Luker: Review of the Literature

Since in class we are discussing proposals, I found chapter five of Luker to be relevant. Where she discusses literature reviews and the daunting task of reviewing literature through out the whole process of research, not just at the beginning.  In my undergraduate degree, I never found literature reviews to be too difficult because I could always find five to ten articles on the topic. However I was never conducting my own research, just writing a review for class, so I never realized how big a job this would actually be. When conducting real research you would really want to find the most relevant and up to date publications. Luker’s point that you may not even know what field you are writing in, is so true. For example, if you were writing about the effects poverty have on civil unrest, it may appear to be a political science interest, but could be more related to peace studies. I think this is really important to keep in mind when we start writing our proposals. I also enjoyed how one of her tips is “make friends with a reference librarian” as I am sure many of the people in our class are LIS stream. It’s interesting that she mentions “your job is to analyze information; a librarians job is to help you find it in the first place”, where this is limiting as many MLS graduates get research jobs, and they in fact analyze the information. However in truth I relate to this because it is the “chase” I like best, not so much analysis.