General
A literature review allows you to show how your work compares with what has been done before. It is not a chronolgical ordering of briefly summarised references. It is best viewed as a way of reviewing what is available on a topic and identifying trends and patterns. In a good literature review you can also advance your own thoughts on why certain established ideas and theories are accepted, and why others might be challenged.
Extra
Primary and Secondary Material
Primary material is new, original and up-to-date at the period in consideration.
Secondary material is information that has been published before and essentially references primary material. An example is a textbook because most of the material will be in print somewhere else.
A consequence of the above is that searching out primary material is more valuable to a dissertation than purely using work in text books.
Fact v Opinion
It is important to be able to distinguish between what are proven and tested facts and what is descriptive opinion. Some publications will give a series of opinions, others will detail works that have been empirically researched and proven and may be viewed as the facts at the time of writing. Given that most writers use other people's work it is interesting to check the references in a piece of work. If there are no references then the piece of work is probably best described as the writer's opinions on a topic and should be quoted as such.
Technical
Harvard Referencing System
There are a number of referencing systems, the Harvard Referencing System has been chosen as an example here. The author's name and year of publication must be given and then the details of the work referenced should be included in alphabetical order at the end of the dissertation or report.
Citation in the text
Single Author
In a study by Bloggs (2002) it was found that ...
When the author has published more than one cited document in the same year use lower case letters after the year to distinguish the publications:
In a study by Bloggs (2002a) it was found that ...
Bloggs (2002b) explains that ...
Two authors
In the journal article by Abraham and Ibrahim (2010)...
More than two authors
In the book by Xui et al (2012)...
There are indications that ... (Xui, 2012; Abraham and Ibrahim, 2010; Bloggs, 2002; Dada, 2002)
In the last example the ordering is by date then alphabetically.
Quoting in the text
Use quotation marks and also the author's name, year of publication and page number of quote in brackets.
Short quotations up to two lines can be included in the body of the text e.g.
Xui (2012) states that "Handheld technology will increasingly be the main choice for the busy HR practitioner within the next 5 years"(p.10).
Longer quotations should be indented in a separate paragraph e.g.
Akin (2013) in explaining the concept of cloud based technologies stated that:
"Online learning allows the user to access information wherever they are. It also brings the added benefit of audio and visual media to help enrich the content accessed so that people can draw upon a range of methods of sharing information in a format that gives users a chance to use both creative and logical thinking"(p.5).
If part of a quotation is missing then use three dots ...
Akin (2013) in explaining the concept of cloud based technologies stated that:
"Online learning allows the user to access information wherever they are. It also brings the added benefit of audio and visual media to help enrich the content accessed ..."(p.5).
Secondary Referencing
Secondary referencing should be avoided where possible. It is when one author is referring to the work of another and the primary source is not available. The primary source is cited and the source that was actually read is cited e.g.(Xui,2010, cited in Akin, 2013).