Literature Review Tips & Tools

This guide contains tips and tools to help in performing literature reviews.

For help with your specific topic, please reach out to the librarian for your department or program. If you don't know who that is, check our Find Your Librarian page.

To learn more about databases and other resources in your subject area, look for a research guide.

The resources below from the Writing Centers at UMass Amherst and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers descriptions on what a literature review is and some tips for how to write one.

Need some help on how to interpret a research study? This brief from the Guttmacher Institute was written about social science research, but most of the questions to ask apply to all types of research.

NOTE: Current captions on the video were auto-generated by YouTube. We will be editing those captions when time permits.

Not sure what the difference is between various types of reviews? These articles describe many types of reviews, what they are used for, and the differences between them. They are long and details, so for a quicker overview, check out the tables, which provide good summaries.