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Writing Workshop: The Literature Review: Develop Your Literature Review

Welcome

The lessons in this guide are designed to teach you search strategies that can help you find enough sources to make progress on writing your literature review for the dissertation or doctoral study.

Using this guide, you will learn:

  • how to design a comprehensive search
    • setting a broad scope
    • planning multiple search terms and keywords 
    • selecting multiple library databases to search
    • using a search log to organize your literature review research
  • how to expand your reference list
  • how to find additional materials outside of the Walden Library’s collection
    • using Google Scholar
    • using Document Delivery Service

These lessons assume familiarity with the Walden University Library research databases and with basic online searching skills. If you would like to review these skills, please see these resources for finding databases appropriate to your subject and searching basics for finding articles.

To begin, click on the menu links to the left. You may view as many lessons as you wish; you are also encouraged to work through the exercises following each section to test your knowlege and practice the skills.