What is Literature? Definition, Function, And Types of Literature

What is literature?

Literature is a scientific material or source commonly used to make a paper or other scientific activities. This literature is similar to a bibliography or reference. If you are confused to find material from a science, then you will look for references to other sources. That reference to other sources is called literature. The form of literature can be in the form of softcopy or hardcopy. Softcopy is the material or reference in the form of computer data, while hardcopy is a material or reference in the form of a book and has been printed on paper.

Literature Function

The function of literature includes:

• help users find the information needed.
• helps strengthen information on the results of an analysis or hypothesis
• provide additional information

Types of Literature

Basically the literature can be distinguished by several categories, according to the location of the placement of the collection, according to the depth of analysis, and according to its nature.

Literature type according to placement location collection:

General Collection

The general literature collection is literature which consists of various kinds of books made for the level of adult readers. This type of literature is usually placed on an open shelf and is free to be used by anyone as a source of reading material. Some of these literature examples are popular books that discuss plant cultivation, comic series, novels, etc.

Reference Collection

Literature reference collection is literature that contains a collection of information that can specifically be used to answer various types of questions that are owned by users. This type of literature is usually in the form of dictionaries, manuals, and encyclopedias.

Type of Literature According to the Depth Level of Analysis.

Primary literature

Primary literature is original writing that contains a study of a new theory, or an explanation of ideas in various fields. Primary literature can be in the form of scientific magazine articles, research reports, dissertations, patents, standards, seminar papers and others.

Secondary literature

Secondary literature is literature that contains information about primary literature. Secondary literature offers primary literature by summarizing or indexing, so secondary literature does not contain new knowledge, but only repeats and organizes existing knowledge. This literature includes the types of reference collections such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, directories, abstract magazines, index magazines, bibliographies, literature reviews, including databases and others.

Tertiary literature

Tertiary literature is literature that contains information that is a guide to obtaining secondary literature. Which includes tertiary literature is a bibliography of bibliographies, directories from directories and so on.

Search Literature

Literature search is looking for information / literature that has been written by people on a particular topic. Such information is contained in publications published both inside and outside the country. Search can be done manually and by computer. Literature search can be done in 3 ways, namely:

1. Manual search using printed, bibliographic, abstract, index and library catalog publications.
2. Search by direct or online access to computer database providers inside and outside the country.
3. Search using the CD-ROM and the database that was built on its own

Type of Literature by Nature

Textual document

Textual document literature is literature that contains various kinds of written texts that can be read by users.

Nontextual document

Nontextual document literature is literature that contains information contained in forms other than text such as images, photos, sounds, etc.

Mixed Documents

Mixed document literature is a literature whose contents are a combination of textual literature and non-textual literature. This type of literature is usually made after the textual document literature and non-textual document literature have been published.

Search through Web Site or Internet

Finding information through www is often referred to as surfing the net. Of course information is provided by various sites that provide information about scientific journals (e-journals), news bases, libraries, or information about institutions that provide www and even sites that provide facilities for searching or tracking about the things we want.

Such sites are better known as search engines, including www.google.com, www yahoo.com and so on sites like this, we just need to write the keywords that we want, for example writing a library science if we want to write library science itself as the keyword after writing in the space provided (text box) we just have to click or press the search button to execute it, the search engine will do it, and then it will display information according to the findings.

4. Base data is divided into four types, namely:

1. Individual database

Individual databases are databases used by individuals. Usually such databases are often found in PC environments. Visual dBASE, Corel Paradox, and Filemaker Pro are examples of software commonly used to manage databases for personal use.

2. Company database

The company database is a database that is intended to be accessed by a number of employees in a company in a location. Such databases are stored on a server and users can access from each computer that is located as a client.

3. Distributed database

A distributed database is a database that is stored on a number of computers located in several locations. This model is widely used by banks that have a number of branches in various cities and serve online banking transactions.

4. Public database

Public database is a database that can be accessed by anyone (public). For example, many websites (such as yahoo and about.com) provide data that is public in nature and can be taken by anyone for free. But sometimes someone must become a member and pay contributions to obtain public data.

Tip Writing Literature

In a scientific work such as a thesis, thesis, dissertation or scientific publication, one important part is the study of literature or literature review.

The definition of literature study is reading and understand the research or knowledge that has been carried out by researchers or previous scholars to be written structurally. The study of literature allows us to know and explore the knowledge related to something that is researched or developed.

Literature studies can be carried out through textbooks, scientific publications in trusted and good-quality conference journals and proceedings. Tips and tricks for choosing reliable and good quality scientific publications can be seen in articles in all scientific publications. When conducting a literature study you should pay attention to the following:

Choosing Relevant Literature Study Sources

This can be done when we know our purpose in searching for literature. For example, is our goal to find literature related to the theories that will be used, methodology in solving a problem or the development of previous research.

Use the Right Key Words / Phrases

Determining the right words / key phrases in finding literature sources will make it easier for us to obtain relevant sources. Use key words / phrases that are not too general, for example, if the literature source you want to find is related to the technique of news classification using a neural network, then the key word or phrase used is news classification neural network. By using these key phrases various sources will appear relating to the classification of news with neural network techniques.

Don’t be afraid of English

When determining the source of literature studies it should not be limited to Indonesian-language sources. Especially for the IT sector where many relevant and good sources come from textbooks or scientific publications in English

Use Google Scholar

Literature sources can be obtained from a special portal of scientific work owned by Google, namely Google Scholar or Google Scholar. Through this portal, in addition to using the right key words / phrases, we can also limit the publication of a literature source. For example, if you want to know the publication published, you can choose the time option in the upper left corner, as shown in Figure

Avoid Plagiarism, use Pharapharsing

When doing literature studies, we often get stuck in the copy-paste process. In the process of writing this is strictly prohibited. Every time you take a statement from a source, do paraphrasing, which is to rewrite the statement using your own words. Of course this can be done if we fully understand the statement, so there is no misinterpretation.

Don't forget to do citation!

Citation is the process of recognizing and recording the literature sources used. In each statement that has been paraphrased from sources the literature must be cited in the correct format. There are several commonly used formats, such as Format (Author, Year), or [number] format. In thesis writing, thesis or dissertation usually uses a format (Author, Year).

Use literature or automatic reference settings

Automatic literature or reference settings software is widely available and not paid. Software such as Mendeley or EndNote can make it easier for us to manage citations and bibliography and minimize errors. These software are automatically connected to Microsoft Word and Google Scholar so that the citation update process can be done efficiently.

In writing a literature review there should be a red thread between one section and the next. This is so that the reader can understand and see a clear relationship between what we develop and the presentation of the literature review. Because basically a literature review is an important part of a scientific paper that justifies and supports the methodology, results and conclusions of research or methods of solving problems that we develop.