How to Absorb the LiteratureIn order to make an original contribution to the knowledge in your field, you have to first know the literature. You do not, of course, want to design a study that has already been conducted (unless your intention is to replicate the study). But to know the literature relevant to your research area, you have to read it. There may be only afew sources that are really important, or there may literally be dozens or even hundreds of relevant articles and books. If there are many, how can you absorb them all in a reasonably short time?One way is to read according to the need. Freeman and Reed, as cited in Walliman (2001), suggest the following reading techniques, suitable for different purposes:SkimmingScanningReading to understandWord-by-word readingSkimming is helpful to quickly determine if a source is likely to be helpful. The title provides the first clue. If you’re dealing with a journal article and it has an abstract, read it. For a book, look at the table of contents. (An easy way to accomplish this is togo to Amazon, call up the book you want to check and use the “Search inside the book” tool, which usually shows a table of contents.) You should develop the skill of determining the relevance of a work in a few minutes. If the article or book seems pertinent, categorize it as being helpful as an overview or as a concrete study of some aspect of your research question, or both. Jot down the full citation of the work and label it “broad” or “specific” or “both.” If it is a journal article, print it out or download it.Scanning is useful when you are searching for an important point or key word. You ignore everything except the one thing you are looking for. One use for scanning is tolocate the major authorities on the subject of interest. If an author continually appears in the reference sections of the articles and books you have collected, you must include him/her in your own literature review.Reading to understand is appropriate when you want to learn the major facts (what your discipline assumes to be true) and theories related to your research area. Read the first sentence of each paragraph to determine whether to continue reading the paragraph or skip to the next.Word-by-word reading is used when you must understand something in depth. For example, there may be a fundamental formula that you need to master or a debate between two leading authorities that you need to know in some depth or results froma study that speak directly to your thesis. You may not need to read this way very often, however.Another way to grasp the literature is to allow others to do some of the work for you, especially with regard to books. For example, many journals publish anywhere from a handful to an armload of book reviews every issue. When you find a book of interest, the review can provide both a summary as well as a critique in a page or two. This can be a very helpful time-saver. How to find them? It’s very simple if you know the name of the book: go to JSTOR, use the ti search, and type in the title of thebook. If you do not know the title, type in a keyword. If it appears in the title of a bookand if that book has been reviewed in one of the covered journals, the review will be shown by JSTOR.There are several additional sources for book reviews and article synopses. All of the following may be accessed from MTSU computers.Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature 1920-presenthttp://collections.chadwyck.com/home/home_abell.jspContains 880,000 items: monographs, journal articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays.American Reference Books Manual (ARBAonline)www.arbaonline.com/index.cfmContains 9,000 reviews of reference works in print or on CD-ROM. Also reviewswebsites.America: History & Life 1954-presenthttp://serials.abc-clio.com/active/start?_appname=serials&initialdb=AHLContains 6,000 book reviews from 100 journals related to U.S. and Canadian history. Tolimit your search to reviews, use Advanced Search and enter r* in the Document Typesearch box.Book Review Digest 1983-presentNow called Wilson Book Review Digestwww.ovid.com/site/catalog/DataBase/170.jspContains 112,000 records, including 7,000 book reviews from 109 American, British and Canadian periodicals, covering humanities, social sciences, and general sciences. Very clunky website. Printed version at the library is much easier to use.Book Review Index 1969-presenthttp://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0137.htmlContains references to 4,000,000 reviews of 2,000,000 books for children and young adults.The Complete Reviewwww.complete-review.com/links/links.htmlContains links to 227 book review sites.Project MUSE 1993-presenthttp://muse.jhu.eduContains full text of 200 journals in literature, history, visual and performing arts, anthropology, education, gender studies, political science and economics. To limit your search to reviews, use Advanced Search. Under Limit Search, see By Type and select Review.Web of Sciencehttp://scientific.thomson.com/products/wosThis is somewhat of a misnomer because it includes humanities as well as sciences. Contains information, including full-text articles, from 8,700 journals around the world.Take a few minutes to explore one of these sites to see what is has to offer you. In addition to reviews, you may discover extra services. For example, Web of Science also has a networking service to help you find a collaborator to co-author research papers.A note of caution: The idea here is to save time, not to cheat. Do not list a book in the References section of your research paper if you have not actually consulted it. Do not cite a book if you are only using something you found in a book review. Even worse is quoting a book and making an observation about it using an idea from the book review, and then citing the book but not the review. This involves two deceptions; citing a book you haven’t consulted and using a book reviewer’s conclusions without giving credit (i.e., plagiarism). Not only is this intellectually dishonest but you may be found out, causing irreparable damage to your reputation. For informal heuristic (teaching) documents such as this handout, a way to include a book you haven’t read except as cited in another source is to reference the two works together as done below. For formal research papers, however, avoid even this expediency. ReferencesFreeman, R. and J. Meed.