This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD. Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015.
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A literary search is an important part of any research work. It allows you to have a comprehensive listing of relevant sources on a given topic. It also forces you to figure out how these sources are relevant to your goals as a researcher, giving you a more informative and educated sense of where your research falls in the academic community. To do a literary search, start with some planning. You'll need to specify your topic and figure out what and where to search. From there, do extensive research and find a variety of sources. Write up summaries of the sources, while making connections between them, and then proofread your search and look for any places where additional research may be necessary.