A literature review, or lit review for short, is an overview of the information that has been published on a subject by researchers and scholars. Your purpose in a literature review is to give your readers a sense of the current state of research on a topic - what knowledge and ideas have been established? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do various authors differ in their conclusions on this topic? What is unknown still?
A literature is not just a list of people or articles who have studied a topic, nor is it simply a summary of resources; a literature review should involve synthesis and analysis of the themes and trends on a topic.
You can always use the library search or a database to automatically generate a citation, but make sure you double check that it's accurate! Automatically generated citations tend to have errors, like missing author names, incorrect page ranges, or unnecessary information.
Use the resources below to double check that your citations are accurate and contain all the information you need.