Literature Review

There are many excellent online guides to doing a lilterature review.  Samples include:

• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It - Univeristy of Toronto
• Academic writing: what is a literarure review - Simon Fraser University
• Conducting a Literature Review - Georgetown University Medical Centre
• Literature Review - Deakin University Library
• Learn how to write a review of literature - University of Wisconsin - Madison
• Guidelines for writing a literature review - University of Minnesota, Duluth

Introducing Summon

The library's new search tool, Summon, allows you to search for books, journal articles, media, and more with a single search. You can access Summon from the library's homepage.  Also try the Advanced Search.

Once you have your results:

To see only BOOKS click on Book/eBook.

To see only JOURNAL ARTICLES click on Journal Article and click on Scholarly & Peer-Review.

Because there will be many results, it is important to narrow your search.  

However, Summon doesn't search everything that the library owns so you will still need to search other resources to find everything that you need. Summon also doesn't let you do sophisticated searches that you may be used to doing in specific databases or the library catalogue.  

Use Summon when starting research on a topic or when you are not sure which databases to use.  

Search the catalogue for books

Use the catalogue to find books, ebooks, government documents, conference proceedings, films and journals.Only the titles of journals are included in the catalogue: use the databases to search for individual articles.

If you know the title of the item you seek, perform a title search.

If you know the author, perform an author search. Enter the author's name with the surname first.

Otherwise, try a keyword search

nonprofit and (leadership or management)

When keyword searching, if a keyword exists in the subject heading or in the title, the resource is much more likely to be about that topic. You can construct sophisticated searches by specifying that your search terms must exist in particular fields of the catalogue record. Prefix the search term with a: to restrict to authors, t: to restrict to titles, s: to restrict to subject headings, and n: to restrict to the notes (where tables of contents are loaded). Or you can partially limit a search. For example:

(philanthropy or nonprofit) and s:canad*

Once you find one or more good books, look at the SUBJECT headings that have been used. Follow those SUBJECT heading links to find related books.

A small sample of Library of Congress Subject headings:

• Nonprofit organizations - Management
• Charities - Canada
• Voluntarism -- Government policy -- Canada
• Social entrepreneurship
• Social surveys -- Methodology
• Qualitative research -- Methodology

Sample titles

• Research methods in public administration and nonprofit management : quantitative and qualitative approaches
• The volunteer management handbook : leadership strategies for success
• The NSFRE fund-raising dictionary
• Excellence in fundraising in Canada : the definitive resource for Canadian fundraisers
• Social media for social good : a how-to guide for nonprofits
• Charities and not-for-profit fundraising handbook
• A dictionary of civil society, philanthropy, and the non-profit sector
• The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management
• Handbook of research on social entrepreneurship
• Handbook of public policy evaluation
• Encyclopedia of evaluation
• Handbook of practical program evaluation
• Doing survey research
• Focus groups : theory and practice

Grey literature is an important source of information for research in public policy.

Grey literature is defined as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing" ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." —ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997. Expanded in New York, 2004

Resources

•     Finding the Hard to Finds: Searching for Grey Literature - University of British Columbia
•     GreyNet International Directory of organizations in grey literature
•     Grey Matters 
•     Grey Literature Report - provides updates to grey literature on health services and topics.
•      Alternative Press Index
•     Economics Search Engine (American Economic Association)

Policy Reports and Working Papers

• Brookings Institute
• Canadian Public Documents Collection
• Conference Board of Canada e-Library  In addtion to the e-Library, look to particular Centres for research on specific topics.  Go to Conference Board of Canada and scroll down to the bottom of the page.  Select Sitemap. Under Special Projects you will see  Centre for the North, Centre for Food in Canada, How Canada Performs, etc.
• National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER) Working Papers
• Policy File Index (U.S.)
• Social Research and Demonstraton Corporation A non-profit research organization, created specifically to develop, field test, and rigorously evaluate new programs.

Think Tanks

• ​Harvard Kennedy School provides a searchable database of more tha 590 think tanks and research centres.