Saturday, November 10, 2012

Literature Review

I completed a complete, polished draft of my Literature Review this afternoon; I am both exhilarated and fearful. I sent a copy to a classmate in my Youth and Libraries group, as I am most comfortable with her support. Using the Patty Oey examplar helped me to organize my thoughts. And, for the first time in my life, I actually wrote an outline (nearly a month) before I wrote the paper.

As I usually do, I jumped into the research early and after a few false starts, I began to see a few trends. I expanded my search, not trusting that what I had was of a high enough academic caliber. I searched again, and again. I mined limp articles for their resources and sought those out as stronger support for a direction I was beginning to find for myself and my needs to answer some key questions. Once the outline was complete, I was better able to target gaps in the research to ensure I had gathered enough. Being particular, I tried restricting my resources to those that are of a scholarly nature and were peer reviewed. Based upon what we've learned in class, I can have much more confidence in the validity and reliability of research articles published in this manner.

I believe I learned a great deal about the interests and needs of young adults....and since I had an 8-10 page limit, I reduced the scope to the environment and resources best suited for young adults as students, social teens, and developing citizens. I have enough material to write another literature review covering programs and services for these same three personas of the young adult.

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