Hello, Jonathan - I think a great deal of this comes down to individual preference. I am a long-time fan of the Buzan mind maps and have been using variations of this for many years. But it still comes down to how much time/effort the individual is willing to devote to the creation of such things, whether in a more traditional form of note taking (which I still do a fair bit of myself), or the more visual organisation of the maps.

Of course, there's a whole range of new softwares out there now from PAPERS http://www.papersapp.com/ to Scrivener and everything in between.

However, if your question is more about the actual reading (i.e. practical criticism) of a text, then it's more about refining your search parameters so that you don't get a huge mass to begin with. After that, it's down to good old solid grunt-work. All part of the joys of learning.

Cheers.

Thanks Tris for your input, I am interested in how many people actually use literature mapping as a technique. I used it in my doctorate and it helped greatly. I agree that it is horses for courses and thanks for the tools you noted.

jd

Qiqqa has a brainstorm linked to your document library.

My brainstorm shows the two key areas of learning and education,

as clustered by Qiqqa. Some of my library documents

are related to one key area, and a few are related to both.

I have manually grouped together documents which have similar colour

swatches, as this means their vocabulary of phrases is similar.

Hovering over a document shows a preview, and double clicking on

a swatch opens the document with my notes on it.

http://www.qiqqa.com/Register70557

Ian thanks for this, qiqqa looks pretty amazing.  I will have a go

jd

Thank you for recommending Qiqqa.  I did not know of it, but it looks to be extremely useful.

Franco Moretti's proposal is quite rich ( and polemic): Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 , Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History . Also, I remember Nabokov's lectures on Russian an European Literature and his frequent use of maps

Thank you Jorge and Alice  for the responses. I love this subject and I have put up a page ( see link)  for students and early researchers on the basics of how to do a literature map. I will link back to this thread also and build on the page as information comes in. My guide on Literature Mapping was Chris Hart (( Hart, C 2005, Doing A Literature Review, Sage Publications Limited, London). It has a great literature mapping chapter.

I used literature mapping in my thesis and it was well received by the examiners.

See link to my lit map for students page

http://www.jondrane.net/the-literature-map-how-to-organise-your-literature-graphically.html

http://www.jondrane.net/-blog/the-literature-map-organising-your-literature-search

I would echo Jorge comments about Franco Moretti's work. But given the field I work in I would also point to Robert Mighall's A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction. Gothic scholars might find Jamieson Ridenhour's In Darkest London- The Gothic Cityscape in Victorian Literature useful.

Thanks Linda I have attached the link to the abstracted version of Moretti's on google scholar. Really interesting and thought provoking thanks for this.

Thanks Jonathan.

Jonathan Drane, Thank you for adding question and articles (Will keep it in mind).

I would also suggest search engine to look at the relevant article on you computer, which I normally use after downloading "nightmare" from google.scholar.

Archivarius 3000. Allows you to perform context search on thousands and thousands of files.

Rusian

Thanks for this , a great tip and will check out 'nightmare' ( what a name) and Archivarius 3000

jd

Dear Jonathan,

Since, Archivarius represent a much more complex search tool we started to perform courses on mass-downloading of certain pdf-files (by mask) for colleagues in my Institute.

E.g. it allows you to get automatically all World Bank’s (or Google.Scholar) publicly available reports and papers which have certain key words (e.g.: all documents by keyword “corruption”). All files will be on your computer in reasonable time (1-3 hours).

Further, Archvarius will read (will index) all downloaded files. After reading it will allow you to search certain keywords in them similar to Google.scholar manner, but with greater flexibility.

Basic command might contain the following :

“corruption tax” “Barro” “Alm”. (where "Barro" and "Alm" particular authors)

Execution of this command will allow you to see all the documents which simultaneously contain listed key words. Just inside Archivarius you may check the pages and paragraphs where exactly words are located in file and move relevant files to specific folder.

This tool might allow you to perform a literature review much faster.

Archivarius search limitation is about 650 000 - 700 000 files per index.

Thanks just grasping the concept, hope to learn more

DO it by themes, then extract the important lines... you may use Mendeley for easy citation and referencing...

Thanks guys I asked this question years ago when I was a PHD candidate at UNSW BE. Great to see the continuing dialogue. My thesis benefited greatly from literature mapping btw and I recommend it be used for clarity of purpose as one gets lost in the mire of the Literature Review. Cheers Jon and stay safe

Hi all

I am running a webinar on how to create a Literature Map. It seems that there is a lot of recurring interest in this feed and on my web site.

Here is the link to the webinar. Please spread the word.

https://www.jondrane.net/research-mentor-coach-private-2/literature-maps/

Thanks for this insightful thread, I find mapping always useful to visualise a big amount of references. I think this post on new tools for literature mapping might enrich the discussion. Especially, I will give Litmaps a go https://www.litmaps.co

https://aarontay.medium.com/3-new-tools-to-try-for-literature-mapping-connected-papers-inciteful-and-litmaps-a399f27622a

Thnx Giuliano am checking it out. Am also running a webinar on 22nd. Let me know if you would like to register with discount voucher.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/how-to-create-a-literature-map-tickets-169583654275

Hi guys I just published a youtube video on How to Create a Literature Map.

https://youtu.be/hIydAUHsEMk