Dan Williams

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      • Using Someone Else's Words
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      • Bibliography for Examples and Items Mentioned in this Guide
  • About
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  • Home
  • Contents of this site
    • Academic Profile >
      • CV
      • Links to Academic Profile on the Web
      • Open Source
      • External Blogs
    • Public Sector Data
    • For Teaching >
      • NYBMR-IPA >
        • Budget Exhbit DOR&IS
        • Budget Exhibit NYPL
        • Budget Exhibit Additional
      • Culture & PA
      • Budgeting and Financial Analysis
      • Style Guide >
        • Paper Rubric Elements
        • Picky objections that you should know
        • How to review a source
        • Structured Bibliography
        • Seminar Paper
        • Spreadsheets
      • Substantial Papers Defined by Biliography >
        • Sources
      • Evidence
  • Citation and Quotation
    • Citation Guide >
      • Using Someone Else's Words
      • Marking Quotes: The link between quoting and citation
      • Use of Graphics First Appearing Elsewhere
      • Using Someone Else's Ideas
      • Citation as Support for What You Say
      • Revealing the Source of Your Information Including Your Own Prior Work
      • Revealing Other Sources
      • Bibliography and Citing Correctly
      • Quotation/Citation Style
      • Memos and Other Non‐Citation Formats
      • Practices Good and Bad
      • Templates and Boilerplate Language
      • What not to put in the bibliography
      • Bibliography for Examples and Items Mentioned in this Guide
  • About
  • Government Blog

How to review sources

When discussing sources within a paper submitted to any course I teach approach the discussion from the point of view of analytic elements. These elements are the topical subjects that contribute to your analysis.

For example, in one of my courses, I ask students to identify characteristics that may be stereotypes that occur in multiple films that we watch. A correct paper will address the characteristics, referencing and briefly explaining the appearances of these characteristics as they occur in a variety of films. The discussion of the film is just long enough to show how the characteristic occurs. It is not an extended review of the entire film. Several films should be discussed while focusing on the characteristic. If the film reflects more than one interesting characteristic, the film will be cited and mentioned at several diverse places in the paper.

In a research literature review, the focus should be on methods, variables, and findings. Variables of interest become one focus and are, again, addressed one at a time, mentioning those multiple sources that are relevant to understanding the variable. The same applies to findings (which may be more diverse and be related to single sources) and to methods.

For any topic, the analytic element should be the focus.

What this approach is not is a paragraph or section discussion focused on one source followed by another paragraph or section focused on another source and continuing until you have reviewed all sources. So, I do not expect to see a series of brief (or extensive) reviews of sources.
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