Method - The Literature Review

Imagine you are given just 2 hours to assemble an endnote bibliography for your (PhD) research project. This bibliography in addition is required to have 250 references. You are playing the role of a ‘research assistant’ in a high pressure research organisation – aka working for a ‘think tank’. When doing a lit review you need to 'set up the bookshelf' I use the book shelf analogy to describe - buying a shelf from ikea (setting up endnote with categories, tags and groups), going to the bookshop/s to browse (aka downloading bibliographies from the internet - aka "bibliography of socially engaged art", and peering into the bibliographies in dissertations), asking people to suggest books to buy (asking people about books and articles, authors they recommend). Goals/ targets This search is best done with four goals - two above the line and two below the line: ABOVE the line 1. Philosophy: To get books/ works on the philosophy of ... (20) 2. The sociology of - aka ethnographic accounts (20) BELOW 3. Field of Research: what are the works of others, case studies, artists, works, genres, ... in the research question area, (50) 4. Your Project: Your Reflections, your readings/ what are the texts from your past .. that have informed you up to this point. (50) Finding REFS Then comes the task of buying the books and putting them into the bookshelf (this is done by inserting the book titles into the RMIT lib site and saving the RIS, reference, for that book - so you dont have to type into endnote), the buying of books (finding new references for your endnote) continues through the PhD and life after. Organise the references Once the bookshelf is full of books - a typical bookshelf may contain about 300 books, and many more articles (so an endnote ref list for a PhD can "start" with between 250 to 400 references) - the books needs to be organised. Some people organise alphabetically (or by color of spine) – a research ‘bookshelf’ is best organsied by themes. Multiuple overlapping themes – aka a since ref sits in multiple themes. Say each shelf is a theme - so 5 shelves 5 themes/ 6 themes. These themes are the 'smart groups' in endnote. So you can teg references - insert the theme name into keywords. Once done you have a well organised library for your PhD. Now you can start reading. Intro: Silk, BBC Drama Youtube: Importing excel into Endnote LINK