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Library Research for Students

This guide is for Seneca students completing a research assignment.

What is a Literature Review?

The term "literature review" could be used in several ways in your assignment instructions:

  1. Conducting a review of the literature
  2. Including a literature review section in your essay
  3. Writing a stand-alone literature review

Conducting a review of the literature generally just means finding scholarly articles, books and grey literature on your topic, to use in your research essay.

Including a literature review section in your essay generally means including a couple paragraphs in your essay with a "Literature Review" heading that discusses the state of current research in your area of interest.

Or you could be asked to produce a stand-alone literature review based on a research topic, which is a long form paper that reviews, compares and evaluates current research on your topic.

Literature Review Tutorial

The tutorial below will provide an introduction to what a literature review is (and is not) and why you would write one.

Complete the tutorial in this window above by clicking "next", or view the tutorial in a new window.