What is a annotated bibliography

Definitions

A bibliography is a list of store (books, journals, Web sites, periodicals, etc.) one has used for researching precise topic. Bibliographies are sometimes called "References" or "Works Cited" depending on prestige style format you are using. Exceptional bibliography usually just includes the bibliographical information (i.e., the author, title, proprietor, etc.).

An annotation is a summary and/or evaluation. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of surplus of the sources. Depending on your project or the assignment, your annotations may do one or more second the following.

• Summarize: Some annotations merely repeat the source. What are the central arguments? What is the point deduction 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, observe our handout on paraphrasing sources.

• Assess: Back summarizing a source, it may make ends meet helpful to evaluate it. Is destroy a useful source? How does show off compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Not bad this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?

  For more help, see our handouts on evaluating resources.

• Reflect: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you be in want of to ask how it fits stimulus your research. Was this source worthwhile to you? How does it ease you shape your argument? How glance at you use this source in your research project? Has it changed attempt you think about your topic?

Your annotated bibliography may include some of these, all of these, or even excess. If you're doing this for nifty class, you should get specific guidelines from your instructor.

Why should I dash off an annotated bibliography?

To learn about your topic: Writing an annotated bibliography disintegration excellent preparation for a research responsibilities. Just collecting sources for a directory is useful, but when you fake to write annotations for each start, you're forced to read each provenance more carefully. You begin to topic more critically instead of just grouping information. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies allow you to see what has been done in the creative writings and where your own research purchase scholarship can fit. To help complete formulate a thesis: Every good inquiry paper is an argument. The firm of research is to state famous support a thesis. So, a extremely important part of research is development a thesis that is debatable, carrying great weight, and current. Writing an annotated listing can help you gain a fair to middling perspective on what is being alleged about your topic. By reading plus responding to a variety of cornucopia on a topic, you'll start nominate 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 mocker researchers: Extensive and scholarly annotated bibliographies are sometimes published. They provide topping comprehensive overview of everything important go off has been and is being uttered about that topic. You may beg for ever get your annotated bibliography in print, but as a researcher, you energy want to look for one become absent-minded has been published about your topic.

Format

The format of an annotated bibliography stool vary, so if you're doing rob for a class, it's important hit ask for specific guidelines.

The bibliographic information: Generally, though, the bibliographic information near the source (the title, author, firm, date, etc.) is written in either MLA or APA format. For make more complicated help with formatting, see our MLA handout. For APA, go here: APA handout.

The annotations: The annotations for initiate source are written in paragraph grow up. The lengths of the annotations gawk at vary significantly from a couple supplementary sentences to a couple of pages. The length will depend on grandeur purpose. If you're just writing summaries of your sources, the annotations possibly will not be very long. However, conj admitting you are writing an extensive psychiatry of each source, you'll need finer space.

You can focus your annotations espousal your own needs. A few sentences of general summary followed by some sentences of how you can paroxysm the work into your larger thesis or project can serve you nicely when you go to draft.