Read: They Say/I Say Chapters 2 and 3, pages 30 to 55
Read: ‘Annotated Bibliographies ’ and ‘Evaluating Sources’
Annotated Bibliographies
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(Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Purdue OWL (Links to an external site.) and those administering the resource…)
Definitions
A bibliography is a list of sources (books, journals, Web sites, periodicals, etc.) one has used for researching a topic. Bibliographies are sometimes called “References” or “Works Cited” depending on the style format you are using. A bibliography usually just includes the bibliographic information (i.e., the author, title, publisher, etc.).
An annotation is a summary and/or evaluation. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Depending on your project or the assignment, your annotations may do one or more of the following.
Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.
For more help, see our handout on paraphrasing (Links to an external site.) sources.
Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?
For more help, see our handouts on evaluating resources (Links to an external site.).
Reflect: Once you’ve summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?
Your annotated bibliography may include some of these, all of these, or even others. If you’re doing this for a class, you should get specific guidelines from your instructor.
Why should I write an annotated bibliography?
To learn about your topic: Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for a research project. Just collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, but when you have to write annotations for each source, you’re forced to read each source more carefully. You begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies allow you to see what has been done in the literature and where your own research or scholarship can fit. To help you formulate a thesis: Every good research paper is an argument. The purpose of research is to state and support a thesis. So, a very important part of research is developing a thesis that is debatable, interesting, and current. Writing an annotated bibliography can help you gain a good perspective on what is being said about your topic. By reading and responding to a variety of sources on a topic, you’ll start to see what the issues are, what people are arguing about, and you’ll then be able to develop your own point of view.
To help other researchers: Extensive and scholarly annotated bibliographies are sometimes published. They provide a comprehensive overview of everything important that has been and is being said about that topic. You may not ever get your annotated bibliography published, but as a researcher, you might want to look for one that has been published about your topic.
Format
The format of an annotated bibliography can vary, so if you’re doing one for a class, it’s important to ask for specific guidelines.
The bibliographic information: Generally, though, the bibliographic information of the source (the title, author, publisher, date, etc.) is written in either MLA or APA format. For more help with formatting, see our MLA handout (Links to an external site.). For APA, go here: APA handout (Links to an external site.).
The annotations: The annotations for each source are written in paragraph form. The lengths of the annotations can vary significantly from a couple of sentences to a couple of pages. The length will depend on the purpose. If you’re just writing summaries of your sources, the annotations may not be very long. However, if you are writing an extensive analysis of each source, you’ll need more space.
You can focus your annotations for your own needs. A few sentences of general summary followed by several sentences of how you can fit the work into your larger paper or project can serve you well when you go to draft.
…and a little more!
ANNOTATIONS VS. ABSTRACTS: Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they may describe the author’s point of view, authority, or clarity and appropriateness of expression.
THE PROCESS: Creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual skills: concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed library research.
First, locate and record citations to books, periodicals, and documents that may contain useful information and ideas on your topic. Briefly examine and review the actual items. Then choose those works that provide a variety of perspectives on your topic.
Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate style.
Write a concise annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the book or article. Include one or more sentences that (a) evaluate the authority or background of the author, (b) comment on the intended audience, (c) compare or contrast this work with another you have cited, or (d) explain how this work illuminates your bibliography topic.
Annotated Bibliography Example:
Elizabeth Thompson
Professor Info Stacks
English 102
20 August 2016
Stem Cell Research: An Annotated Bibliography
Holland, Suzanne. The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy.
Boston: MIT P, 2001.
This is the annotation of the above source, which is formatted according to MLA 2016 (8th ed.)
guidelines for the bibliographic information listed above. If one were really writing an annotation for
this source, one would offer a brief summary of what this book says about stem cell research.
After a brief summary, it would be appropriate to assess this source and offer some criticisms of it. Does it seem like a reliable and current source? Why? Is the research biased or objective? Are the facts well documented? Who is the author? Is she qualified in this subject? Is this source scholarly, popular, some of both?
The length of your annotation will depend on the assignment or on the purpose of your annotated bibliography. After summarizing and assessing, you can now reflect on this source. How does it fit into your research? Is this a helpful resource? Too scholarly? Not scholarly enough? Too general/specific? Since “stem cell research” is a very broad topic, has this source helped you to narrow your topic?
Senior, K. “Extending the Ethical Boundaries of Stem Cell Research.” Trends in Molecular Medicine, vol. 7, 2001, pp. 5-6.
Not all annotations have to be the same length. For example, this source is a very short scholarly article. It may only take a sentence or two to summarize. Even if you are using a book, you should only focus on the sections that relate to your topic.
Not all annotated bibliographies assess and reflect; some merely summarize. That may not be the most helpful for you, but, if this is an assignment, you should always ask your instructor for specific guidelines.
Wallace, Kelly. “Bush Stands Pat on Stem Cell Policy.” CNN. 13 Aug. 2001.
Using a variety of sources can help give you a broader picture of what is being said about your topic. You may want to investigate how scholarly sources are treating this topic differently than more popular sources. But again, if your assignment is to only use scholarly sources, then you will probably want to avoid magazines and popular web sites.
The bibliographic information above is proper MLA format (use whatever style is appropriate in your field) and the annotations are in paragraph form. Note also that the entries are alphabetized by the first word in the bibliographic entry. If you are writing an annotated bibliography with many sources, it may be helpful to divide the sources into categories. For example, if putting together an extensive annotated bibliography for stem cell research, it might be best to divide the sources into categories such as ethical concerns, scholarly analyses, and political ramifications.
For more examples, a quick search at a library or even on the Internet should produce several examples of annotated bibliographies in your area.
Evaluating Sources: An Ongoing Project!
To begin with, here’s a TED talk hosted by journalist Markham Nolan on ‘How to Separate Fact and Fiction Online’. Mr. Nolan shares and discusses both tools and strategies that journalists use to check sources and verify information in images and video as a news story is developing. We too often forget to constantly evaluate image, audio, and video sources in addition to text-based sources, and this is a good place to learn and understand more about that area of source evaluation. It’s a big job, and though your job hopefully won’t be so difficult, it’s a good example of what needs be done to sift out what is true in our big world.
Nowadays, some experts are arguing that that teachers and librarians stop using checklists of evaluation criteria — often accuracy, expertise, currency, relevance, etc. — to teach students to evaluate websites. It might be a better approach to discuss the library’s vetted resources like article databases, and to use comparison and corroboration to compare, contrast, and utilize websites and library resources. We’ll be visiting the Snow Library to check out both sources and resources available to us on campus for reliable sources often easily accessible easily on the web.
Nevertheless, here’s checklist-based way to ‘sniff’ out problems with sources, the ‘CRAAP test (Links to an external site.)’. All giggles aside, it’s a simple applicable way to find things that ought not be in our source lists, and it’s used in many forms in academic library systems all over America.
A similar test for veracity and appropriateness is the ‘SMELL Test (Links to an external site.)’ (ha-ha, again). Read this article on the idea and come to class prepared to discuss it and its application to research like you will be doing for your paper.
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