There are a number of guides on university and academic library websites describing and detailing procedures for conducting a review of the research literature in a given subject field and presenting the narrative description of the review, which in general comprises a synthesis; what's described by the Purdue OWL (see below) as a discussion of of the salient materials retrieved in a search of the literature "in conversation with each other" . This is a selected list of online resources on the theory and practice of executing and formatting the results of a literature review:









The following useful works are available as e-books through our library (TC) and Columbia University Libraries (CU):


  • Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. (2016). The Craft of Research (4th Edition) University of Chicago Press. (CU)




There are also a number of print resources, unfortunately not available online at present, that you may want to consult; these include:





And these videos and websites focus specifically on the organization and presentation of literature reviews:


    Writing the Literature Review, Part II (David Taylor, University of Maryland University College)


    Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students (North Carolina State University)


    Citation Management Software (Columbia University)