristan
Yeah.
Mary
OK. And then a systematic review from what I've OK. You know that one a little bit more, OK from what I've heard, it takes a very long time. They can be huge. Yeah. This might be like a grad student is doing an entire professional paper on it or like, dissertation and stuff. So they take a very long time and often have really strict and clear...
Tristan
MHM.
Mary
...requirements on why they're including each item as the author, so they use very specific search terms or data points or whatever that each source must have in order to be included in this systematic review. Did you have some to that?
Tristan
Yes, so I used to work at Northern Illinois University, and one of the librarians there was just starting to get really into systematic reviews. And I remember talking to her and yes, being blown away by how long the process was going to take because it was years.
Mary
OK, so there is a difference between a literature review, a scoping review, and a systematic review.
OK, my next question...again, I have notes, but I want to get your off the cuff responses first. Why should I care about a lit review?
Tristan
I love this question. This is a great question because. OK. A little, a little bit about me as an undergrad, so as an undergrad and English and gender and sexuality studies major, I had to do many lit reviews and I will be the first to say I did not take them seriously, especially not at the beginning of my time as an undergrad. I got there by the end. But I know that they can feel kind of redundant, I think, and perhaps not the most useful at times, but from personal experience, they--they can be incredibly helpful, incredibly helpful.
So, I think literature reviews can do a couple things for you as a researcher. One, they can give you really valuable background information that can be really hard to keep track of if you're just finding sources and don't have sort of a structure to plug them into.
Another thing I think they help with, kind of along the same lines, if you're someone who struggles to keep track of your sources, as I once was, literature reviews can be great for that. So again, it's giving you a structure to keep track of your research and to keep track of the research out there.
I think another way they can be really helpful is that they can help you find the bounds of the research out there. If you're doing research and you're finding yourself not really sure where to stop or maybe not sure where to start, a literature review if you can help give you an idea of what research is out there and that can help you either tailor your research question to give you a better starting place. Or, if you're you've been doing research for a while on this topic and you are running out of research, a literature review can help you realize when you've kind of hit the end of the research out there, or if you need to rethink and rework your topic a little bit.
And finally, I think the final piece is that, again for me personally, I found that literature reviews were really helpful for making me reconsider things. I would often go into my research with a really set idea of ‘This is how it is going to go. These are the arguments I'm going to make. I will absolutely find sources that 100% agree with all of my arguments.’
Mary
I've never felt that way before as a budding researcher, cannot relate—that's sarcasm, folks.
Tristan
So I think literature reviews are really, really good for showing you that there is a breadth of research out there and it's not all going to support what you think and that's really important.
Mary
Mm-hmm. OK. I would just like to say yes, I agree with all those. And I think it's so funny because I wrote a list of responses to this question and that was none of them.
Tristan
Really?
Mary
Yeah.
Tristan
Oh, my gosh. Amazing.
Mary
So like, full agree. But it's so interesting, like how we often have like fairly similar like perspectives on things, but this is a demonstration of like, yes, we agree with each other and also like go in completely different ways.
My first thing in terms of why you should care about our review is that who you choose to cite matters.
Tristan
Yes, 100%.
Mary
And I, yeah, I knew you'd be on board with that one. We talked about it a lot together, but lit reviews can really help you figure out kind of how to engage with all of your sources, especially the ones that you're maybe not used to interacting with.
Tristan
Yeah.
Mary
So, not just your top scholars in your field, but also maybe some newer work and newer researchers. Sometimes that can be a harder process and so lit review is going to give you a space to practice those skills, and then you can refer back to it later when you're in crunch time for the rest of your work.
And then just on like a similar point, how you engage with or characterize certain sources matters a lot.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
Hopefully you've listened to our previous episodes and maybe seen or heard, I should say, what happens when you cite with intention. Or what happens when you misquote or mis-cite. And a lit review can be a really good stepping stone to practice engaging resources ethically and with transparency.
Tristan
I love what you just said. The idea of practicing, I think that is such a cool point. Like a lit review is a good way to practice research, and it's a little less high stakes than going into writing a 25 page paper, I love that.
Mary
Thank you. I have more.
So I also think lit reviews, and this is maybe is revealing a bit about me as an undergraduate research, but—researcher--but they are also important to help you identify gaps that are going to be integral in how your own argument is shaped or your research direction. So kind of similar to your last point, Tristan, but I would push it a little farther. As someone who has a tendency even now to find myself interested in parts of fields that maybe haven't been as explored, a lit review, or using some of the parts of a lit review, at least in your research project, can really help you identify what people have said and pick at the frustrations you might be having on what they're not saying.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
A lot of my research does tend to try to fill some gaps, so my undergrad research was on accusations of sodomy in the Royal Navy. Boy where there are a lot of gaps in that lit review. Yeah, to me, I tend to think of lit reviews as this thing that lets you find them loose threads and pull at them.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
So can help you narrow down or expand even your--your research. Topic.
Tristan
Yeah. And I again just wanna pull out something that you said cause I think it's so great, but finding something that makes you angry or that really frustrates you, yes, is honestly such a good way to start your research.
Mary
No, it is.
Tristan
It is because you'll be interested in--in it, you'll be invested in it, and if it's not there and it's frustrating, you're probably not the only person who's frustrated that it's not there.
Mary
Mm-hmm. Yes. And to kind of build on that. I also think that sometimes, especially as a newer researcher or as maybe someone who feels like you can't quite contribute to the field or you're less confident in your “status” as a scholar, which we'll have to do an episode on that. I think doing a lit review can be a really nice tool to back yourself.
Tristan
Yes
Mary
You have then evidence in front of you that does demonstrate that people aren't talking about this gap, right, or are talking about something similar, but they're missing a really important piece. And I will caution you that sometimes, especially if you're in that mindset, it doesn't feel like enough ever. And it at some point needs to be enough. So definitely talk to your research cohort if you have one. Talk to your research mentors, maybe make an appointment with one of your librarians.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
To talk about when we find those bounds that Tristan was mentioning earlier, like how do you find those? I struggle with that or I did struggle with that a lot. And so I have a lot of conversations with my colleagues and mentors now about that. A lit review can kind of again it can back you. It can give you tools that you need to defend why you're doing the kind of research you're doing and what feels so important about it. And yes, again anger is a huge part. I always like to say anger and spite of my biggest motivators, especially in terms of research. And hey, it's been serving me so far. So sometimes you just need to pick at it a little bit and it'll get better.
A lighter one. It can also help you stay up to date with your field.
Tristan
Yes, yes, that was something I was going to add off of what you just said is if you're a new researcher and you don't have as much confidence in your knowledge of the field and kind of the history and background of the field, literature reviews are so good for that. Again, it's a relatively low stakes, shorter way to get a lot of knowledge quickly and contextualize a lot of knowledge quickly. Keep going.
Mary
No, no, that was good. And then just one more point to add to that. This was my last one anyway. I would also argue that even if you're a scholar further along in your career, lit reviews can be really helpful even if you're not producing them for whatever reason at that point. Maybe it's just like not the direction your research is going in, and it's not that important to your field. Finding them written by scholars is a really it's like a like a life hack on how to keep up with what's going on and just making sure you're not missing an integral piece as you've got your head down in your own research. Yay, how exciting. OK.
I never thought that I liked like reviews until I started prepping for this episode and I was like, oh wait, actually that sounds kinda cool.
Tristan
I hated them in undergrad. I'll be so honest.
Mary
But I--I was talking about this with a student who came to talk to me about her life review process. And I realized that my notes now, as a researcher look a lot like a combination of an annotated bibliography and a lit review, like a lit review with a whole lot of quotes. But in bullet form. It's a--it's a hot mess. We can maybe talk about that together one day.
Speaker
Yep, Yep.
Mary
I don't know that I'd recommend that to others, but it does work for me, so.
I wanted to highlight a few things that are important to think about when you're actually writing a lit review. So I thought we could first talk about if you're actually writing one, where do you even start?
Tristan
It's kind of personal, I feel like. Because I think research generally is very personal something. I tell a lot of students when I'm meeting with them one-on-one or going to classes is that I will tell you how I would approach this. I will tell you how other people recommend you approach this, but also know that you can come up with your own methods as well. There is no one-size-fits-all in research. Feel very strongly about that.
Mary
Mhmm, agree.
Tristan
Typically when I'm starting my research, and again I'm not going to say this is the best way to do things, but just to give you an idea. So when I start, I like to start by just doing some searching in some databases in the library catalog. See what's out there. And it is something I recommend to students too, because I think just playing around in databases, seeing what's out there very broadly, is a great place to start and can feel a little less overwhelming than trying to start writing or putting together a review right away.
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
So I recommend doing some searching. Poking around in databases, seeing what's out there as you're doing that, make sure if you are finding good sources, you're keeping them somewhere, so there are some good citation management tools out there. Zotero is one we use at Beloit fairly frequently. But also I know students who will just use a Google Doc. Mary kind of talked about just having a document where she keeps citations and quotations and such, so I think that's also a totally valid way to do things like you don't need to use super fancy technology to track your research. If that doesn't feel like the right path for you, and I do recommend doing some annotating as you're finding those sources just so when you look back, you know why they caught your attention, why they grabbed your eye. It doesn't necessarily need to be super in-depth to start. It could just be. I saw the source and it's saying something really interesting about this part of what I'm interested in. So I think just keeping it basic to start seeing what's out there. And then as you are building on those sources, again finding that kind of stopping point or pivot point can be difficult. I also struggle with it because I'm a librarian and I just really love the finding sources part of things, but also I do want to make sure I'm fully representing the topic, and I think I get a little anxious about missing something.
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
And I it's a little different when talking to students because they usually have a pretty strict timetable that they're working in. And that ends up dictating more of when their research needs to be done.
But I think typically if your research is starting to kind of double back or if you're running out of things, that could either be a sign you're at the end or that you might need to rethink how you're searching. I also always tell students to look at the works cited or bibliography of sources, because that can be a great way to find information and tell if you have kind of the foundational texts, if you have a good depth and breadth of research in your lit review.
Mary
One thing I will add is as you're doing those preliminary searches, you're trying out keywords, try to find a way to keep a record of the searches that you're doing and where the sources came from.
This just cynically will help you write a review later because you can organize by theme. We'll talk about that in just a sec. F guring out, especially earlier in your career, way to track these trends and threads that you're following. Or is akin to the old school Wikipedia rabbit holes. That will help you not only identify these themes and all that, but kind of reconstruct how you got to certain pieces, especially if you're working on a longer term project where you have to set it down for a while and come back.
I did, as you were talking, I also was thinking of a question and I don't know if you have an answer to it, which is OK, but is there like an ideal per portion to like the poking around stages versus like how long you should be sending on your lit review?
Just cause you were talking about rightfully, that students often have like kind of a crunch time, really short timeline or strict timeline, at least for when something is due. Would you say that there's just like a ballpark estimate of about how much time you should be spending on each part?
Tristan
That is such a great question, and I I honestly don't think I have a good answer because I think it is so subjective to who you are and where you're at. So for a student, I think typically what I've seen in classes is they'll get maybe a few weeks to do a lit review, maybe up to a month or so depending on the class. Depending on the discipline.
I think sometimes they're just expected to be doing it until they start writing their final paper project. So. So yeah, I--I think it's just so subjective.
For a researcher who's just out in the fields, again, it's going to depend a lot on what other time constraints you have going on. If you have a goal when you would like to have your project done by. I know there are some really good resources out there about planning, research and figuring out timelines. I don't have any off the top of my head, but we can link some in the show notes.
So yeah, so I think it's really subjective, but what I would say is it's good to have sort of a plan or an idea going in. And I think a good way to do that is kind of working backwards. So if you're a student, you might have a little bit more of a set schedule, but if you don't, you might want to think from the end of the semester. OK, my final deliverable is due this day. I want to spend, or I know it takes me at least this long usually to write this many pages, so I want to make sure I have enough time for that, and I know that I want to have my research done by this state so that I can start my writing and it usually, maybe takes me this long to do the research portion, so I'll set aside this time. I think just going in with the plan, but then also knowing that you might need to be flexible depending on how things go.
Mary
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I that's a good answer. I didn't have that question prepared. Like I said, I just, it was something I was thinking about as you were talking. And I'll also add another layer as someone who's not good at that process.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
I am really bad actually at estimating how long things are gonna take me. So that's one of the reasons that I do do like a truncated lit review as I'm doing my data scraping research. I will literally it's not pretty, but if I find a source that seems interesting, I'll create a full citation for it usually in Chicago because that's most often what I'm trying to write in.
And then I will add bullet points of my first impressions. Maybe what the argument being made is. I will if I have more time to kind of read the article or whatever, I will throw in actual quotes with page numbers and if it's an online source, not page numbers, paragraph numbers.
Tristan
Yes.
Mary
Because you will need to include that. I learned that the hard way, but it really helps me feel less overwhelmed because I definitely, as someone who loves research as well, can totally get sucked in and spend like 80 to 90% of my time poking around and pulling all these threads and seeing what this author did and all of this stuff. And realistically, I also need time to break down what's happening in each source and then organize them all, clean it up all of that.
OK. Awesome. I think that hopefully will be helpful to some folks at home too. And then just another quick note on how to actually organize a lit review. I do have a number of especially Lib guides I will link in the show notes, so you can kind of poke around more in these.
Tristan
What is a lib guide?
Mary
Ohh yay OK, so lib guides. It's short for library guide we often call them research guides also. LibGuides is also like a software that we use, so we use it as shorthand, but it's basically a library worker created this collection of materials and resources centered around the theme. They can be a really good jumping off point. We do have a number of them that we've made or at least updated, maintained at Beloit; however, oftentimes I actually send students to other schools’ lib guides because, and we've mentioned this before in previous episodes, there's only two of us, and we do have a lot of things that we do. And so sometimes it's actually more helpful for us to send one of our students to a subject specialist or like a collection-specific librarian or somebody that just has more time and energy and specialty in different areas.
So I always recommend to my students if they're feeling really stuck to actually use like a search engine like Google or something and type in their topic, their keywords plus the word, Lib guide, L-I-B-G-U-I-D-E and just see what comes back and like, poke through those cause there's usually reference materials, there's important keywords, there's database recommendations so much helpful stuff.
Tristan
Thank you.
Mary
Of course. Thank you for asking. I did want to highlight just a few ways you can kind of organize your lit review, as you get into the actual narrative portion and that is you could do by theme if you're seeing themes amongst the different researchers. You could go more based on timelines or how the field has progressed. You could organize it by trend in the field. You could organize it more by research method that's being done. One other kind of disclaimer that I wanted to talk about is...maybe tone is a bad descriptor. But how do we actually write a late review?
Tristan
Ooh, yes, I was hoping you'd bring this up.
Mary
Oh, my gosh. OK, so you go ahead and answer. How do I light, how do I “light”? If this was a video podcast, I could have some little flames going. Man, maybe we just do need to make this a video podcast. OK, anyway, how do I actually write a lit review, Tristan? What do the words and such look like?
Tristan
OK, so I was hoping you'd bring this up because something we talk about sometimes is tone and professional tone and your voice as a researcher, because even if you're an undergraduate, you are developing and thinking about and developing--you're developing your voice as a professional, as someone in the field, and something I saw in a lot of the lib guides I looked at actually, and I'm wondering if you saw this too...was there was usually a section on tone or voice.
Mary
Uh-huh.
Tristan
And every Lib guide. Every single one, without exception that I saw that had a section on tone or voice said that something along the lines of, you should use a formal professional tone, you should use proper grammar and spelling and punctuation and some of them even gave some examples of what a professional tone--that was my professional tone—what a professional or scholarly voice sounds like, looks like is on the page and...
[pause]
Mary
I'll leave the pause in there. Don’t worry.
Tristan
And I have thoughts as I'm sure you do too, as well, Mary.
Mary
Yes. Yes, I do.
Tristan
Because part of the literature review process, in my opinion at least is you are working through research in the field you are developing your knowledge as a researcher and part of that process I think necessarily needs to include you developing your voice as well, especially for undergraduate researchers who are newer to the field.
So, for a lib guide, many lib guides, to very strongly say that you need to have a very formal, professional tone...I get it. I understand where they're coming from because it is important to know how to use different types of tone.
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
And traditionally, scholarly research does have a very specific type of tone and voice to it traditionally. Also depending on the field. But I don't want students, researchers to feel really bound by that, if that makes sense.
Mary
It does, yeah.
Tristan
Yeah. I want them to know that there is room to experiment and to explore, it's a literature review. It's--again, sometimes literature reviews are submitted to journals. They are published in journals, but especially for a literature review for a class, I think there is room for experimentation there and there's to try out some different tones, some different voices, especially if you know your instructor and you know they're open to that.
Mary
Yeah. So, one small caveat. If you have a rubric, if you have guidelines, follow them. I'm not--We're not telling you to blow up your grades.
Tristan
Yes. No.
Mary
I actually have a whole presentation that I've given this semester on how you develop your scholarly voice, and I don't think it's what my students were expecting.
Tristan
It's really good.
Thank you. I can link my slides. I don't mind.
Tristan
You should.
Mary
And maybe we--we should do an episode actually on scholarly voice cause I would have a good time.
Tristan
Yes, 100%
Mary
And I think, I mean, I'm a little biased on this subject because as I've said many times, I call myself a silliness researcher, really, I'm looking at approachability and formality in higher ed, but I actually find formality or a formal slash professional tone quite silly in itself, and I think we have a tendency to err on formality over clarity a lot. I don't think that's accessible. Not only in understanding, but also in disability friendy--friendly communication.
Tristan
Mm-hmm.
Mary
So yeah, I have a lot of feelings about that. I actually in my notes for when I was pulling the sources, like different Lib guides that I wanted to link. I actually have a couple that I have sub points that were like I actually don't like this one lol or yeah, there's just a few little points and maybe we'll put some notes in there about what we liked and some of the guides that we’re linking.
Tristan
We'll annotate!
Mary
We will provide some annotations, a little bit of a synthesis, if you will.
So yeah, a lot of what you were saying I think is completely valid. And I think as I mentioned earlier, lit reviews, whether it's for a class or part of a paper, whatever, can be a really helpful tool to build your ownscholarly voice. And so feeling like you have to restrict yourself to certain word choices or a tone is kind of the antithesis of that whole point, right? Like it's just not necessary. Now, again, if you're writing for a grade, you need to write to the requirements. If you're writing for submission to a publisher or a journal, you often have to write to their requirements. We're not saying throw it all away, burn it all down. But often when you have a strong understanding of these tones or these ways of communicating, you can kind of play with them and bend those rules and create a much more interesting communication style. I always advocate for learn the rules as best you can and then bend and break them at your will.
Tristan
Right. And it goes back to our earlier discussion about why literature reviews are important, because if you read enough literature in your fields around your topic, you will get a sense of what the tone is, right? Then you can either decide, again within the bounds of your assignment slash submission guidelines, you can decide if you want to uphold that tone or push back against it, which also ties into perhaps who we're citing, how we're citing.
Mary
Mhmm.
Tristan
And a lot of the good conversations we've had today.
Mary
Uh-huh. Yeah, for sure. OK.
So one additional thing that I kind of wanted to hit on and maybe expand on is that literature reviews should still be narrative in some way. So we compare them a lot to an annotated bibliography, which is less narrative typically and more just kind of focused on what's happening in each source. But you are still selecting and discussing works to create some kind of argument. There were a couple of guides that said there's no argument, which I have an issue with. My claim my--what I will posit here is that you are always making an argument when you are writing anything.
Tristan
I love that.
Mary
Yes, whether it's on a rubric or in the directions for an assignment, or you're just writing. Heck, if you're just writing in, Oh my gosh, I was said “informally.” If you're just writing in like a journal entry, you're still doing something, right? You have a goal in writing. So I would push back pretty hard on the idea that any style of writing could be without an argument anyway. So you are creating an argument. You are producing a narrative by how you're talking about the sources, the way you're arranging them, how you're critiquing them, what you're highlighting from them.
I don't think that there's a specific tone that you absolutely have to emulate to have a successful review; however, I would like to highlight especially cause we mentioned earlier, anger and spite and frustration, all of those are really good ways to start your writing process, but it's probably not the way you want to talk about it in the lit review.
And what I mean by that is we're less interested in, if you liked a source or not when we're talking about lit review. We're more interested in did you find weak points? Did you find the argument convincing? What were they completely forgetting to mention? What did they miss? Things like that. So you are going to want to remove some of the emotion or feeling in your in your words, there most likely, but you are still creating this narrative.
Tristan
Right. And that's not to say that you can't bring that emotion and feeling back later, right? So it might not fit in your literature review in the scope of a literature review. But again, depending on the bounds of your perhaps assignment or other factors, when you're actually sitting down to write your paper, you can bring it back.
Mary
Mm-hmm. OK, one last thing I wanted to hit on in terms of light reviews is, how do you interact with or understand a light review written by someone else?
Tristan
In a--like published in a journal or just generally?
Mary
Anything. Yeah. Do you have any strategies or questions that you ask when you are interacting with a lit review or trying to find something using a lit review? I have questions that I could start with if that's feeling weird.
Tristan
Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I'm gonna think about it for a little bit.
Mary
Yeah, for sure. So just a few other things I jotted down are, can you find the information that they're citing? So in their--we talked about this a lot. It's in our evaluation toolkit. But the point of art review is to talk about a source, talk about the arguments, if they were a strong argument, if they're evidence back the argument. Can you actually find the source they're talking about? And is there interpretation a good interpretation?
Tristan
Mhmm.
Mary
Sometimes bad interpretations happen maliciously, and sometimes people just misunderstand something. But it's good as a researcher to kind of practice those skills of making sure that you can trust this person's argument because, again, a lit review is an argument.
Tristan
Right. And especially this is bringing up the humanities for me again, but especially in the humanities, with maybe some of those more theoretical or foundational texts, you might have a different interpretation.
Mary
Mhmm. Yeah. Or you might have additional context that maybe this researcher didn't have. Maybe you're in a really interdisciplinary space in your field, and you have a strong background in a completely different field. Maybe that's helping you see something that this original person didn't see.
So then just to kind of continue in that thread. Is the lit review accurately representing their original authors that they're talking about arguments, ideas, information?
And then I also have a note that lit reviews can often--we've talked about this a bit, but can often be a really good starting point to understand part of your field, whether it's something you are going to do research on, whether it's something that's like a subtopic of your field that you just don't know a lot about, whether you are in a related or completely unrelated field, and you're kind of starting to see some connections where that might fall into place. A lit review can be a really good way to figure out what arguments people are making, what conversations are happening in the scholarship.
Tristan
Yeah, those are all really, really great points. I--I don't. I don't have too much more to add, but I think I would just say if you're someone who perhaps struggles with getting started or knowing where to start, literature reviews can be really good for that, because they've already done some of the groundwork for you.
I will emphasize what Mary said, that you probably want to evaluate the sources they're citing and just make sure that...that it's OK. That the sources I represented accurately, and you know there is kind of a diversity of sources represented what's missing perhaps, but it can be a really good way to get that foundational knowledge.
I also think literature reviews. And this this might be more personal, but I think they're fairly skimmable and that Mary laid out earlier some of the different ways that people might format their literature reviews. But often the ways they are formatted are kind of for ease of use. So if you know that you need more sources, like foundational texts, if you know that, maybe you could find a literature you out there that is formatted chronologically or by theory, perhaps and instead of having to maybe read the whole thing, which you could still do for sure, you know how those are formatted can help you find some of that a little faster and a little more efficiently than having to start from scratch.
Mary
Mhmm. I also think yes, you should go double check what people are saying, but I think sometimes it can help, especially at the beginning to help you throw things out, like at least at the beginning stage of your research. Because oftentimes, when you do your preliminary searches like the search tools interpret your terms in ways you weren't expecting, and so if you find a lit review, you can throw out a lot of things really quickly to at least help refine your searches. And then if you need to come back to them, great. But it can help remove some of that friction right at the beginning.
Yeah. No, that's--that's so true. Just figuring out the jargon of your field, but then also how library cataloging systems interpret the jargon of your field.
Mary
Yeah, or remix it in some cases.
Tristan
Or remix it. Yeah, can be so difficult. So yeah, lit reviews can be a great resource for that.
Mary
Ok. That's all I have. Do you have any other closing thoughts?
Tristan
Amazing. No, I feel like we really covered a lot.
Mary
Yeah, remember how I said that the brewing tea episodes were gonna be short? I don’t think that’s the case.
Tristan
Well, it's the longest one yet.
Mary
Yet. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Tristan
At least at the time of recording.
Mary
I know I have a feeling we're gonna have, like, a lengthy one later. OK, so we'll just go ahead and do our closing then. What are you liking in our library right now?
Tristan
Right. Not me going what is our closing?
OK, what am I liking in our library right now? Ohh. Breaking news at the time of recording won't be probably when this is out. But I was walking into the library today on the 1st floor past the archives and there was a bunch of activity. There were facilities workers everywhere. There were people I didn't recognize everywhere. And they were measuring a giant gap in our wall that faces or that goes into the archives reading room because for those who don't know, during renovation, our library flooded and part of the flooding was in the archive, so we lost our archives display case, but they are in the process of installing a new one.
Mary
*gasp* How exciting.
Tristan
So I got to see that this morning, starting. And it's yes, it will be very exciting. It will mean we finally have a functioning archives reading room and a place to display archives material.
Mary
Yeah, which I know our archivist is really excited about.
Tristan
Yes, yeah. So I'm sure our archivist will have some really great displays going up there very soon.
Mary
Yeah, I've heard rumors that there's gonna be some historical school hats.
Tristan
Yes, me too. Some beanies.
Mary
Yeah, some class beanies. Ohh, so exciting. OK.
Tristan
What about you, Mary?
Mary
I wasn't quite sure until I was literally thinking about how I had to ask you this question, but today I want to highlight our octagonal. Is that how you say that word?
Tristan
I would say octagonal, but I would also say Opossum so.
Mary
OK.
I noticed. I noticed that you changed it in the notes. Anyway, I wanted to highlight the book displays. They are in the shape of octagons. Right when you walk into the second floor of the library that have our new and featured titles on them. So, one, come visit us. Two, take a look at what's on those displays because we have been processing a ton of books. And we also have a loaning program with Baker and Taylor. So we have some new and shiny fiction titles that have been going like hotcakes that we have for a temporary amount of time, but they are checkout-able just like the rest of our collection to our patrons with Beloit cards.
Tristan
Yes. And if you ever have any book recommendations. Let us know 100%.
Mary
OK, let's end it there. All right, thank you for listening to librarians spill the tea.
Mary
Thank you for listening to Librarians Spill the Tea. This podcast is hosted and produced by us, Mary Elizabeth Schiavone and Tristan M.K. Draper and edited by me, Mary Elizabeth Schiavone.
Tristan
This podcast was recorded at the Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Beloit.
Subscribe to Librarians Spill the Tea for free on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and follow our library on Instagram and TikTok @beloitLITS.
Mary
We've been your...
Both
Librarians!
Mentioned in this Episode
* Resources for Planning Research:
* Developing a Research Plan Libguide
* Creating Your Research Paper Guide
* Mary’s slides on Developing Scholarly Voice
* Research Genealogy, discussed by Dr. Sonya Maria Johnson in her class
Other Resources Reviewed in the Prep for this Episode
* SFU Library Student Learning Commons
* SJSU Writing Center: How to Write a Literature Review
* This reddit thread
* Purdue OWL: Writing a Literature Review
* University of Buffalo Libraries: Reviewing Research: Literature Reviews, Scoping Reviews, Systematic Reviews: Differentiating the Three Review Types
Pin Check
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Turtle “I read banned books” button (Mary made this!):
Tomorrow Needs You button (Mary made this!):
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